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Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles Lever · English · Gutenberg #32060 · 1,212,799 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

Author: Charles Lever

Illustrator: Hablot Knight Browne


        
Release date: April 19, 2010 [eBook #32060]
                Most recently updated: November 27, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32060

Credits: David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF CON CREGAN, THE IRISH GIL BLAS ***



Produced by David Widger



_CONFESSIONS OF_

CON CREGAN

 _An Irish Gil Blas_


By Charles Lever


With Illustrations by Phiz.


Boston: Little, Brown, And Company. 1913



CONTENTS


PREFACE.

CHAPTER I.   A PEEP AT MY FATHER

CHAPTER II.   ANOTHER PEEP AT MY FATHER

CHAPTER III.   A FIRST STEP ON LIFE'S LADDER

CHAPTER IV.   HOW I ENTERED COLLEGE, AND HOW I LEFT IT

CHAPTER V.   A PEEP AT "HIGH AND LOW COMPANY"

CHAPTER VI.   VIEWS OF LIFE

CHAPTER VII.   A BOLD STROKE FOR AN OPENING IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER VIII.   A QUIET CHOP AT 'KILLEEN'S'

CHAPTER IX.   SIR DUDLEY BROUGHTON

CHAPTER X.   THE VOYAGE OUT

CHAPTER XI.   MEANS AND MEDITATIONS

CHAPTER XII.   A GLIMPSE OF ANOTHER OPENING IN LIFE

CHAPTER XIII.   QUEBEC

CHAPTER XIV.   FELL IN AND OUT WITH THE WIDOW DAVIS

CHAPTER XV.   AN EMIGRANTS FIRST STEP ON SHORE

CHAPTER XVI.   A NIGHT IN THE LOWER TOWN

CHAPTER XVII.   MY LUCUBRATIONS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE

CHAPTER XVIII.   THE ORDINARY OF ALL NATIONS

CHAPTER XIX.   ON BOARD THE 'CHRISTOBAL'

CHAPTER XX.   THE LOG-HUT AT BRAZOS

CHAPTER XXI.   A NIGHT IN THE FOREST OF TEXAS

CHAPTER XXII.   THE LAZARETTO OF BEXAR

CHAPTER XXIII.   THE PLACER

CHAPTER XXIV.   THE FATE OF A GAMBUSINO

CHAPTER XXV.   LA SEÑHORA

CHAPTER XXVI.   THE DISCOVERY

CHAPTER XXVII.   GUAJUAQUALLA

CHAPTER XXVIII.   THE VOYAGE OF THE 'ACADIE'

CHAPTER XXIX.   THE CARCEL MORENA AT MALAGA

CHAPTER XXX.   CONSOLATIONS OF DIPLOMACY

CHAPTER XXXI.   A NEW WALK IN PROGRESSIVE LIFE

CHAPTER XXXII.   MOI ET MON PRINCE

CHAPTER XXXIII.     A SOIRÉE IN THE GREAT WORLD

CHAPTER XXXIV.   CONCLUSION



PREFACE.

An eminent apothecary of my acquaintance once told me that at each
increase to his family, he added ten per cent to the price of his drugs,
and as his quiver was full of daughters, Blackdraught, when I knew him,
was a more costly cordial than Curaçoa.

To apply this to my own case, I may mention that I had a daughter born
to me about the time this story dates from, and not having at my command
the same resource as my friend the chemist, I adopted the alternative of
writing another story, to be published contemporaneously with that now
appearing,--"The Daltons;" and not to incur the reproach so natural in
criticism--of over-writing myself--I took care that the work should come
out without a name.

I am not sure that I made any attempt to disguise my style; I
was conscious of scores of blemishes--I decline to call them
mannerisms--that would betray me: but I believe I trusted most of all to
the fact that I was making my monthly appearance to the world in another
story, and with another publisher, and I had my hope that my small
duplicity would thus escape undetected.

I was aware that there was a certain amount of peril in running an
opposition coach on the line I had made in some degree my own; not to
say that it might be questionable policy to glut the public with a kind
of writing more remarkable for peculiarity than perfection.

I remember that excellent Irishman Bianconi, not the less Irish that he
was born at Lucca,--which was simply a "bull,"--once telling me that to
popularize a road on which few people were then travelling, and on which
his daily two-horse car was accustomed to go its journey, with two or at
most three passengers, the idea occurred to him that he would start
an opposition conveyance, of course in perfect secrecy, and with every
outward show of its being a genuine rival. He effected his object with
such success that his own agents were completely taken in, and never
wearied of reporting, for his gratification, all the shortcomings and
disasters of the rival company.

At length, and when the struggle between the competitors was at its
height, one of his drivers rushed frantically into his office one day,
crying out, "Give a crown-piece to drink your honor's health for what I
done to-day."

"What was it, Larry?"

"I killed the yallow mare of the opposition car; I passed her on the
long hill, when she was blown, and I bruk her heart before she reached
the top."

"After this I gave up the opposition," said my friend; "'mocking was
catching,' as the old proverb says; and I thought that one might carry a
joke a little too far."

I had this experience before me, and I will not say it did not impress
me. My puzzle was, however, in this wise: I imagined I did not care on
which horse I stood to win; in other words, I persuaded myself that it
was a matter of perfect indifference to me which book took best with the
public, and whether the reader thought better of "The Daltons" or "Con
Cregan," that it could in no way concern me.

That I totally misunderstood myself, or misconceived the case before
me, I am now quite ready to own. For one notice of "The Daltons" by the
Press, there were at least three or four of "Con Cregan," and while the
former was dismissed with a few polite and measured phrases, the latter
was largely praised and freely quoted. Nor was this all. The critics
discovered in "Con Cregan" a freshness and a vigor which were so sadly
deficient in "The Daltons." It was, they averred, the work of a less
practised writer, but of one whose humor was more subtle, and whose
portraits, roughly sketched as they were, indicated a far higher power
than the well-known author of "Harry Lorrequer."

The unknown--for there was no attempt to guess him--was pronounced not
to be an imitator of Mr. Lever, though there were certain small points
of resemblance; for he was clearly original in his conception of
character, in his conduct of his story, and in his dialogues, and there
were traits of knowledge of life in scenes and under conditions to
which Mr. Lever could lay no claim. One critic, who had found out more
features of resemblance between the two writers than his colleagues,
uttered a friendly caution to Mr. Lever to look to his laurels, for
there was a rival in the field possessing many of the characteristics by
which he first won public favor, but a racy drollery in description and
a quaintness in his humor all his own. It was the amusement of one of my
children at the time to collect these sage comments and torment me with
their judgments, and I remember a droll little note-book, in which they
were pasted, and read aloud from time to time with no small amusement
and laughter.

One or two of these I have even now before me:--

"Our new novelist has great stuff in him."--_Bath Gazette_.

"'Con Cregan'--author unknown--begins promisingly; his first number is a
decided hit."--_Cambridge Chronicle_.

"The writer of 'Con Cregan' is a new hand, but we predict he will be a
success"."--_Cambridge Advertiser_.

"A new tale, in a style with which Lever and his followers have made us
acquainted."--_Hampshire Advertiser_.

"This tale is from the pen of an able Irish writer. The dialogue is very
smartly written, so much so--and we cannot pay the writer a more
genuine compliment--that it bespeaks the author to be an Irishman,
&c."--_Somerset Gazette_.

"'Con Cregan '--by an unnamed author--is a new candidate for
popularity," &c.--_Northern Whig_, Belfast.

"The writer must be an Irishman."--_Nottingham Gazette_.

"A new bark, launched by an unknown builder."--_Cheltenham Chronicle_.

"That the author's name is not disclosed will not affect the popularity
of this work,--one of the most attractive," &c.--_Oxford Journal_.

