"I'm an ould fool," continued O'RAMMIS, in a convinced tone. "But
ye know, JOCK, how 'twas. I misremember fwhat I said to her, but she
never stirred, and only luked at me wid her melancolious ois, and
wid that my arm was round her waist, for bedad, it was pretty, she
was under the moon in the ould barrick square. 'Hould on there,' she
says, 'ye boiled thief of Deuteronomy. D'ye think I've kem here to be
philandhering afther you. I'd make a better man than you out av empty
kyartridges and putty.' Wid that she turned on her heel, and was for
marching away. But I was at her soide agin before she'd got her left
fut on the beat. 'That's quare,' thinks I to myself; 'but, TERENCE,
me bhoy, 'tis you know the thricks av the women. Shoulder arrums,' I
thinks, 'and let fly wid the back sight.' Wid that I just squeezed her
hand wid the most dellikit av all squeezings, and, sez I, 'MARY, me
darlint,' I sez, 'ye're not vexed wid TERENCE, I know;' but you never
can tell the way av a woman, for before the words was over the tongue
av me, the bhoys kem raging an' ramshackling--"

"Really, O'RAMMIS," I ventured to observe, for I noticed that he
and his two friends had pulled all the other five bottles out of my
pocket, and had finished them, "I'm a little disappointed with you
to-day. I came out here for a little quiet blood-and-thunder before
going to bed, and you are mixing up your stories like the regimental
laundress's soapsuds. It's not right of you. Now, honestly, is it?"

But the Three Musketeers had vanished. Perhaps they may reappear,
bound in blue-grey on the railway bookstalls. Perhaps not. And the
worst of it is, that the Colonel will never understand them, and the
gentlemen who write articles will never understand them. There is
only one man who knows all about them, and even he is sometimes what