that some of Strides's men fired at them, without orders?--Is that the
history of the affair?"

"It's jist that, majjor; and little good, or little har-r-m, did it do.
Joel, and his poor'atin's, blazed away at 'em, as if they had been so
many Christians--and 'twould have done yer heart good to have heard the
serjeant belabour them with hard wor-r-ds, for their throuble. There's
none of the poor'atin' family in the serjeant, who's a mighty man wid
his tongue!"

"And the savages returned the volley--which explains the distant
discharge I heard."

"Anybody can see, majjor, that ye're yer father's son, and a souldier
bor-r-n. Och! who would of t'ought of that, but one bred and bor-r-n in
the army? Yes; the savages sent back as good as they got, which was
jist not'in' at all, seem' that no one is har-r-m'd."

"And the single piece that followed--there was one discharge, by
itself?"

Mike opened his mouth with a grin that might have put either of the
Plinys to shame, it being rather a favourite theory with the
descendants of the puritans--or "poor'atin's," as the county Leitrim-
man called Joel and his set--that the Irishman was more than a match
for any son of Ham at the Knoll, in the way of capacity about this
portion of the human countenance. The major saw that there was a good
deal of self-felicitation in the expression of Mike's visage, and he
demanded an explanation in more direct terms.