"They are firing on us, sir!" cried O'Moy on a note of sharp alarm.

"So I perceive," Lord Wellington answered calmly, and leisurely he
closed his glass, so leisurely that O'Moy, in impatient fear of his
chief, spurred forward and placed himself as a screen between him
and the line of fire.

Lord Wellington looked at him with a faint smile. He was about to
speak when O'Moy pitched forward and rolled headlong from the saddle.

They picked him up unconscious but alive, and for once Lord
Wellington was seen to blench as he flung down from his horse to
inquire the nature of O'Moy's hurt. It was not fatal, but, as it
afterwards proved, it was grave enough. He had been shot through
the body, the right lung had been grazed and one of his ribs broken.

Two days later, after the bullet had been extracted, Lord
Wellington went to visit him in the house where he was quartered.
Bending over him and speaking quietly, his lordship said that which
brought a moisture to the eyes of Sir Terence and a smile to his
pale lips. What actually were his lordship's words may be gathered
from the answer he received.

"Ye're entirely wrong, then, and it's mighty glad I am. For now
I need no longer hand you my resignation. I can be invalided home."

So he was; and thus it happens that not until now - when this
chronicle makes the matter public - does the knowledge of Sir
Terence's single but grievous departure from the path of honour go
beyond the few who were immediately concerned with it. They kept