Mike was duly relieved from his station at the door, the younger Pliny being substituted for him, and he was led into the library.  Here he received hasty but clear orders from the major how he was to proceed, and was thrust, rather than conducted from the room, in his superior’s haste to hear the tidings.  Three or four minutes might have elapsed, when an irregular volley of musketry was heard in front; then succeeded an answering discharge, which sounded smothered and distant.  A single musket came from the garrison a minute later, and then Mike rushed into the library, his eyes dilated with a sort of wild delight, dragging rather than carrying his piece after him.

“The news!” exclaimed the major, as soon as he got a glimpse of his messenger.  “What mean these volleys, and how comes on my father in front?”

“Is it what do they mane?” answered Mike.  “Well, there’s but one maning to powther and ball, and that’s far more sarious than shillelah wor-r-k.  If the rapscallions didn’t fire a whole plathoon, as serjeant Joyce calls it, right at the Knoll, my name is not Michael O’Hearn, or my nature one that dales in giving back as good as I get.”

“But the volley came first from the house—­why did my father order his people to make the first discharge?”

“For the same r’ason that he didn’t.  Och! there was a big frown on his f’atures, when he heard the rifles and muskets; and Mr. Woods never pr’ached more to the purpose than the serjeant himself, ag’in that same.  But to think of them rapscallions answering a fire that was ag’in orders!  Not a word did his honour say about shooting any of them, and they just pulled their triggers on the house all the same as if it had been logs growing in senseless and uninhabited trees, instead of a rational and well p’apled abode.  Och! arn’t they vagabonds!”

“If you do not wish to drive me mad, man, tell me clearly what has past, that I may understand you.”

“Is it understand that’s wanting?—­Lord, yer honour, if ye can understand that Misther Strhides, that’s yon, ye’ll be a wise man.  He calls hisself a ‘son of the poor’atin’s,’ and poor ’ating it must have been, in the counthry of his faders, to have produced so lane and skinny a baste as that same.  The orders was as partic’lar as tongue of man could utter, and what good will it all do?—­Ye’re not to fire, says serjeant Joyce, till ye all hear the wor-r-d; and the divil of a wor-r-d did they wait for; but blaze away did they, jist becaase a knot of savages comes on to them rocks ag’in, where they had possession all yesterday afthernoon; and sure it is common enough to breakfast where a man sups.”

“You mean to say that the Indians have reappeared on the rocks, and that some of Strides’s men fired at them, without orders?—­Is that the history of the affair?”

“It’s jist that, majjor; and little good, or little har-r-m, did it do.  Joel, and his poor’atin’s, blazed away at ’em, as if they had been so many Christians—­and ’twould have done yer heart good to have heard the serjeant belabour them with hard wor-r-ds, for their throuble.  There’s none of the poor’atin’ family in the serjeant, who’s a mighty man wid his tongue!”