"That is one of the prettiest speeches
I have heard for a long time. I shall know where to come for a character."
"You are right there, Terence; but you may live a good many years before
you get a chance of calling a whole British army under arms, as you did at
Salamanca."
Terence was at once assailed with a storm of questions, for with the
exception of O'Grady, no one had suspected the share that he and Dicky
Ryan had had in that affair. Terence knew that the latter had kept the
secret, for he had asked him only two or three days before, and he
therefore assumed an expression of innocence.
"What on earth do you mean, O'Grady?"
"What do I mane? Why, that somehow or other you were at the bottom of that
shindy when all the troops were turned out on a false alarm."
"Really, O'Grady, that is too bad. You know that every trick that was
played at Athlone was your suggestion, and as we never could find out how
that alarm originated, of course you put it down to me, whereas it is just
as likely to have been your own work. Colonel Corcoran knows that Dicky
and I were in the mess-room at the convent at the time when the alarm
broke out."
"That was so," the colonel agreed, "for I know that you were talking to me
when Hoolan ran in and told us that there was a row in the town. On what
do you base your suspicions, O'Grady?"
"Just upon me knowledge of the two lads, Colonel.
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