"Wait till the lad has got something to eat and drink," the colonel said, peremptorily. "Pray take your seats, gentlemen. You take this chair by me, O'Connor; and now, while you are waiting for your plate, tell us in a few words how you escaped. Everyone made sure that you were killed. We heard that Fane had sent you to carry an order, that you had delivered it, and then started to rejoin him; from that time nobody saw you alive or dead." "The matter was very simple, Colonel. My horse was hit in the head with a round shot. I went a frightful cropper on some stones in the middle of a clump of bushes. I lay there insensible all night, and coming-to in the morning, saw that the French had advanced, and the firing on the hill over the town told me that the troops had got safely on board ship. I lay quiet all day, and at night made off, sheltered for a couple of days with some peasants on the other side of the hill, joined Romana, went to the Portuguese frontier with him, and then rode to Lisbon, where Sir John Cradock was good enough to put me on his staff." "We heard you had turned up safely at Lisbon, and glad we were, as you may be sure, and a good jollification we had over it. As for O'Grady, it has served as an excuse for an extra tumbler ever since." "Bad excuses are better than none," Terence laughed, "and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else." "Shut up, you young scamp," O'Grady said. "How is it that you have not answered my question? Why are you wearing staff-officer's uniform instead of your own?" "Have you not heard, Colonel," Terence said, "that I no longer belong to the regiment?" There was a chorus of expressions of regret round the table. "And how has that happened, Terence?" the colonel asked. "That is bad news for us all, anyway." "I was gazetted lieutenant a month ago, Colonel. I suppose you had sailed from England before the _Gazette_ came out." "I suppose so, lad. Well, you richly deserved your promotion, if it was only for that affair on board the _Sea-horse_, and you ought to have had it long ago." "I am awfully sorry to leave the regiment. It has been my home as long as I can remember, and wherever I may be, I shall always regard it in that light." "And so you remain on the staff at present, O'Connor?" "Well, sir, I am on the staff still, but for the present I am on detached duty." "What sort of duty, Terence?" "I have the honour to command two Portuguese regiments that marched in an hour ago." A shout of laughter followed the announcement. "Bedad, Terence," O'Grady said, "that crack on your head hasn't changed your nature, thanks to your thick skull. I suppose it is poking fun at us that you are. But you won't take us in this time."