the saddle before ye, and gallop like blazes. Oi'll bring up the rear
and the other horse.' Wid that we changed horses and cantered up to
where she was standing, and he gives the word when she isn't lookin',
and Oi grabs her up--she sthrugglin' like mad but not utterin' a
cry--and Oi lights out for the trail agin. And sure enough the braves
made as if they would folly, but the leftenant throws the reins of her
horse over the horn of his saddle, and whips out his revolver and houlds
'em back till I've got well away to the trail again. And then they let
fly their arrows, and begorra the next thing a BULLET whizzes by him.
And then he knows they have arrms wid 'em and are 'hostiles,' and he
rowls the nearest one over, wheelin' and fightin' and coverin' our
retreat till we gets to the road agin. And they daren't folly us out of
cover. Then the lady gets more sinsible, and the leftenant pershuades
her to mount her horse agin. But before we comes to the fort, he sez to
me: 'Cassidy,' sez he, 'not a word o' this on account of the leddy.'
And I was mum, sorr, while he was shootin' off his mouth about him bein'
lost and all that, and him bein' bully-ragged by the kernel, and me
knowin' that but for him your sister wouldn't be between these walls
here, and Oi wouldn't be talkin' to ye. And shure, sorr, ye might be
tellin's the kernel as how the leddy was took by the hysterics, and was
that loony that she didn't know whatever she was sayin', and so get the
leftenant in favor again."
"I will speak with the colonel to-night," said Peter gloomily.
"Lord save yer honor," returned the trooper gratefully, "and if ye could
be sayin' that the LEDDY tould you,--it would only be the merest taste
of a loi ye'd be tellin',--and you'd save me from breakin' me word to
the leftenant."
"I shall of course speak to my sister first," returned Peter, with a
guilty consciousness that he had accepted the trooper's story mainly
from his previous knowledge of his sister's character. Nevertheless, in
|