The second rocket flew up.

“Forward, Onety-oneth!” cried I, in a voice of thunder.  “Killaloo boys, follow your captain!” and with a shrill hurray, that sounded above the tremendous fire from the fort, we sprung upon the steep; Bowser with the brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend, keeping well up with us.  We passed the demilune, we passed the culverin, bayoneting the artillerymen at their guns; we advanced across the two tremendous demilunes which flank the counterscarp, and prepared for the final spring upon the citadel.  Soult I could see quite pale on the wall; and the scoundrel Cambaceres, who had been so nearly my prisoner that day, trembled as he cheered his men.  “On, boys, on!” I hoarsely exclaimed.  “Hurroo!” said the fighting Onety-oneth.

But there was a movement among the enemy.  An officer, glittering with orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall, and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous Joachim Murat.

“We are hardly pressed, methinks,” Napoleon said sternly.  “I must exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;” and Murat loaded, and the Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twenty-four-pounder that had not been silenced by our fire.

“Hurray, Killaloo boys!” shouted I. The next moment a sensation of numbness and death seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the rampart.

II.

“Hush!” said a voice, which I recognized to be that of the Marquis d’ O’Mahony.  “Heaven be praised, reason has returned to you.  For six weeks those are the only sane words I have heard from you.”

“Faix, and ’tis thrue for you, Colonel dear,” cried another voice, with which I was even more familiar; ’twas that of my honest and gallant Lanty Clancy, who was blubbering at my bedside overjoyed at his master’s recovery.

“O musha, Masther Phil agrah! but this will be the great day intirely, when I send off the news, which I would, barrin’ I can’t write, to the lady your mother and your sisters at Castle Fogarty; and ’tis his Riv’rence Father Luke will jump for joy thin, when he reads the letther!  Six weeks ravin’ and roarin’ as bould as a lion, and as mad as Mick Malony’s pig, that mistuck Mick’s wig for a cabbage, and died of atin’ it!”

“And have I then lost my senses?” I exclaimed feebly.

“Sure, didn’t ye call me your beautiful Donna Anna only yesterday, and catch hould of me whiskers as if they were the Signora’s jet-black ringlets?” Lanty cried.

At this moment, and blushing deeply, the most beautiful young creature I ever set my eyes upon, rose from a chair at the foot of the bed, and sailed out of the room.

“Confusion, you blundering rogue,” I cried; “who is that lovely lady whom you frightened away by your impertinence?  Donna Anna?  Where am I?”