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Updated: May 31, 2025
Terence O'Connor's duties had been light enough during the advance, but during the three days of the retreat to the Esla he had been incessantly occupied. He and Trevor had both been directed to ride backwards and forwards along the line of the brigade to see that there was no straggling in the ranks, and that the baggage carts in the rear kept close up.
It seemed actually as if O'Connor's mind had been unsettled by the shock; the few words he uttered were marked with all the incoherence of distraction; but it was not words that marked his despair most strongly, the appalling and heart-sickening groans that came from the terror-stricken and dying man must haunt me while I live; the expression, too, of hopeless, imploring agony with which he turned his eyes from object to object, I can never forget.
He thought nine rather young for a postilion, but when I had grown a little, and had gained more experience, he saw no insuperable objections to my obtaining the post. The leader-postilion was O'Connor's nephew, a smart-looking, light-built boy of seventeen, named Byrne. Byrne was less hopeful about my chance.
"I congratulate you, Conway," the latter said heartily. "We all pitied your being ordered away to this dreary place; and now you have been getting no end of honor and credit. O'Connor's report speaks in the strongest terms of you, and says it was entirely owing to your promptness and courage that the band was captured, and his life and that of Desmond saved.
I have given all the particulars of the bridegrooms' accoutrements, and signed myself the young ladies' "obedient servant and perhaps dupe." I am going on with "Patronage," and wish I could show it to you. Do get O'Connor's Child, Campbell's beautiful poem.
I had O'Connor's orders not to leave here till you arrived." "You are to go back yourself to-morrow morning, Conway," Captain Morrison said. "You are to take the prisoners in with an escort of a corporal and ten men, and to hand them over to the civil authorities; which means, I suppose, that you are to take them to the prison." "I suppose I shall come straight out again?" Ralph asked.
"Now, a cheer, boys!" cried Ruby. The men did not require urging to this. It burst from them with tremendous energy, and was echoed back by their comrades on the rock, in the midst of whose wild hurrah, Ned O'Connor's voice was distinctly heard to swell from a cheer into a yell of triumph!
"Why, you haven't got him," said the captain, seeing the same number come back as had gone away in the boat. "Yes, sir," we answered; "but poor Derrick has gone;" and we explained how our other shipmate had been lost. So there was a sigh and a tear for poor Derrick; and a cheer and congratulations for O'Connor's preservation.
She wished she was twice as big as he was, so that she might lift him bodily to her breast and snuggle and hug him like a kitten. So comprehensive an embrace alone could atone for injury to a big man's feelings. In about twenty minutes she reached Mrs. O'Connor's house and knocked.
Ralph rewarded the peasants generously for their hospitality, and the men set off in high spirits for their tramp, and reached Ballyporrit at half-past two in the afternoon. "You gave us a nice scare yesterday, Conway," was Captain O'Connor's greeting as they marched in.
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