They ordered him up - a slim, slight, dark-haired young man,
devoured with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only
reaches its full growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from
his mother's breast in the little cabin at the back of the
northern avenues of New York; he had been taught his rights and
his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal fronts of Chicago;
and San Francisco held men who told him strange and awful things
of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business took
him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and
being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas
of England that
were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one iron-fisted
colonel and an unbending adjutant.
He would go to the mines if need be to teach his gospel. And he
went, as his instructions advised, p. d. q. - which means "with
speed" - to introduce embarrassment into an Irish regiment,
"already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh peasantry, all
wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja of the
Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival."
Other information equally valuable was given him by his masters.
He was to be cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the
hearts of the men in the regiment. His mother in New York would
supply funds, and he was to write to her once a month. Life is
pleasant for a man who has a mother in New York to send him two
hundred pounds a year over and above his regimental pay.

In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and
musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's
stripe, went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty's Royal
Loyal Musketeers, commonly known as the "Mavericks," because they