"Well, Terence," the colonel said, "I didn't think the time was coming so soon when I was going to be instructed by your father's son, but I will own that you have made me feel that I have begun campaigning too late in life, and that you have given me a lesson." "I did not mean to do that, Colonel," Terence said, a good deal abashed. "It was O'Grady I was chiefly speaking to." "Your supeyrior officer!" O'Grady murmured. "My superior officer, certainly," Terence went on, with a smile; "but who, having, as he says, never looked at a map since he left school--while I have naturally studied one every evening since we started from Torres Vedras--can therefore know no more about the situation than does Tim Hoolan. But I certainly never intended my remarks to apply to you, Colonel." "They hit the mark all the same, lad, and the shame is mine and not yours. I think you have done us all good. One doesn't care when one is retreating for a good reason, but when one marches for twelve days to meet an enemy, and then, when just close to him, one turns one's back and runs away, it is enough to disgust an Englishman, let alone an Irishman. Well, boys, now we see it is all right, we will do our duty as well on the retreat as we did on the advance, and divil a grumble shall there be in my hearing." From that moment, therefore, the Mayo Fusiliers were an example to the brigade. Any grumble in the ranks was met with a cheerful "Whist, boys! do you think that you know the general's business better than he does himself? It is plenty of fighting you are likely to get before you have done, never fear. Now is the time, boys, to get the regiment a good name. The general knows that we can fight. Now let him see that we can wait patiently till we get another chance. Remember, the better temper you are in, the less you will feel the cold." So, laughing and joking, and occasionally breaking into a song, the Mayo Fusiliers pushed steadily forward, and the colonel that evening congratulated the men that not one had fallen out. "Keep that up, boys," he said. "It will be a proud day for me when we get to our journey's end, wherever that may be, to be able to say to the brigadier: 'Except those who have been killed by the enemy, here is my regiment just as it was when it started from the Carrion--not a man has fallen out, not a man has straggled away, not a man has made a baste of himself and was unfit to fall in the next morning.' I know them," he said to O'Driscol, as the regiment was dismissed from parade. "They will not fall out, they will not straggle, but if they come to a place where wine's in plenty, they will make bastes of themselves; and after all," he added, "after the work they have gone through, who is to blame them?"