human
You're off ag'in, are you? Sure I heerd so, and you're mad for a dhrink now. Can ye write, Dawson, or must I brace you up furrst?
gpt
Here, thin, wait! It's absinthe ye need, my buck. Go you into that room now and wash yourself, and I'll bring it, and whin the others come back for their whiskey I'll tell 'um you've gone. You're to do what I say, now, and Doyle will see you t'rough; if not, it's back to that hell in the guard-house you'll go, my word on it.
human
Oh, for God's sake, Mrs. Doyle----
gpt
In there wid you! the others are coming.
human
Is he gone? Did he tell you what happened?
gpt
He's gone, yes, answered one:
human
Oh, they bate him cruel. But did he tell you of the lady--who it was they took from him?
gpt
Why, sure, the wife of that old Frenchman, Lascelles, that lives below,--her the lieutenant's been sparkin' this three months.
human
The very wan, mind ye! replied the lady of the house, with significant emphasis and glance from her bleary eyes;
gpt
she finished, with slow nodding accompaniment of the frowzy head.
human
And that's the kind of gintlemen that undertakes to hold up their heads over soldiers like Doyle. Here, byes, dhrink now, but be off ag'inst his coming. He'll be here any minute. Take this to comfort ye, but kape still about this till ye see me ag'in--or Doyle. Now run. And with scant ceremony the dreary party was hustled out through a paved court-yard to a gate-way opening on a side street. Houses were few and scattering so far below the heart of the city. The narrow strip of land between the great river and the swamp was cut up into walled enclosures, as a rule,--abandoned warehouses and cotton-presses, moss-grown one-storied frame structures, standing in the midst of desolate fields and decrepit fences. Only among the peaceful shades of the Ursuline convent and the warlike flanking towers at the barracks was there aught that spoke of anything but demoralization and decay. Back from the levee a block or two the double lines of strap-iron stretched over a wooden causeway between parallel wet ditches gave evidence of some kind of a railway, on which, at rare intervals, jogged a sleepy mule with a sleepier driver and a musty old rattle-trap of a car,--a car butting up against the animal's lazy hocks and rousing him occasionally to ringing and retaliatory kicks. Around the barracks the buildings were closer, mainly in the way of saloons; then came a mile-long northward stretch of track, with wet fields on either side, fringed along the river by solid structures and walled enclosures that told of days more prosperous than those which so closely followed the war. It was to one of these graceless drinking-shops and into the hands of a rascally