She had touched a tender chord, and its vibration shook his very frame, for he had in the last few days, taken leave of four motherless girls, pledges of love by a wife whom he had fondly loved, and of whom he had been suddenly bereaved.  Well might he feel for this poor wretch, for he had known parting in all its bitterness.

A soldier and his wife stood side by side, apparently ready to embark, whose looks told unutterable things; they both seemed young, but their faces betokened the extreme of agony.  The name of Patrick Morgan being called, the distracted wife clung to her husband, uttering the most piercing and heartrending cries.

“Sure, and what’ll become of me,” cried she, “will you then lave me, Pat, dear, lave your own poor Norah to die, as, sure I will, when you go in that big ship?  Oh, my dear Captain, and where will I go if your honour isn’t plazed to go without him this time?  Oh, do forgive me, but do not, oh, do not, in pity, part us.  Sure, an’ its your honours dear self as knows what it is to part from them ye loves; an’ so you thought, when ye tuk lave of the dear childer, t’other day, an’ saw the mother’s swate face, God rest her sowl, in the biggest of ’em, for sure they’re like, as two pays in a bushel, only one is little an’ t’other big, barring she’s in heaven.  Sure, and if your honour’s self had to bid ’em good bye over agin you’d, may be, think how hard it was for me to stay behind when Pat goes.”

Patrick, who, with national keen-sightedness, saw the internal working which his wife’s home appeal had created, now came forward, and said, “Oh, yer honour, if as how I dare be so bowld as jist to ax you this wan’st, to take compassion on us; may be, next time, we could go together, and if Norah was but wid me, what do I care where I goes.  Here’s Jem O’Connor wouldn’t mind going in my stead, and he’s neither wife, as I have, nor childer, like your honour to part from.”  Jem O’Conner now came forward and testified his readiness to go all the world over to serve a comrade.

Words could but poorly convey an idea of the looks of the anxious couple, as they watched the varying countenance of the Captain.  The situation of the soldier and his wife touched him to the quick, and the appeal proved irresistible.  Jem O’Connor was permitted to go instead of Pat.  Morgan, who, triumphantly led off his wife, both of them invoking blessings on his head, whose humanity had thus spared them the pangs of separation.

I stood, perhaps, twenty minutes musing on the scenes that had just been passing before me and was returning, to retrace my steps to the inn breakfast, when I noticed a wretched looking woman, with a baby in her arms.  She was walking very fast, towards the water’s edge, where the boats were still waiting to take the last of the soldiers on board ship.  She had an anxious, nay, a despairing look as she looked around, as I judged, for the Captain, who was not to be seen.