“Halloo, Orderly!” cried I, from the window, as I hurriedly sealed my few words of acknowledgment, “take this note back to General Picton, and here’s a guinea for yourself.” So saying, I pitched into his ready hand one of the very few which remained to me in the world. “This is, indeed, good news!” said I, to myself. “This is, indeed, a moment of unmixed happiness!” As I closed the window, I could hear Mike pronouncing a glowing eulogium upon my liberality, from which he could not, however, help in some degree detracting, as he added: “But the devil thank him, after all! Sure, it’s himself has the illigant fortune and the fine place of it!” Scarcely were the last sounds of the retiring horseman dying away in the distance, when Mike’s meditations took another form, and he muttered between his teeth, “Oh, holy Agatha! a guinea, a raal gold guinea to a thief of a dragoon that come with the letter, and here am I wearing a picture of the holy family for a back to my waistcoat, all out of economy; and sure, God knows, but may be they’ll take their dealing trick out of me in purgatory for this hereafter; and faith, it’s a beautiful pair of breeches I’d have had, if I wasn’t ashamed to put the twelve apostles on my legs.” While Mike ran on at this rate, my eyes fell upon a few lines of postscript in Picton’s letter, which I had not previously noticed. “The official despatches of the storming are, of course, intrusted to senior officers, but I need scarcely remind you that it will be a polite and proper attention to his Royal Highness to present your letters with as little delay as possible. Not a moment is to be lost on your landing in England.” “Mike!” cried I, “how look the cattle for a journey?” “The chestnut is a little low in flesh, but in great wind, your honor; and the black horse is jumping like a filly.” “And Badger?” said I. “Howld him, if you can, that’s all; but it’s murthering work this, carrying despatches day after day.” “This time, however, Mike, we must not grumble.” “May be it isn’t far?” “Why, as to that, I shall not promise much. I’m bound for England, Mickey.” “For England!” “Yes, Mike, and for Ireland.” “For Ireland! whoop!” shouted he, as he shied his cap into one corner of the room, the jacket he was brushing into the other, and began dancing round the table with no bad imitation of an Indian war dance. “How I’ll dance like a fairy, To see ould Dunleary, And think twice ere I leave it to be a dragoon.”