"This is a new tale by the pen of some able Irish writer, the first part
of which is only published."--_Ten Town Messenger_.

"Another new candidate for popular fame, and 'Harry Lorrequer' had
better look to his laurels. There is a poacher in the manor in the
person of the writer of 'Con Cregan.'"--_Yorkshireman_.

"'Con Cregan' promises to become as great a fact as 'Harry Lorrequer.'
"--_People's Journal_.

"The author of 'Con Cregan,' whoever he be, is no ordinary man."

"Another daring author has entered the lists, and with every promise of
success."--_Exeter Post_.

It may sound very absurd to confess it, but I was excessively provoked
at the superior success of the unacknowledged book, and felt the rivalry
to the full as painfully as though I had never written a line of it. Was
it that I thought well of one story and very meanly of the other, and
in consequence was angry at the want of concurrence of my critics? I
suspect not. I rather imagine I felt hurt at discovering how little hold
I had, in my acknowledged name, on a public with whom I fancied myself
on such good terms; and it pained me to see with what little difficulty
a new and a nameless man could push for the place I had believed to be
my own.

"The Daltons" I always wrote, after my habit, in the morning; I never
turned to "Con Cregan" until nigh midnight; and I can still remember the
widely different feelings with which I addressed myself to the task I
liked, and to a story which, in the absurd fashion I have mentioned, was
associated with wounded self-love.

It is scarcely necessary for me to say that there was no plan whatever
in this book. My notion was, that "Con Cregan," once created, would not
fail to find adventures. The vicissitudes of daily poverty would beget
shifts and contrivances; with these successes would come ambition
and daring. Meanwhile a growing knowledge of life would develop his
character, and I should soon see whether he would win the silver spoon
or spoil the horn. I ask pardon in the most humble manner for presuming
for a moment to associate my hero with the great original of Le Sage.

But I used the word "Irish" adjectively, and with the same amount of
qualification that one employs to a diamond, and indeed, as I have read
it in a London paper, to a "Lord."

An American officer, of whom I saw much at the time, was my guide to the
interior of Mexico; he had been originally in the Santa Fé expedition,
was a man of most adventurous disposition, and a love of stirring
incident and peril, that even broken-down health and a failing
constitution could not subdue.

It was often very difficult for me to tear myself away from his Texan
and Mexican experiences, his wild scenes of prairie life, or his sojourn
amongst Indian tribes, and keep to the more commonplace events of my own
story; nor could all my entreaties confine him to those descriptions of
places and scenes which I needed for my own characters.

The saunter after tea-time, with this companion, generally along that
little river that tumbles through the valley of the Bagno di Lucca, was
the usual preparation for my night's work; and I came to it as intensely
possessed by Mexico--dress, manner, and landscape--as though I had been
drawing on the recollection of a former journey.

So completely separated in my mind were the two tales by the different
parts of the day in which I wrote them, that no character of "The
Daltons" ever crossed my mind after nightfall, nor was there a trace of
"Con Cregan" in my head at my breakfast next morning.

None of the characters of this story have been taken from life. The one
bit of reality in the whole is in the sketch of "Anticosti," where I
myself suffered once a very small shipwreck, but of which I retain a
very vivid recollection to this hour.

I have already owned that I bore a grudge to the story as I wrote it;
nor have I outlived the memory of the chagrin it cost me, though it is
many a year since I acknowledged that "Con Cregan" was by the author of
"Harry Lorrequer."



CHAPTER I. A PEEP AT MY FATHER

When we shall have become better acquainted, my worthy reader, there
will be little necessity for my insisting upon a fact which at this
early stage of our intimacy, I deem it requisite to mention; namely,
that my native modesty and bashfulness are only second to my veracity,
and that while the latter quality in a manner compels me to lay an
occasional stress upon my own goodness of heart, generosity, candor, and
so forth, I have, notwithstanding, never introduced the subject without
a pang,--such a pang as only a sensitive and diffident nature can suffer
or comprehend. There now, not another word of preface or apology!

I was born in a little cabin on the borders of Meath and King's County.
It stood on a small triangular bit of ground, beside a cross-road; and
although the place was surveyed every ten years or so, they were never
able to say to which county we belonged; there being just the same
number of arguments for one side as for the other,--a circumstance,
many believed, that decided my father in his original choice of the
residence; for while, under the "disputed boundary question," he paid
no rates or county cess, he always made a point of voting at both county
elections! This may seem to indicate that my parent was of a naturally
acute habit; and indeed the way he became possessed of the bit of ground
will confirm that impression.

There was nobody of the rank of gentry in the parish, nor even
"squireen;" the richest being a farmer, a snug old fellow, one Henry
M'Cabe, that had two sons, who were always fighting between themselves
which was to have the old man's money,--Peter, the elder, doing
everything to injure Mat, and Mat never backward in paying off the
obligation. At last Mat, tired out in the struggle, resolved he would
bear no more. He took leave of his father one night, and next day set
off for Dublin, and 'listed in the "Buffs." Three weeks after, he sailed
for India; and the old man, overwhelmed by grief, took to his bed, and
never arose from it after.

Not that his death was any way sudden, for he lingered on for months
long,--Peter always teasing him to make his will, and be revenged on
"the dirty spalpeen" that disgraced the family, but old Harry as stoutly
resisting, and declaring that whatever he owned should be fairly divided
between them.

These disputes between them were well known in the neighborhood. Few of
the country people passing the house at night but had overheard the old
man's weak, reedy voice, and Peter's deep, hoarse one, in altercation.
When at last--it was on a Sunday night--all was still and quiet in the
house,--not a word, not a footstep, could be heard, no more than if it
were uninhabited,--the neighbors looked knowingly at each other, and
wondered if the old man was worse--if he was dead!

It was a little after midnight that a knock came to the door of our
cabin. I heard it first, for I used to sleep in a little snug basket
near the fire; but I did n't speak, for I was frightened. It was
repeated still louder, and then came a cry, "Con Cregan! Con, I
say, open the door! I want you." I knew the voice well; it was Peter
M'Cabe's; but I pretended to be fast asleep, and snored loudly. At last
my father unbolted the door, and I heard him say, "Oh, Mr. Peter, what's
the matter? Is the ould man worse?"

"Faix that's what he is, for he 's dead!"

"Glory be his bed! when did it happen?"

"About an hour ago," said Peter, in a voice that even I from my corner
could perceive was greatly agitated. "He died like an ould haythen, Con,
and never made a will!"

"That's bad," says my father; for he was always a polite man, and said
whatever was pleasing to the company.

"It is bad," said Peter; "but it would be worse if we could n't help
it. Listen to me now, Corny, I want ye to help me in this business; and
here's five guineas in goold, if ye do what I bid ye. You know that ye
were always reckoned the image of my father, and before he took ill ye
were mistaken for each other every day of the week."

"Anan!" said my father; for he was getting frightened at the notion,
without well knowing why.

"Well, what I want is, for ye to come over to the house, and get into
the bed."

"Not beside the corpse?" said my father, trembling.

"By no means, but by yourself; and you 're to pretend to be my father,
and that ye want to make yer will before ye die; and then I 'll send for
the neighbors, and Billy Scanlan the schoolmaster, and ye 'll tell him
what to write, laving all the farm and everything to me,--ye understand.
And as the neighbors will see ye, and hear yer voice, it will never be
believed but that it was himself that did it."

"The room must be very dark," says my father.

"To be sure it will, but have no fear! Nobody will dare to come nigh the
bed; and ye 'll only have to make a cross with yer pen under the name."

"And the priest?" said my father.

"My father quarrelled with him last week about the Easter dues, and
Father Tom said he 'd not give him the 'rites,' and that's lucky now!
Come along now, quick, for we 've no time to lose; it must be all
finished before the day breaks."

