'LOVE-O'-WOMEN'
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die than to live for them, though. Whin Raines comes out—he'll be changin' his kit at the jail now—he'll think that too. He shud ha' shot hemeelf an' the woman by rights an' made a clean bill av all, Now he's left the woman—she tuk tay wid Dinah Sunday gone last—an' he's left himself. Mackie's the lucky man,'
'He's probably getting it hot where he is,' I ventured, for I knew something of the dead Corporal's record,
'Be sure av that,' said Terence, spitting over the edge of the verandah. 'But fwhat he'll get there is light marchin'-ordher to fwhat he'd ha' got here if he'd lived,'
'Surely not. He'd have gone on and forgotten— like the others.'
'Did ye know Mackie well, sorr?' said Terence.
- He was on the Pattiala guard of honour last winter, and I went out shooting with him in an eke for the day, and I found him rather an amusing man,'
'Well, he'll ha' got shut av amusemints, excipt turnin' from wan side to the other, these few years to come, I knew Mackie, an' I've seen too many to be mistuk in the muster av wan man, He miglit ha' gone on an' forgot as you say, sorr, but he was a man wid an educashin, an' he used ut for his schames; an' the same educashin, an' talkin', an' all that made him able to do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that same wud turn back again in the long-run an' tear him alive. I can't say fwhat that 1 mane to say bekaze I don't know how, but Mackie was the spit an' livin' image avy a man-that I saw march the same march «l/l bué; an' 'twas worse for him that he did not come by