CHAPTER THIRTY.
BRIGGS'S IRISH LION.
"Why, it's an Irish lion!" cried the Sergeant, who was now close behind me.
I was too much surprised to say anything then; but I felt afterwards that I might have said, "Irish jackal! The Irish lions are quite different." But somehow the sight of the badly-wounded man disarmed me, and I dismounted to part the bushes and kneel down beside where my enemy lay back with his legs beneath the neck and shoulders of his dead horse, blood-smeared and ghastly, as he gazed wildly in my face.
"Wather!" he said pitifully.

"I am a dead man." "Are you, now, Pat ?" cried the Sergeant, in mocking imitation of the poor wretch's accent and high-pitched intonation.
"Don't be a brute, Sergeant," I said angrily as I opened my water-bottle and held it to the man's lips.

"Can't you see he's badly hurt ?" "Serve him right," growled the Sergeant angrily.

"What business has he fighting against the soldiers of the Queen?
Ugh! he don't deserve help; he ought to be stood up and shot for a traitor." "Be quiet!" I said angrily as I held the bottle, and the wounded man gulped down the cool water with terrible avidity.
"All!" he moaned, "it putts life into me.

Pull this baste of a horse aff me.