“Me!—­Desart!  Sure, it isn’t run away from yer honour, and the Missus, and Miss Beuly, and pratthy Miss Maud, and the child, that’s yer honour’s m’aning?”

This was said with so much nature and truth, that the captain had not the heart to repeat the question, though Joyce’s more drilled feelings were less moved.  The first even felt a tear springing to his eye, and he no longer distrusted the Irishman’s fidelity, as unaccountable as his conduct did and must seem to his cooler judgment.  But Mike’s sensitiveness had taken the alarm, and it was only to be appeased by explanations.

“Yer honour’s not sp’aking when I questions ye on that same?” he resumed, doubtingly.

“Why, Mike, to be sincere, it did look a little suspicious when you not only went, off yourself, but you let the Indian go off with you.”

“Did it?”—­said Mike, mus’ng—­“No, I don’t allow that, seein’ that the intent and object was good.  And, then, I never took the Injin wid me; but ’twas I, meself, that went wid him.”

“I rather think, your honour,” said Joyce, smiling, “we’ll put O’Hearn’s name in its old place on the roster, and make no mark against him at pay-day.”

“I think it will turn out so, Joyce.  We must have patience, too, and let Mike tell his story in his own way.”

“Is it tell a story, will I?  Ah!—­Nick’s the cr’ature for that same!  See, he has given me foor bits of sticks, every one of which is to tell a story, in its own way.  This is the first; and it manes let the captain into the sacret of your retrait; and how you got out of the windie, and how you comes near to breaking yer neck by a fall becaase of the fut’s slipping; and how ye wint down the roof by a rope, the divil a bit fastening it to yer neck, but houlding it in yer hand with sich a grip as if ‘twere the fait’ of the church itself; and how Nick led ye to the hole out of which ye hot’ wint, as if ye had been two cats going t’rough a door!”

Mike stopped to grin and look wise, as he recounted the manner of the escape, the outlines of which, however, were sufficiently well known to his auditors before he, began.

“Throw away that stick, now, and let us know where this hole is, and what you mean by it.”

“No”—­answered Mike, looking at the stick, in a doubting manner—­“I’ll not t’row it away, wid yer honour’s l’ave, ’till I’ve told ye how we got into the brook, forenent the forest, and waded up to the woods, where we was all the same as if we had been two bits of clover tops hid in a haymow.  That Nick is a cr’ature at consailment!”

“Go on,” said the captain, patiently, knowing that there was no use in hurrying one of Mike’s peculiar mode of communicating his thoughts.  “What came next?”

“That will I; and the r’ason comes next, as is seen by this oder stick.  And, so, Nick and meself was in the chaplain’s room all alone, and n’ither of us had any mind to dhrink; Nick becaase he was a prisoner and felt crass, and full of dignity like; and meself becaase I was a sentinel; and sarjeant Joyce, there, had tould me, the Lord knows how often, that if I did my duty well, I might come to be a corporal, which was next in rank to himself; barring, too, that I was a sentinel, and a drunken sentinel is a disgrace to a man, sowl and body, and musket.”