My father did not lose much time at his toilet, for he just wrapped his
big coat 'round him, and slipping on his brogues, left the house. I
sat up in the basket and listened till they were gone some minutes; and
then, in a costume as light as my parent's, set out after them, to
watch the course of the adventure. I thought to take a short cut, and
be before them; but by bad luck I fell into a bog-hole, and only escaped
being drowned by a chance. As it was, when I reached the house, the
performance had already begun.

I think I see the whole scene this instant before my eyes, as I sat on
a little window with one pane, and that a broken one, and surveyed the
proceeding. It was a large room, at one end of which was a bed, and
beside it a table, with physic-bottles, and spoons, and teacups; a
little farther off was another table, at which sat Billy Scanlan, with
all manner of writing materials before him. The country people sat two,
sometimes three, deep round the walls, all intently eager and anxious
for the coming event. Peter himself went from place to place, trying
to smother his grief, and occasionally helping the company to whiskey,
which was supplied with more than accustomed liberality.

All my consciousness of the deceit and trickery could not deprive the
scene of a certain solemnity. The misty distance of the half-lighted
room; the highly wrought expression of the country people's faces,
never more intensely excited than at some moment of this kind; the low,
deep-drawn breathings, unbroken save by a sigh or a sob,--the tribute of
affectionate sorrow to some lost friend, whose memory was thus forcibly
brought back; these, I repeat it, were all so real that, as I looked, a
thrilling sense of awe stole over me, and I actually shook with fear.

A low, faint cough, from the dark corner where the bed stood, seemed to
cause even a deeper stillness; and then, in a silence where the buzzing
of a fly would have been heard, my father said, "Where's Billy Scanlan?
I want to make my will!"

"He's here, father!" said Peter, taking Billy by the hand and leading
him to the bedside.

"Write what I bid ye, Billy, and be quick; for I hav'n't a long time
afore me here. I die a good Catholic, though Father O'Rafferty won't
give me the 'rites '!"

A general chorus of muttered "Oh! musha, musha!" was now heard through
the room; but whether in grief over the sad fate of the dying man, or
the unflinching severity of the priest, is hard to say.

"I die in peace with all my neighbors and all mankind!"

Another chorus of the company seemed to approve these charitable
expressions.

"I bequeath unto my son Peter,--and never was there a better son, or
a decenter boy!--have you that down? I bequeath unto my son Peter the
whole of my two farms of Killimundoonery and Knocksheboora, with the
fallow meadows behind Lynch's house; the forge, and the right of turf on
the Dooran bog. I give him, and much good may it do him, Lanty Cassara's
acre, and the Luary field, with the limekiln; and that reminds me that
my mouth is just as dry; let me taste what ye have in the jug." Here the
dying man took a very hearty pull, and seemed considerably refreshed
by it. "Where was I, Billy Scanlan?" says he; "oh, I remember, at the
limekiln; I leave him--that's Peter, I mean--the two potato-gardens at
Noonan's Well; and it is the elegant fine crops grows there."

"An't you gettin' wake, father, darlin'?" says Peter, who began to be
afraid of my father's loquaciousness; for, to say the truth, the punch
got into his head, and he was greatly disposed to talk.

"I am, Peter, my son," says he; "I am getting wake; just touch my lips
again with the jug. Ah, Peter, Peter, you watered the drink!"

"No, indeed, father; but it's the taste is leavin' you," says Peter; and
again a low chorus of compassionate pity murmured through the cabin.

"Well, I'm nearly done now," says my father; "there's only one little
plot of ground remaining; and I put it on you, Peter,--as ye wish to
live a good man, and die with the same easy heart I do now,--that ye
mind my last words to ye here. Are ye listening? Are the neighbors
listening? Is Billy Scanlan listening?"

"Yes, sir. Yes, father. We're all minding," chorused the audience.

"Well, then, it's my last will and testament, and may--Give me over the
jug." Here he took a long drink. "And may that blessed liquor be poison
to me if I 'm not as eager about this as every other part of my will.
I say, then, I bequeath the little plot at the cross-roads to poor Con
Cre-gan; for he has a heavy charge, and is as honest and as hard-working
a man as ever I knew. Be a friend to him, Peter, dear; never let him
want while ye have it yourself; think of me on my death-bed whenever he
asks ye for any trifle. Is it down, Billy Scanlan? the two acres at the
cross to Con Cregan and his heirs in _secla seclorum_. Ah, blessed be
the saints! but I feel my heart lighter after that," says he; "a good
work makes an easy conscience. And now I 'll drink all the company's
good health, and many happy returns--"

What he was going to add, there 's no saying; but Peter, who was now
terribly frightened at the lively tone the sick man was assuming,
hurried all the people away into another room, to let his father die in
peace.

When they were all gone Peter slipped back to my father, who was putting
on his brogues in a corner. "Con," says he, "ye did it all well; but
sure that was a joke about the two acres at the cross."

"Of course it was, Peter," says he; "sure it was all a joke, for the
matter of that. Won't I make the neighbors laugh hearty to-morrow when I
tell them all about it!"

"You wouldn't be mean enough to betray me?" says Peter, trembling with
fright.

"Sure ye would n't be mean enough to go against yer father's dying
words," says my father,--"the last sentence ever he spoke? And here he
gave a low, wicked laugh, that made myself shake with fear.

"Very well, Con!" says Peter, holding out his hand; "a bargain's a
bargain; yer a deep fellow, that's all!" And so it ended; and my father
slipped quietly home over the bog, mighty well satisfied with the legacy
he left himself.

And thus we became the owners of the little spot known to this day as
Con's Acre; of which, more hereafter.



CHAPTER II. ANOTHER PEEP AT MY FATHER

My father's prosperity had the usual effect it has on similar cases.

It lifted him into a different sphere of companionship and suggested new
habits of life. No longer necessitated to labor daily for his bread,
by a very slight exercise of industry he could cultivate his
"potato-garden;" and every one who knows anything of Ireland well knows
that the potato and its corollary, the pig, supply every want of an
Irish cottier household.

Being thus at liberty to dispose of himself and his time, my parent was
enabled to practise a long-desired and much-coveted mode of life; which
was to frequent "sheebeens" and alehouses, and all similar places of
resort,--not, indeed, for the gratification of any passion for drink,
for my father only indulged when he was "treated," and never could bring
himself to spend a farthing in liquor himself, but his great fondness
for these places took its origin in his passion for talk. Never, indeed,
lived there a man--from Lord Brougham himself downwards--who had a
greater taste for gossip and loquaciousness than my father. It mattered
little what the subject, he was always ready; and whether it were a
crim. con. in the newspapers, a seizure for rent, a marriage in
high life, or a pig in the pound,--there he was, explaining away all
difficult terms of law and jurisprudence; and many a difficulty that Tom
Cafferty, the postmaster, had attempted in vain to solve was, by a kind
of "writ of error," removed to my father's court for explanation and
decision.

That he soon became a kind of authority in the neighboring town of
Kilbeggan need not excite any surprise. It is men of precisely his kind,
and with talents of an order very similar to his, that wield influence
in the great cities of the earth. It is your talking, pushing, forward
men, seeming always confident in what they say, never acknowledging an
error nor confessing a defeat, who take the lead in life. With average
ability, and ten times the average assurance, they reach the goal that
bashful merit never even so much as gets within sight of.

