bringing me tidbits out of the kitchen; and he visited me again and again—­not often, however, for he dare only come when he could steal away the key from the custody of the thaif of a porter.  I was three years in the dungeon, and should have gone mad but for the cook, and his words of comfort, and his tidbits, and nice books which he brought me out of the library, which were the ‘Calendars of Newgate,’ and the ’Lives of Irish Rogues and Raparees,’ the only English books in the library.  However, at the end of three years, the ould thaif of a rector, wishing to look at them books, missed them from the library, and made a perquisition about them, and the thaif of a porter said that he shouldn’t wonder if I had them; saying that he had once seen me reading; and then the rector came with others to my cell, and took my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me how I came by them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again till the blood ran down my back; and making more perquisition they at last accused the cook of having carried the books to me, and not denying, he was given warning to leave next day, but he left that night, and took me away with him; for he stole the key, and came to me and cut my chain through, and then he and I escaped from the religious house through a window—­the cook with a bundle, containing what things he had.  No sooner had we got out than the honest cook gave me a little bit of money and a loaf, and told me to follow a way which he pointed out, which he said would lead to the sea; and then, having embraced me after the Italian way, he left me, and I never saw him again.  So I followed the way which the cook pointed out, and in two days reached a seaport called Chiviter Vik, terribly foot-foundered, and there I met a sailor who spoke Irish, and who belonged to a vessel just ready to sail for France; and the sailor took me on board his vessel, and said I was his brother, and the captain gave me a passage to a place in France called Marseilles; and when I got there, the captain and sailor got a little money for me and a passport, and I travelled across the country towards a place they directed me to called Bayonne, from which they said I might, perhaps, get to Ireland.  Coming, however, to a place called Pau, all my money being gone, I enlisted into a regiment called the Army of the Faith, which was going into Spain, for the King of Spain had been dethroned and imprisoned by his own subjects, as perhaps you may have heard; and the King of France, who was his cousin, was sending an army to help him, under the command of his own son, whom the English called Prince Hilt, because when he was told that he was appointed to the command, he clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword.  So I enlisted into the regiment of the Faith, which was made up of Spaniards, many of them priests who had run out of Spain, and broken Germans, and foot-foundered Irish, like myself.  It was said to be a blackguard regiment, that same regiment of the Faith; but, ’faith,