Thank you." Just now the lump in his throat would not have allowed him to eat soup, let alone a rather hard biscuit, but he looked up with a laugh and waved a genial salute to the trooper, who as genially responded.
Virgie, however, had become quite single minded since she had discovered food, and with a happy sigh she raised the biscuit to her lips.

Just then the sentry in the road flung up his hand with a shout.
"Look out, O'Connell! They're coming," and he clambered quickly over the wall and dropped behind it, his gun in readiness.
"What is it ?" demanded the other trooper.
"Detachment of cavalry.

A small one." "But whose is it, man.

Can ye not see ?" Collins, holding his hand behind him in a gesture which commanded them to stay where they were, raised his head cautiously over the wall.
"Morrison's," he answered, after a quick look, and he dropped down again out of sight.
At the sound of hoof beats and the name she remembered so well Virgie, with her biscuit all untasted, sprang up from the ground as if she would run out on the road.

But her father caught her, for O'Connell had turned to them with a serious face.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I'll have to trouble ye to get under cover in the woods.