His chief resort, however, was the Court of Quarter Sessions, where he
sat from the first opening case to the last judgment, watching with an
intense interest all the vacillating changes of the law's uncertainty,
which unquestionably were not in any way diminished by the singular
individual who presided in that seat of justice. Simon Ball, or, as he
was better known at the bar, Snow Ball,--an epithet he owed to his white
head and eyebrows,--had qualified himself for the Bench by improving
upon the proverbial attribute of justice. He was not only blind but
deaf. For something like forty-five years he had walked the hall of the
Four Courts with an empty bag, and a head scarcely more encumbered, when
one morning--no one could guess why--the "Gazette" announced that
the Lord Lieutenant had appointed him to the vacant chairmanship
of Westmeath,--a promotion which had the effect of confounding all
political animosity by its perfect unaccountableness.

It is a law of Nature that nothing ever goes to loss. Bad wine will make
very tolerable vinegar; spoiled hay is converted into good manure; and
so, a very middling lawyer often drops down into a very respectable
judge. Had the gods but acknowledged Mr. Ball's abilities some years
earlier, doubtless he had been an exception to the theory.

They waited, however, so long that both sight and hearing were in
abeyance when the promotion came. It seemed to rally him, however, this
act of recognition, although late. It was a kind of corroboration of the
self-estimate of a long life, and he prepared to show the world that he
was very different from what they took him for. No men have the bump
of self-esteem like lawyers; they live, and grow old, and die, always
fancying that Holts, and Hales, and Mansfields are hid within the
unostentatious exterior of their dusty garments; and that the wit that
dazzles, and the pathos that thrills, are all rusting inside, just
for want of a little of that cheering encouragement by which their
contemporaries are clad in silk and walk in high places. Snow Ball was
determined to show the world its error, and with a smart frock and green
spectacles he took the field like a "fine old Irish barrister," with
many a dry joke or sly sarcasm curled up in the wrinkles beside his
mouth. However cheap a man may be held by his fellows in the "Hall,"
he is always sure of a compensation in the provinces. There the country
gentlemen looked upon their chairman as a Blackstone,--not alone
a storehouse of law, but a great appeal upon questions of general
knowledge and information. I should scarcely have ventured upon what
some of my readers may regard as a mere digression, if it were not that
the gentleman and the peculiar nature of his infirmities had led to an
intimate relation with my father. My parent's fondness for law, and all
appertaining to it, had attached him to the little inn where Mr. Ball
usually put up at each season of his visit; and gradually, by tendering
little services, as fetching an umbrella when it rained, hastening for a
book of reference if called for, searching out an important witness, and
probably by a most frequent and respectful use of the title "my lord,"
instead of the humble "your worship," he succeeded in so ingratiating
himself with the judge that, without exactly occupying any precise
station, or having any regular employment, he became in some sort
a recognized appendage, a kind of "unpaid attaché to the court" of
Kilbeggan.

My father was one of those persons who usually ask only a "lift" from
Fortune, and do not require to be continually aided by her. From being
the humble attendant on the judge, he soon succeeded to being his
privy councillor; supplying a hundred little secret details of the
neighborhood and its local failings, which usually gave Mr. Ball's
decisions on the bench an air approaching inspiration, so full were they
of a knowledge of individual life. As confidence ripened, my father
was employed in reading out to the judge of an evening the various
depositions of witnesses, the informations laid, and the affidavits
sworn,--opportunities from which he did not neglect to derive the full
advantage; for while he usually accompanied the written document with a
running commentary of his own to Mr. Ball, he also contrived to let the
suitor feel how great was his knowledge of the case, and what a powerful
influence behind the scenes he wielded over the fortunes of the cause;
insomuch that it became soon well known that he who had Con Cregan on
his side was better off than with the whole Bench of country magistrates
disposed to favor him.

My father's prudence did not desert him in these trying circumstances.
Without any historical knowledge of the matter, he knew by a species of
instinct that pride was the wreck of most men, and that, to wield real,
substantial power, it is often necessary to assume a garb of apparent
inefficiency and incapacity. To this end, the greater the influence he
possessed, the humbler did he affect to be; disclaiming everything like
power, he got credit for possessing a far greater share than he ever
really enjoyed.

That the stream of justice did not run perfectly pure and clear,
however, may not be a matter of surprise; for how many rocks, and
shoals, and quicksands, are there in the channel! and certainly my
father was a dangerous hand at the wheel. Litigation, it must be owned,
lost much of its vacillation. The usual question about any case was,
"What does Con say? Did Con Cregan tell ye ye 'll win?" That was
decisive; none sceptical enough to ask for more!

At the feet of this Gamaliel I was brought up; nothing the more tenderly
that a stepmother presided over the "home department." As I was a stout
boy, of some thirteen or fourteen at this period of my father's life,
and could read and write tolerably well, I was constantly employed
in making copies of various papers used at the Sessions. Were I
psychologically inclined, I might pause here to inquire how far these
peculiar studies had their influence in biassing the whole tenor of my
very eventful life; what latent stores of artifice did I lay up from
all these curious subtleties; how did I habituate my mind to weigh and
balance probabilities, as evidence inclined to this side or that; above
all, how gratified was I with the discovery that there existed a legal
right and wrong, perfectly distinct from the moral ones,--a fact which
served at once to open the path of life far wider and more amply before
me.

I must, however, leave this investigation to the reader's acuteness, if
he think it worth following out; nor would I now allude to it save as
it affords me the opportunity, once for all, of explaining modes
of thinking and acting which might seem, without some such clue, as
unfitting and unseemly in one reared and brought up as I was.

Whether the new dignity of his station had disposed him to it or not,
I cannot say; but my father became far more stern in his manner and
exacting in his requirements as he rose in life. The practice of the
law seemed to impart some feature of its own peremptory character to
himself, as he issued his orders in our humble household with all the
impressive solemnity of a writ,--indeed, aiding the effect by phrases
taken from the awful vocabulary of justice.

If my stepmother objected to anything the answer was, usually, she might
"traverse in prox" at the next Sessions; while to myself every order was
in the style of a "mandamus." Not satisfied with the mere terrors of the
Bench, he became so enamoured of the pursuit as to borrow some features
of prison discipline for the conduct of our household; thus, for
the slightest infractions of his severe code I was "put" upon No. 3
Penitentiary diet,--only reading potatoes _vice_ bread.

There would seem to be something uncongenial to obedience in any form
in the life of an Irish peasant; something doubtless in the smell of the
turf. He seems to imbibe a taste for freedom by the very architecture of
his dwelling, and the easy, unbuttoned liberty of his corduroys. Young
as I was, I suppose the Celt was strong within me; and the "Times" says,
that will account for all delinquencies. I felt this powerfully; not
the less, indeed, that my father almost invariably visited me with the
penalty of the case then before the Court; so that while copying out at
night the details of the prosecution, I had time to meditate over the
coming sentence. It was, perhaps, fortunate for me that capital cases
do not come under the jurisdiction of a "sitting barrister;" otherwise I
verily believe I might have suffered the last penalty of the law from my
parent's infatuation.

My sense of "equity" at last revolted. I perceived, that no matter who
"sued," I was always "cast;" and I at length resolved on resistance. I
remember well the night this resolution was formed; it was a cold and
cheerless one of January. My father had given me a great mass of papers
to copy, and a long article for the newspapers to write out, which the
"Judge" was to embody in his address to the Bench. I never put pen to
either, but sat with my head between my hands for twelve mortal hours,
revolving every possible wickedness, and wondering whether in my
ingenuity I could not invent some offences that no indictment could
comprise. Day broke, and found me still unoccupied. I was just
meditating whether I should avow my rebellion openly, and "plead" in
mitigation, when my father came in.

My reader must excuse me if I do not dwell on what followed. It is
enough to say that the nature of my injuries are unknown to the criminal
statute, and that although my wounds and bruises are familiar to the
prize-ring, they are ignored by all jurisprudence out of the slave
states. Even my stepmother confessed that I was not fit to "pick out of
the gutter;" and she proved her words by leaving me where I lay.

