“Now,” said the Irish sergeant, “I could brain you, but it is not worth while!”--I question if he could, however, knowing as I did the thickness of their skulls, “Ah, here they come!”--and a dozen half drunken, more than half-naked, bloated, villainous-looking blackamoors, with shovels and pick-axes on their shoulders, came along the road, laughing and singing most lustily. They passed beneath where we sat, and, when about a stonecast beyond, they all jumped into a trench or pit, which I had not noticed before, about twenty feet long, by eight wide. It was already nearly six feet deep, but it seemed they had instructions to sink it further, for they first plied their pickaxes, and then began to shovel out the earth. When they had completed their labour, the sergeant, who had been superintending their operations, returned to where the carts were still standing beneath the tree. One of them had six coffins in it, with the name of the tenant of each, and number of his company, marked in red chalk on the smallest end! “I say, Snowdrop,” said the sergeant, “how do you come to have only five bodies, when Cucumbershin there has six?” “To be sure I hab no more as five, and weight enough too. You no see Corporal Bumblechops dere? You knows how big he was.” “Well, but where is Sergeant Heavystern? why did you not fetch him away with the others?” The negro answered doggedly, “Massa Sergeant, you should remember dem no die of consumption--cough you call him--nor fever and ague, nor any ting dat waste dem--for tree day gone--no more--all were mount guard--tout and fat; so as for Sergeant Heavystern, him left in de dead-house at de hospital.” “I guessed as much, you dingy tief,” said the sergeant, “but I will break your bones, if you don’t give me a sufficing reason why you left him.”--And he approached Snowdrop, with his cane raised in act to strike. “Top, massa,” shouted the negro; “me will tell you--Dr Plaget desire dat Heavystern should be leave.” “Confound Dr Plaget”--and he smote the pioneer across the pate, whereby he broke his stick, although, as I anticipated, without much hurting his man--but the sergeant instantly saw his error, and with the piece of the baton he gave Snowdrop a tap on the shin-bone, that set him pirouetting on one leg, with the other in his hand, like a tee-totum. “Why, sir, did you not bring as many as Cucumbershin, sir?” “Becaase” screamed Snowdrop, in great wrath, now all alive and kicking from the smart--“Becaase Cucumbershin is loaded wid light infantry, sir, and all of mine are grenadier, Massa Sergeant--dat dem good reason surely!”