just a straight slip of a lad from Malahide. 'Hould on! Teddie,' says
I, 'hould on! How'll yer face yer mother if yer turn yer back on the
inimy of yer counthry?' The b'y looks me in the eyes long enough to wink
three times, picks up his gun, an' shtood loike a rock, he did, till the
Roosians charged us, roared on us, an' I saw me slip of a b'y go down
under the sabre of a damned Cossack. 'Mother!' I heard him say,
'Mother!' an' that's all I heard him say--and the mother waitin' away aff
there by the Liffey soide. Aw, wurra, wurra, the b'ys go down to battle
and the mothers wait at home! Some of the b'ys come back, but the most
of thim shtay where the battle laves 'em. Wurra, wurra, many's the b'y
wint down that day by Alma River, an' niver come back! "There I was
shtandin', when hell broke loose on the b'ys of me rigimint, and divil
the wan o' me knows if I killed a Roosian that day or not. But Sergeant-
Major Kilpatrick--a bit of a liar was the Sergeant-Major--says he: 'It
was tin ye killed, Kilquhanity.' He says that to me the noight that I
left the rigimint for ever, and all the b'ys shtandin' round and liftin'
lasses an' saying, 'Kilquhanity! Kilquhanity! Kilquhanity!'
as if it was sugar and honey in their mouths. Aw, the sound of it!
'Kilquhanity,' says he, 'it was tin ye killed;' but aw, b'ys, the
Sergeant-Major was an awful liar. If he could be doin' annybody anny
good by lyin', shure he would be lyin' all the time.

"But it's little I know how many I killed, for I was killed meself that
day. A Roosian sabre claved the shoulder and neck of me, an' down I
wint, and over me trampled a squadron of Roosian harses, an' I stopped
thinkin'. Aw, so aisy, so aisy, I slipped away out av the fight! The
shriekin' and roarin' kept dwindlin' and dwindlin', and I dropped all
into a foine shlape, so quiet, so aisy. An' I thought that slip av a lad
from the Liffey soide was houlding me hand, and sayin' 'Mother! Mother!'
and we both wint ashlape; an' the b'ys of the rigimint when Alma was