Revenge must be a very "human" passion; my taste for it came quite
naturally. I had never read "Othello" nor "Zanga;" but I conceived a
very clear and precise notion that I had a debt to pay, and pay it
I would. Had the obligation been of a pecuniary character, and some
"bankrupt commission" been in jurisdiction over it, I had doubtless been
called upon to discharge it in a series of instalments proportional to
my means of life; being a moral debt, however, I enjoyed the privilege
of paying it at once, and in full; which I did thus: I had often
remarked that my father arose at night and left the cabin, crossing a
little garden behind the house to a little shed, where our pig and an
ass lived in harmony together; and here, by dint of patient observation,
I discovered that his occupation lay in the thatch of the aforesaid
shed, in which he seemed to conceal some object of value.

Thither I now repaired, some secret prompting suggesting that it might
afford me the wished-for means of vengeance. My disappointment was
indeed great that no compact roll of bank-notes, no thick woollen
stocking close packed with guineas, or even crown-pieces, met my hand.
A heavy bundle of papers and parchment was all I could find; and
these bore such an unhappy family resemblance to the cause of all my
misfortunes that I was ready to tear them to pieces in very spite. A
mere second's reflection suggested a better course. There was a certain
attorney in Kilbeggan, one Morissy, my father's bitterest enemy; indeed,
my parent's influence in the Session court had almost ruined and left
him without a client. The man of law and precedents in vain struggled
against decisions which a secret and irresponsible adviser contrived
beforehand, and Morissy's knowledge and experience were soon discovered
to be valueless. It was a game in which skill went for nothing.

This gentleman's character at once pointed him out as the fitting agent
of vengeance on my father, and by an hour after daybreak did I present
myself before him in all the consciousness of my injured state.

Mr. Morissy's reception of me was not over gracious.

"Well, ye spawn of the devil," said he, as he turned about from a small
fragment of looking-glass, before which he was shaving, "what brings ye
here? Bad luck to ye; the sight of ye's made me cut myself."

"I'm come, sir, for a bit of advice, sir," said I, putting my hand to my
hat in salutation.

"Assault and battery!" said he, with a grin on the side of his mouth
where the soap had been shaved away.

"Yes, sir; an aggravated case," said I, using the phrase of the
Sessions.

"Why don't ye apply to yer father? He's Crown lawyer and
Attorney-General; faith, he 's more besides,--he 's judge and jury too."

"And more than that in the present suit, sir," says I, following up his
illustration; "he's the defendant here."

"What! is that his doing?"

"Yes, sir; his own hand and mark," said I, laughing.

"That's an ugly cut, and mighty near the eye! But sure, after all, you
're his child."

"Very true, sir; it's only paternal correction; but I have something
else!"

"What's that, Con my boy?" said he; for we were now grown very familiar.

"It is this, sir," said I; "this roll of papers that I found hid in the
thatch,--a safe place my father used to make his strong-box."

"Let us see!" said Morissy, sitting down and opening the package. Many
were old summonses discharged, notices to quit withdrawn, and so on;
but at last he came to two papers pinned together, at sight of which he
almost jumped from his chair. "Con," says he, "describe the place you
found them in."

I went over all the discovery again.

"Did ye yourself see your father put in papers there?"

"I did, sir."

"On more than one occasion?"

"At least a dozen times, sir."

"Did ye ever remark any one else putting papers there?"

"Never, sir! none of the neighbors ever come through the garden."

"And it was always at night, and in secret, he used to repair there?"

"Always at night"

"That'll do, Con; that 'll do, my son. You'll soon turn the tables on
the old boy. You may go down to the kitchen and get your breakfast;
be sure, however, that you don't leave the house to-day. Your father
mustn't know where ye are till we're ready for him."

"Is it a strong case, sir?" said I.

"A very strong case--never a flaw in it."

"Is it more than a larceny, sir?" said I.

"It is better than that."

"I'd rather it didn't go too far," said I, for I was beginning to feel
afraid of what I had done.

"Leave that to me, Con," said Mr. Morissy, "and go down to yer
breakfast."

I did as I was bid, and never stirred out of the house the whole day,
nor for eight days after; when one morning Morissy bid me clean myself,
and brush my hair, to come with him to the Court-house.

I guessed at once what was going to happen; and now, as my head was
healed, and all my bruises cured, I'd very gladly have forgiven all the
affair, and gone home again with my father; but it was too late. As Mr.
Morissy said, with a grin, "The law is an elegant contrivance; a child's
finger can set it in motion, but a steam engine could not hold it back
afterwards!"

The Court was very full that morning; there were five magistrates on
the bench, and Mr. Ball in the middle of them. There were a great many
farmers, too, for it was market-day; and numbers of the townspeople, who
all knew my father, and were not sorry to see him "up." Cregan versus
Cregan stood third on the list of cases; and very little interest
attached to the two that preceded it. At last it was called; and there I
stood before the Bench, with five hundred pair of eyes all bent upon me;
and two of them actually looking through my very brain,--for they were
my father's, as he stood at the opposite side of the table below the
Bench.

The case was called an assault, and very soon terminated; for, by my own
admission, it was clear that I deserved punishment; though probably
not so severely as it had been inflicted. The judge delivered a very
impressive lesson to my father and myself, about our respective duties,
and dismissed the case with a reproof, the greater share of which fell
to me. "You may go now, sir," said he, winding up a line peroration;
"fear God and honor the king; respect your parents, and make your
capitals smaller."

"Before your worship dismisses the witness," said Morissy, "I wish to
put a few questions to him."

"The case is disposed of: call the next," said the judge, angrily.

"I have a most important fact to disclose to your worship,--one which
is of the highest importance to the due administration of justice,--one
which, if suffered to lie in obscurity, will be a disgrace to the law,
and a reproach to the learned Bench."

"Call the next case, crier," said the judge. "Sit down, Mr. Morissy."

"Your worshipw may commit me; but I will be heard--"

"Tipstaff! take that man into--" "When you hear of a mandamus from the
King's Bench--when you know that a case of compounding a felony--"

"Come away, Mr. Morissy; come quiet, sir!" said the police-sergeant.

"What were ye saying of a mandamus?" said the judge, getting frightened
at the dreaded word.

"I was saying this, sir," said Morissy, turning fiercely round; "that
I am possessed of information which you refused to hear, and which
will make the voice of the Chief Justice heard in this court, which now
denies its ear to truth."

"Conduct yourself more becomingly, sir," said one of the county
magistrates, "and open your case."

Morissy, who was far more submissive to the gentry than to the chairman,
at once replied in his blandest tone:--

"Your worship, it is now more than a month since I appeared before you
in the case of Noonan versus M'Quade and others,--an aggravated case of
homicide; I might go further, and apply to it the most awful term the
vocabulary of justice contains! Your worship will remember that on that
very interesting and important case a document was missing, of such a
character that the main feature of the case seemed actually to hang upon
it. This was no less than the deathbed confession of Noonan, formally
taken before a justice of the peace, Mr. Styles, and written with all
the accurate regard to circumstances the law exacts. Mr. Styles, the
magistrate who took the deposition, was killed by a fall from his horse
the following week; his clerk being ill, the individual who wrote the
case was Con Cregan. Your worship may bear in mind that this man,
when called to the witness box, denied all knowledge of this dying
confession; asserted that what he took down in writing were simply some
brief and unsatisfactory notes of the affray, all to the advantage
of the M'Quades, and swore that Mr. Styles, who often alluded to the
document as a confession, was entirely in error, the whole substance
of it being unimportant and vague; some very illegible and-ill-written
notes corroborating which were produced in court as the papers in
question.

