"How could I manage it?" Terence said, indignantly. "No, no, O'Grady; I know you did make some remark about that scare at Athlone, and said it would be fun to have one here. I was a little shocked at hearing such a thing from, as you often say, a superior officer, and it certainly appears to me that it was you who first broached the idea. So I have much more right to feel a suspicion that you had a hand in the carrying of it out than for you to suspect me." "Well, Terence," O'Grady said, in an insinuating way, "I won't ask you any questions now, and maybe some day when you have marched away from this place, you will tell me the ins and outs of the business." "Maybe, O'Grady, and perhaps you will also confess to me how you managed to bring the scare about." "Go along wid you, Terence, it is yourself knows better than anyone else that I had nothing to do with it, and I will never forgive you until you make a clean breast of it to me." "We shall see about it," Terence laughed. "Anyhow, if you allude to the subject again, I shall feel it my duty to inform the colonel of my reasons for suspecting that you were concerned in spreading those false reports last night." "It was first-rate, wasn't it?" Dick Ryan said, as he joined Terence, when the latter left the mess-room. "It was good fun, Dicky; but I tell you, for a time I was quite as much scared as anyone else. I never thought that it would have gone quite so far. When it came to all the troops turning out, and Sir John and everyone, I felt that there would be an awful row if we were ever found out." "It was splendid, Terence. I knew that we could not be found out when we had not told a soul. Did you ever see such a funk as the Spaniards were all in, and after all their bragging and the airs that they had given themselves. Our men were so savage at their cowardice, that I believe they would have liked nothing better than an order to pitch into them. And didn't the women yell and howl? It is the best lark we have ever had." "It is good fun to look back at, Dicky, but I shall be glad when we are out of this. The Spanish authorities are making all sorts of inquiries, and I have no doubt that they will get hold of some of the men in that wine-shop, and it will come out that two British officers started the alarm."