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 *lery battalion o' Saint Patrick they're called—an insult to the name. Every man once wore the United States uniform, and this day they turned the guns upon their own comrades. Tom Riley is their captain. The most of 'em desarted from Taylor, in north Mexico, with hopes of better pay and positions. 'Twas they who held out longest at the church. Three times they pulled down the white flag, for they well knew they were in a tight place. Hanged they'll be, as they desarve."

"I dunno," spoke somebody. "Old Fuss and Feathers has a soft heart in him for the enlisted man. Now if they were officers he'd give 'em short shift."

"Did you find many wounded, poor fellows?" the detail man was asked.

"Not near enough before darkness. There's like to be a hundred of the First lying now in the corn-*fields—and the rain closing down."

"That's bad, bad. What with the mud and the corn and the ditches, it must be a sore place to search."

"We're doing our best."

"Well, lads," Sergeant Mulligan uttered, "I'm wet through already, an' I'm goin' to turn in, for to-morrow we'll likely take the city. An' why we didn't go for'd an' take it this evenin', on the heels o' that mob, I dunno. Wid the help o' Shields an' Pillow, the First could ha' walked right along."

"An' walked into a trap, maybe. But the gin'ral had no orders, an' he waited too long, undecided."

"Yes; and the gen'ral-in-chief stopped him, too. Like as not that United States commissioner, by name o' Trist, who's been followin' with headquarters all the way from Puebla, is instructed ag'in any