"Noonan being dead, and Mr. Styles also, the whole case rested on the
evidence of Cregan; and although, your worship, the man's character
for veracity was not of that nature among the persons of his own
neighborhood to--"

"Confine yourself to the case, sir," said the judge, "without
introducing matter of mere common report."

"I am in a position to prove my assertion," said Morissy, triumphantly.
"I hold here in my hand the abstracted documents, signed and sealed by
Mr. Styles, and engrossed with every item of regularity. I have more: a
memorandum purporting to be a copy of a receipt for eighteen pounds
ten shillings, received by Cregan from Jos. M'Quade, the wages of this
crime; and, if more were necessary, a promissory note from M'Quade for
an additional sum of seven pounds, at six months' date. These are the
papers which I am prepared to prove in court; this the evidence which
a few minutes back I tendered in vain before you; and there," said he,
turning with a vindictive solemnity to where my father was standing,
pale, but collected, "there's the man who, distinguished by your
worship's confidence, I now arraign for the suppression of this
evidence, and the composition of a felony!"

If Mr. Morissy was not perfectly correct in his law, there was still
quite enough to establish a charge of misdemeanor against my father; and
he was accordingly committed for trial at the approaching assizes,
while I was delivered over to the charge of a police-sergeant, to be in
readiness when my testimony should be required.

The downfall of a dynasty is sure to evoke severe recrimination against
the late ruler; and now my parent, who but a few days past could have
tilted the beam of justice at his mere pleasure, was overwhelmed with
not merely abuse and attack, but several weighty accusations of crime
were alleged against him. Not only was it discovered that he interfered
with the due course of justice, but that he was a prime actor in, and
contriver of, many of the scenes of insurrectionary disturbance which
for years back had filled the country with alarm and the jails with
criminals.

For one of these cases, a night attack for arms, the evidence was so
complete and unquestionable that the Crown prosecutor, disliking the
exhibition of a son giving evidence against his parent, dispensed with
my attendance altogether, and prosecuting the graver charge obtained a
verdict of guilty.

The sentence was transportation for life, with a confiscation of all
property to the Crown. Thus my first step in life was to exile my
father, and leave myself a beggar,--a promising beginning, it must be
owned!



CHAPTER III. A FIRST STEP ON LIFE'S LADDER

It is among the strange and singular anomalies of our nature that
however pleased men may be at the conviction of a noted offender, few
of those instrumental to his punishment are held in honor and esteem.
If all Kilbeggan rejoiced, as they did, at my father's downfall, a very
considerable share of obloquy rested on me,--a species of judgment, I
honestly confess, that I was not the least prepared for.

"There goes the little informer," said they, as I passed; "what did ye
get for hanging--" a very admirable piece of Irish exaggeration--"for
hanging yer father, Con?" said one.

"Could n't ye help yer stepmother to a say voyage?" shouted another.

"And then we 'd be rid of yez all," chimed in a third.

"He's rich now," whined out an old beggar-man that often had eaten his
potatoes at our fireside. "He's rich now, the chap is; he 'll marry a
lady!"

This was the hardest to bear of all the slights, for not alone had I
lost all pretension to my father's property, but the raggedness of my
clothes and the general misery of my appearance might have saved me from
the reproach of what is so forcibly termed "blood-money."

"Come over to me this evening," said Father Rush; and they were the
only words of comfort I heard from any side. "Come over to me about six
o'clock, Con, for I want to speak to you."

They were long hours that intervened between that and six. I could not
stay in the town, where every one I met had some sneer or scoff against
me; I could not go home, I had none! and so I wandered out into the open
country, taking my course towards a bleak common, about two miles off,
where few, if any one, was like to be but myself.

This wild and dreary tract lay alongside of the main road to Athlone,
and was traversed by several footpaths, by which the country people were
accustomed to make "short cuts" to market, from one part of the road to
another; for the way, passing through a bog, took many a winding turn as
the ground necessitated.

There is a feeling of lonely desolation in wide far-stretching wastes
that accords well with the purposeless vacuity of hopelessness; but,
somehow or other, the very similitude between the scene without and the
sense of desolation within, establishes a kind of companionship. Lear
was speaking like a true philosopher when he uttered the words, "I like
this rocking of the battlements."

I had wandered some hours "here and there" upon the common; and it
was now the decline of day when I saw at a little distance from me the
figure of a young man whose dress and appearance bespoke condition,
running along at a brisk pace, but evidently laboring under great
fatigue.

The instant he saw me he halted, and cried out, "I say, my boy, is that
Kilbeggan yonder, where I see the spire?"

"Yes, sir."

"And where is the high-road to Athlone?"

"Yonder, sir, where the two trees are standing."

"Have you seen the coach pass,--the mail for Athlone?"

"Yes, sir, she went through the town about half an hour ago."

"Are ye certain, boy? are ye quite sure of this?" cried he, in a voice
of great agitation.

"I am quite sure, sir; they always change horses at Moone's
public-house; and I saw them 'draw up' there more than half an hour
since."

"Is there no other coach passes this road for Dublin?"

"The night mail, sir, but she does not go to-night; this is Saturday."

"What is to be done?" said the youth, in deep sorrow; and he seated
himself on a stone as he spoke, and hid his face between his hands.

As he sat thus, I had time to mark him well, and scan every detail of
his appearance.

Although tall and stoutly knit, he could not have been above sixteen, or
at most seventeen, years of age; his dress, a kind of shooting-jacket,
was made in a cut that affected fashion; and I observed on one finger
of his very white hand a ring which, even to my uneducated eyes, bespoke
considerable value.

He looked up at last, and his eyes were very red, and a certain
trembling of the lips showed that he was much affected. "I suppose, my
lad, I can find a chaise or a carriage of some kind in Kilbeggan?" said
he; "for I have lost the mail. I had got out for a walk, and by the
advice of a countryman taken this path over the bog, expecting, as he
told me, it would cut off several miles of way. I suppose I must have
mistaken him, for I have been running for above an hour, and am too late
after all; but still, if I can find a chaise, I shall be in time yet."

"They 're all gone, sir," said I; "and sorry am I to have such tidings
to tell. The Sessions broke up to-day, and they're away with the lawyers
to Kinnegad."

"And how far is that from us?"

"Sixteen miles or more, by the road."

"And how am I to get there?"

"Unless ye walk it--"

"Walk! impossible. I am dead beat already; besides, the time it would
take would lose me all chance of reaching Dublin as I want."

"Andy Smith has a horse, if he'd lend it; and there's a short road by
Hogan's boreen."

"Where does this Smith live?" said he, stopping me impatiently.

"Not a half mile from here; you can see the house from this."

"Come along, then, and show me the way, my boy," said he; and the gleam
of hope seemed to lend alacrity to his movements.

Away we set together, and as we went, it was arranged between us that if
Andy would hire out his mare, I should accompany the rider as guide, and
bring back the animal to its owner, while the traveller proceeded on his
journey to town.

The negotiation was tedious enough; for, at first, Andy would n't appear
at all; he thought it was a process-server was after him,--a suspicion
probably suggested by my presence, as it was generally believed that a
rag of my father's mantle had descended to me. It was only after a very
cautious and careful scrutiny of the young traveller through a small
glass eye--it wasn't a window--in the mud wall that he would consent to
come out. When he did so, he treated the proposal most indignantly.
"Is it he hire out his baste? as if she was a dirty garraun of Betty
Nowlan's of the head inn; he wondered who 'd ask the like!" and so on.

