heir lips at
their claret, that if they could only be wounded, and taste a cup of
water, they would then know what it was to feel a beverage grateful. In
about an hour and a half, which appeared to me to be five days at the
least, we arrived at the town of Cette, and I was taken up to the house
of the officer who commanded the troops, and who had often looked at me
as I was carried there from the battery, saying, "_Pauvre enfant_!" I
was put on a bed, where I again fainted away. When I came to my senses,
I found a surgeon had bandaged my leg, and that I had been undressed.
O'Brien was standing by me, and I believe that he had been crying, for
he thought that I was dead. When I looked him in the face, he said,
"Pater, you baste, how you frightened me: bad luck to me if ever I take
charge of another youngster. What did you sham dead for?"

"I am better now, O'Brien," replied I, "how much I am indebted to you:
you have been made prisoner in trying to save me."

"I have been made prisoner in doing my duty, in one shape or another. If
that fool of an armourer hadn't held his hammer so tight, after he was
dead, and it was of no use to him, I should have been clear enough, and
so would you have been! but, however, all this is nothing at all, Peter;
as far as I can see, the life of a man consists in getting into scrapes,
and getting out of them. By the blessing of God, we've managed the
first, and by the blessing of God we'll manage the second also; so be
smart, my honey, and get well, for although a man may escape by running
away on two legs, I never heard of a boy who hopped out of a French
prison upon one."

I squeezed the offered hand of O'Brien, and looked round me; the surgeon
stood at one side of the bed, and the officer who commanded the troops
at the other. At the head of the bed was a little girl about twelve
years old, who held a cup in her hand, out of which something had been
poured down my throat. I looked at her, and she had such pity in her
face, which was remarkably handsome, that she appeared to me as an
angel, and I turned round as well as I could, that I might look at her
alone. She offered me the cup, which I should have refused from any one
but her, and I drank a little. Another person then came into the room,
and a conversation took place in French.

"I wonder what they mean to do with us," said I to O'Brien.

"Whist, hold your tongue," replied he; and then he leaned over me, and
said in a whisper, "