and, on the contrary, had his acceptance actually in my pocket for money lost at play.  As for my friend Mrs. Fitzsimons, she sat down on the bed and fairly burst out crying.  She had her faults, but her heart was kind; and though she possessed but three shillings in the world, and fourpence in copper, the poor soul made me take it before I left her—­to go—­whither?  My mind was made up:  there was a score of recruiting-parties in the town beating up for men to join our gallant armies in America and Germany; I knew where to find one of these, having stood by the sergeant at a review in the Phoenix Park, where he pointed out to me characters on the field, for which I treated him to drink.

I gave one of my shillings to Sullivan the butler of the Fitzsimonses, and, running into the street, hastened to the little alehouse at which my acquaintance was quartered, and before ten minutes had accepted His Majesty’s shilling.  I told him frankly that I was a young gentleman in difficulties; that I had killed an officer in a duel, and was anxious to get out of the country.  But I need not have troubled myself with any explanations; King George was too much in want of men then to heed from whence they came, and a fellow of my inches, the sergeant said, was always welcome.  Indeed, I could not, he said, have chosen my time better.  A transport was lying at Dunleary, waiting for a wind, and on board that ship, to which I marched that night, I made some surprising discoveries, which shall be told in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OF MILITARY GLORY

I never had a taste for anything but genteel company, and hate all descriptions of low life.  Hence my account of the society in which I at present found myself must of necessity be short; and, indeed, the recollection of it is profoundly disagreeable to me.  Pah! the reminiscences of the horrid black-hole of a place in which we soldiers were confined; of the wretched creatures with whom I was now forced to keep company; of the ploughmen, poachers, pickpockets, who had taken refuge from poverty, or the law (as, in truth, I had done myself), is enough to make me ashamed even now, and it calls the blush into my old cheeks to think I was ever forced to keep such company.  I should have fallen into despair, but that, luckily, events occurred to rouse my spirits, and in some measure to console me for my misfortunes.

The first of these consolations I had was a good quarrel, which took place on the day after my entrance into the transport-ship, with a huge red-haired monster of a fellow—­a chairman, who had enlisted to fly from a vixen of a wife, who, boxer as he was, had been more than a match for him.  As soon as this fellow—­Toole, I remember, was his name—­got away from the arms of the washerwoman his lady, his natural courage and ferocity returned, and he became the tyrant of all round about him.  All recruits, especially, were the object of the brute’s insult and ill-treatment.