The youth, deterred by this reception, would have abandoned the scheme
at once; but I, better acquainted with such characters as Andy, and
knowing that his difficulties were only items in the intended charge,
higgled, and bargained, and bullied, and blarneyed by turns; and, after
some five and forty minutes of alternate joking and abusing each other,
it was at last agreed on that the "baste" was to be ceded for the sum of
fifteen shillings,--"two and sixpence more if his honor was pleased with
the way she carried him;" the turnpike and a feed of oats being also
at the charge of the rider, as well as all repairs of shoes incurred
by loss or otherwise. Then there came a supplemental clause as to the
peculiar care of the animal. How "she was n't to be let drink too much
at once, for she 'd get the colic;" and if she needed shoeing, she
was to have a "twitch" on her nose, or she'd kick the forge to
"smithereens." The same precaution to be taken if the saddle required
fresh girthing; a hint was given, besides, not to touch her with the
left heel, or she 'd certainly kick the rider with the hind leg of
the same side; and, as a last caution given, to be on our guard at the
cross-roads at Toomes-bridge, or she'd run away towards Croghan, where
she once was turned out in foal. "Barring" these peculiarities, and
certain smaller difficulties about mounting, "she was a lamb, and the
sweetest-tempered crayture ever was haltered."

In the very midst of this panegyric upon the animal's good and noble
qualities he flung open the door of a little shed, and exhibited her to
our view. I verily believe, whatever the urgency of the youth's reason
for proceeding, that his heart failed him at the sight of the steed; a
second's reconsideration seemed to rally his courage, and he said, "No
matter, it can't be helped; saddle her at once, and let us be off."

"That's easier said nor done," muttered Andy to himself, as he stood at
the door, without venturing a step farther. "Con," said he, at last, in
a species of coaxing tone I well knew boded peril, "Con, a cushla! get
a hould of her by the head, that's a fine chap; make a spring at the
forelock."

"Maybe she 'd kick--"

"Sorra kick! get up there, now, and I'll be talking to you all the
while."

This proposition, though doubtless meant as most encouraging, by no
means reassured me.

"Come, come! I'll bridle the infernal beast," said the youth, losing
all patience with both of us, and he sprung forward into the stable; but
barely had he time to jump back, as the animal let fly with both hind
legs together. Andy, well aware of what was coming, pulled us both back
and shut to the door, against which the hoofs kept up one rattling din
of kicks that shook the crazy edifice from roof to ground.

"Ye see what comes of startlin' her; the crayture's timid as a
kid," said Andy, whose blanched cheek badly corroborated his assumed
composure. "Ye may do what ye plaze, barrin' putting a bridle on her;
she never took kindly to that!"

"But do ye intend me to ride her without one?" said the youth.

"By no manner of means, sir," said Andy, with a plausible slowness on
each word that gave him time to think of an expedient. "I would n't be
guilty of the like; none that knows me would ever say it to me: I 'm a
poor man--"

"You're a devilish tiresome one," broke in the youth, suddenly; "here we
have been above half an hour standing at the door, and none the nearer
our departure than when we arrived."

"Christy Moore could bridle her, if he was here," said Andy; "but he's
gone to Moate, and won't be back till evening; may be that would do?"

A very impatient, and not very pious exclamation consigned Christy to an
untimely fate. "Well, don't be angry, anyhow, sir," said Andy; "there's
many a thing a body might think of, if they were n't startled. See, now,
I have a way this minute; an elegant fine way, too."

"Well, what is it? Confound your long-winded speeches!"

"There, now, you're angry again! sure it's enough to give one quite a
through-otherness, and not leave them time to reflect."

"Your plan, your plan!" said the young man, his lips trembling with
anger and impatience.

"Here it is, then; let the 'gossoon,'" meaning me, "get up on the roof
and take off two or three of the scraws, the sods of grass, till he can
get through, and then steal down on the mare's back; when he 's once on
her, she 'll never stir head nor foot, and he can slip the bridle over
her quite asy."

"The boy might be killed; no, no, I 'll not suffer that--"

"Wait, sir," cried I, interrupting, "it's not so hard, after all; once
on her back, I defy her to throw me."

"Sure I know that well; sorra better rider in the Meath hunt than little
Con," broke in Andy; backing me with a ready flattery he thought would
deceive me.

It was not without reluctance that the youth consented to this forlorn
hope, but he yielded at last; and so, with a bridle fastened round me
like a scarf, I was hoisted on the roof by Andy, and, under a volley of
encouraging expressions, exhorted to "go in and win."

"There! there, a cushla!" cried Andy, as he saw me performing the first
act of the piece with a vigor he had never calculated on; "'tis n't a
coach and six ye want to drive through. Tear and ages! ye'll take the
whole roof off." The truth was, I worked away with a malicious pleasure
in the destruction of the old miser's roof; nor is it quite certain
how far my zeal might have carried me, when suddenly one of the
rafters--mere light poles of ash--gave way, and down I went, at first
slowly, and then quicker, into a kind of funnel formed by the smashed
timbers and the earthen sods. The crash, the din, and the dust appeared
to have terrified the wicked beast below, for she stood trembling in one
corner of the stable, and never moved a limb as I walked boldly up and
passed the bridle over her head. This done, I had barely time to spring
on her back, when the door was forced open by the young gentleman, whose
fears for my fate had absorbed every other thought.

"Are you safe, my boy, quite safe?" he cried, making his way over the
fallen rubbish.

"Oh! the devil fear him," cried Andy, in a perfect rage of passion;
"I wish it was his bones was smashed, instead of the
roof-sticks--see!--Och, murther, only look at this." And Andy stood amid
the ruins, a most comical picture of affliction, in part real and in
part assumed. Meanwhile the youth had advanced to my side, and, with
many a kind and encouraging word, more than repaid me for all my danger.

"'T is n't five pound will pay the damage," cried Andy, running up on
his fingers a sum of imaginary arithmetic.

"Where's the saddle, you old--" What the young man was about to add, I
know not; but at a look from me he stopped short.

"Is it abusin' me you're for now, afther wrecking my house and
destroying my premises?" cried Andy, whose temper was far from sweetened
by the late catastrophe. "Sure what marcy my poor beast would get from
the likes of ye! sorry step she 'll go in yer company; pay the damages
ye done, and be off."

Here was a new turn of affairs, and, judging from the irascibility
of both parties, a most disastrous one; it demanded, indeed, all my
skill,--all the practised dexterity of a mind trained, as mine had been
been by many a subtlety, to effect a compromise, which I did thus:
my patron being cast in the costs of all the damages to the amount of
twenty shillings, and the original contract to be maintained in all its
integrity.

The young man paid the money without speaking; but I had time to mark
that the purse from which he drew it was far from weighty. "Are we free
to go at last?" cried he, in a voice of suppressed wrath.

"Yes, yer honor; all's right," answered Andy, whose heart was mollified
at the sight of money. "A pleasant journey, and safe to ye; take good
care of the beast, don't ride her over the stones, and--"

The remainder of the exhortation was lost to us, as we set forth in a
short jog-trot, I running alongside.

"When we are once below the hill, yonder," said I to my companion, "give
her the whip, and make up for lose time."

"And how are you to keep up, my lad?" asked he, in some surprise.

I could scarcely avoid a laugh at the simplicity of the question; as
if an Irish gossoon, with his foot on his native bog, would n't be an
overmatch in a day's journey for the best hack that ever ambled! Away we
went, sometimes joking over, sometimes abusing, the old miser Andy, of
whom, for my fellow-traveller's amusement, I told various little traits
and stories, at which he laughed with a zest quite new to me to witness.
My desire to be entertaining then led me on to speak of my father and
his many curious adventures,--the skill with which he could foment
litigation, and the wily stratagems by which he sustained it afterwards.
All the cunning devices of the process-server I narrated with a gusto
that smacked of my early training: how, sometimes, my crafty parent
would append a summons to the collar of a dog, and lie in wait till
he saw the owner take it off and read it, and then, emerging from his
concealment, cry out "sarved," and take to his heels; and again how he
once succeeded in "serving" old Andy himself, by appearing as a beggar
woman, and begging him to light a bit of paper to kindle her pipe.
The moment, however, he took the bit of twisted paper, the assumed
beggar-woman screamed out, "Andy, yer sarved: that's a process, my
man!" The shock almost took Andy's life; and there's not a beggar in the
barony dares to come near him since.

