be mighty little use your turning in."

"You won't catch me sitting up all night," Terence said, "with perhaps a
twenty-mile march in the morning, and maybe a fight at the end of it. If
it is to Leirya we are going it will be nearer thirty miles than twenty,
and even you, seasoned vessel as you are, will find it a long walk after
being up all night, and having had pretty hard work to-day."

"I cannot hold wid the general there," O'Grady said, gravely; "he has been
kapeing us all at it from daybreak till night, ivery day since we landed,
and marching the men's feet off. It is all very well to march when we have
got to march, but to keep us tramping fifteen or twenty miles a day when
there is no occasion for it is out of all reason."

"We shall march all the better for it to-morrow, O'Grady. It has been hard
work, certainly, but not harder than it was marching down to Cork; and we
should have a good many stragglers to-morrow if it had not been for the
last week's work. We have got half a dozen footsore men in my company
alone, and you would have fifty to-morrow night if the men had not had all
this marching to get them fit."

"It is all very well for you, Terence, who have been tramping all over the
hills round Athlone since you were a gossoon; but I am sure that if I had
not had that day off duty when I showed the priest round the camp I should
have been kilt."

"Here is the general order of the day," the adjutant said, as he came in
with Captain O'Connor. "The general says that now the army is about to
take the field he shall expect the strictest discipline to be maintained,
and that all stragglers from the ranks will at once be handed over to the