



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive









THE RETURN OF THE O’MAHONY

_A Novel_

By Harold Frederic

Author Of “The Lawton Girl” “Seth’s Brother’s Wife” Etc.

With Illustrations By Warren B. Davis.

New York: G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers,

1892


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THE RETURN OF THE O’MAHONY




CHAPTER I.--THE FATHER OF COMPANY F.

ZEKE TISDALE was the father of Company F. Not that this title had
ever been formally conferred upon him, or even recognized in terms, but
everybody understood about it. Sometimes Company F was for whole days
together exceedingly proud of the relation--but alas! more often it
viewed its parent with impatient levity, not to say contempt. In either
case, it seemed all the same to Zeke.

He was by no means the oldest man in the company, at least as
appearances went. Some there were gathered about the camp-fire, this
last night in March of ‘65, who looked almost old enough to be _his_
father--gray, gaunt, stiff-jointed old fighters, whose hard service
stretched back across four years of warfare to Lincoln’s first call for
troops, and who laughed now grimly over the joke that they had come
out to suppress the Rebellion within ninety days, and had the job still
unfinished on their hands at the end of fourteen hundred.

But Zeke, though his mud- hair and beard bore scarcely a trace
of gray, and neither his placid, unwrinkled face nor his lithe, elastic
form suggested age, somehow produced an impression of seniority upon all
his comrades, young and old alike. He had been in the company from the
beginning, for one thing