to him or her,)--"Yes, by the holy poker, off duty, if
they like it," returned Phil Shehan; "but it isn't even
the colonel's own born son that dare to do so while
officer of the guard."

"Ye are right, comrade," said Burford; "there would soon
be hell and tommy to pay if he did."

At this point of their conversation, one of the leading
men at the litter, in turning to look at its subject,
stumbled over the root of a stump that lay in his way,
and fell violently forward. The sudden action destroyed
the equilibrium of the corpse, which rolled off its
temporary bier upon the earth, and disclosed, for the
first time, a face begrimmed with masses of clotted blood,
which had streamed forth from the scalped brain during
the night.

"It's the divil himself," said Phil Shehan, making the
sign of the cross, half in jest, half in earnest: "for
it isn't the captin at all, and who but the divil could
have managed to clap on his rigimintals?"

"No, it's an Ingian," remarked Dick Burford, sagaciously;
"it's an Ingian that has killed the captain, and dressed
himself in his clothes. I thought he smelt strong, when
I helped to pick him up."

"And that's the reason why the bloody heathens wouldn't
let us carry him off," said another of the litter men.