’It’s playing it low on me.  Let me go.  For pity’s sake let me go.  I never did you harm, and—­and I stood you as much beer as I could.  Oh, don’t be hard on me, Dan!  You are—­you were in it too.  You won’t kill me up there, will you?’

‘I’m not thinkin’ of the treason; though you shud be glad any honest boys drank with you.  It’s for the regiment.  We can’t have the shame o’ you bringin’ shame on us.  You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat to get and stay behind an’ live with the women at the depot—­you that wanted us to run to the sea in wolf-packs like the rebels none of your black blood dared to be!  But we knew about your goin’ to the doctor, for he told in mess, and it’s all over the regiment.  Bein’, as we are, your best friends, we didn’t allow any one to molest you yet.  We will see to you ourselves.  Fight which you will—­us or the enemy—­you’ll never lie in that cot again, and there’s more glory and maybe less kicks from fightin’ the enemy.  That’s fair speakin’.’

’And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers—­you’ve forgotten that, Dan,’ said Horse Egan, to justify sentence.

‘What’s the use of plaguin’ the man?  One shot pays for all.  Sleep ye sound, Mulcahy.  But you onderstand, do ye not?’

Mulcahy for some weeks understood very little of anything at all save that ever at his elbow, in camp, or at parade, stood two big men with soft voices adjuring him to commit hari-kari lest a worse thing should happen—­to die for the honour of the regiment in decency among the nearest knives.  But Mulcahy dreaded death.  He remembered certain things that priests had said in his infancy, and his mother—­not the one at New York—­starting from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband’s soul in torment.  It is well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in time of trouble the weak human mind returns to the creed it sucked in at the breast, and if that creed be not a pretty one trouble follows.  Also, the death he would have to face would be physically painful.  Most conspirators have large imaginations.  Mulcahy could see himself, as he lay on the earth in the night, dying by various causes.  They were all horrible; the mother in New York was very far away, and the Regiment, the engine that, once you fall in its grip, moves you forward whether you will or won’t, was daily coming closer to the enemy!

They were brought to the field of Marzun-Katai, and with the Black Boneens to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the newspapers.  In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later.  They gathered behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were pot-valiant in artillery.  It was expedient to hold a large reserve and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the shrieking shrapnel.  Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come.  Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally managed to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black porpoise, at length on the grass.  To him crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray, demanding absolution.