"Your father must be well off, then, I suppose," said my companion.

"He was a few weeks ago, sir; but misfortune has come on us since that."
I was ashamed to go on, and yet I felt that strange impulse so strong in
the Irish peasant to narrate anything of a character which can interest
by harrowing and exciting the feelings.

Very little pressing was needed to make me recount the whole story,
down to the departure of my father with the other prisoners sentenced to
transportation.

"And whither were you going when I met you this morning on the common?"
said my fellow-traveller, in a voice of some interest.

"To seek my fortune, sir," was my brief answer; and either the words or
the way they were uttered seemed to strike my companion, for he drew
up short, and stared at me, repeating the phrase, "Seek your fortune!"
"Just so," said I, warmed by an enthusiasm which then was beginning to
kindle within me, and which for many a long year since, and in many a
trying emergency, has cheered and sustained me. "Just so; the world is
wide, and there 's a path for every one, if they 'd only look for it."

"But you saw what came of _my_ taking a short cut, this morning," said
my companion, laughing.

"And you'd have been time enough too, if you had been always thinking of
what you were about, sir; but as you told me, you began a thinking and
a dreaming of twenty things far away. Besides, who knows what good turn
luck may take, just at the very moment when we seem to have least of
it?"

"You 're quite a philosopher, Con," said he, smiling.

"So Father Mahon used to say, sir," said I, proudly, and in reality
highly flattered at the reiteration of the epithet.

Thus chatting, we journeyed along, lightening the way with talk, and
making the hours seem to me the very pleasantest I had ever passed. At
last we came in sight of the steeple of Kinnegad, which lay in the plain
before us, about a mile distant.

The little town of Kinnegad was all astir as we entered it The "up
mail" had just come down, in the main street, sending all its passengers
flying in various directions,--through shop-windows; into cow-houses and
piggeries; some being proudly perched on the roof of a cabin, and others
most ignobly seated on a dunghill; the most lamentable figure of all
being an elderly gentleman, who, having cut a summerset through an
apothecary's window, came forth cut by a hundred small vials, and
bearing on his person unmistakable evidence of every odor, from
tar-water to assafotida. The conveyance itself lay, like the Ark after
the Deluge, quietly reposing on one side; while animals male and female,
"after their kind," issued from within. Limping and disconsolate figures
were being assisted into the inn; and black eyes and smashed faces were
as rife as in a country fair.

I was not slow in appropriating the calamity to a good purpose. "See,
sir," I whispered to my companion, "you said, a while ago, that nobody
had such bad luck as yourself; think what might have happened you, now,
if you had n't missed the coach."

"True enough, Con," said he, "there is such a thing as being too late
for bad as well as for good fortune; and I experience it now. But the
next question is, how to get forward; for, of course, with a broken
axle, the mail cannot proceed further."

The difficulty was soon got over. The halt and the maimed passengers,
after loudly inveighing against all coach-proprietors,--the man that
made, and the man that horsed, he that drove, and he that greased the
wheels of all public conveyances,--demanded loudly to be forwarded to
the end of their journey by various chaises and other vehicles of the
town; I at the same time making use of my legal knowledge to suggest
that while doing so, they acted under protest; that it was "without
prejudice" to any future proceedings they might deem fit to adopt for
compensatory damages. If some laughed heartily at the source from
which the hint came, others said I was a "devilish shrewd chap," and
insinuated something about a joint-stock subscription of sixpences for
my benefit; but the motion was apparently unseconded, and so, like
many benefactors of my species, I had to apply to my conscience for my
reward; or, safer still, had to wait till I could pay myself.

My young companion, who now, in a few words, told me that he was a
student at Trinity College and a "reader for honors," pulled out his
purse to pay me. "Remember, my boy, the name of Henry Lyndsay; I 'm
easily found, if you chance to come to Dublin,--not that I can be of
much service to any one, but I shall not forget the service you rendered
me this day. Here, take this, pay for the mare's feeding, and when she
has rested--"

I would not suffer him to proceed further, but broke in:

"I'm not going back, sir! I'll never turn my footsteps that way again!
Leave the mare in the inn; Andy comes every Saturday here for the
market, and will find her safe. As for me, I must 'seek my fortune;'
and when one has to search for anything, there's nothing like beginning
early."

"You 're a strange fellow, Con," said he, looking at me; and I was
shrewd enough to see that his features exhibited no small astonishment
at my words. "And where do you intend to look for this same fortune you
speak of?"

"No one place in particular, sir! I read in an old book once, that good
luck is like sunshine, and is not found in all climates at the same
time; so I intend to ramble about; and when I breakfast on the sunny
side of the apple, never stay to dine off the green one."

"And you are the kind of fellow to succeed!" said he, half to himself,
and rather as though reflecting on my words than addressing me.

"So I intend, sir," replied I, confidently.

"Have you ever read 'Gil Blas,' Con?"

"I have it almost by heart, sir."

"That's it!" said he, laughing; "I see whence you've got your taste for
adventure. But remember, Con, Gil Blas lived in different times from
ours, and in a very different land. He was, besides, a well-educated
fellow, with no small share of good looks and good manners."

"As for age and country, sir," said I, boldly, "men and women are pretty
much alike at all times, and in all places; in the old book I told you
of a while ago, I read that human passions, like the features of the
face, are only infinite varieties of the same few ingredients. Then, as
to education and the rest,--what one man can pick up, so can another.
The will is the great thing, and I feel it very strong in me. And now,
to give a proof of it, I am determined to go up to Dublin, and with your
honor too, and you'll see if I won't have my way."

"So you shall, Con!" replied he, laughing; "I'll take you on the top of
the chaise; and although I cannot afford to keep a servant, you shall
stay with me in College until chance, in which you have such implicit
faith, shall provide better for you. Come, now, lead the mare into the
stable, for I see my companions are packing up to be gone."

I was not slow in obeying the orders, and soon returned to assist my
new master with his luggage. All was quickly settled; and a few minutes
after saw me seated on a portmanteau on the roof on my way to Dublin.



CHAPTER IV. HOW I ENTERED COLLEGE, AND HOW I LEFT IT

It was still dark, on a drizzling morning in January, as we reached the
Capital; the lamps shone faintly through the foggy, wet atmosphere; and
the gloom was deepened as we entered the narrow streets at the west of
the city. A few glimmering lights from five-stories high, showed where
some early riser was awaking to his daily toil; while here and there,
some rough-coated policeman stood at the corner of a street to be rained
on; except these, no sign of living thing appeared; and I own the whole
aspect was a sad damper to the ardor of that enthusiasm which had often
pictured the great metropolis as some gorgeous fairy-land.

The carriage stopped twice, to set down two of the travellers, in
obscure dingy streets, and then I heard Mr. Lyndsay say, "To the
College;" and on we went through a long labyrinth of narrow lanes and
thoroughfares, which gradually widened out into more spacious streets,
and at length arrived at a great building, whose massive gates slowly
opened to receive, and then solemnly closed after us. We now stood in a
spacious quadrangle, silent and noiseless as a church at midnight.

Mr. Lyndsay hastily descended, and ordering me to carry in some of the
baggage, I followed him into a large scantily furnished room, beyond
which was a bedchamber, of like accommodation. "This is my home, Con,"
said he, with a melancholy attempt at a smile; "and here," said he,
leading me to a small one-windowed room on the opposite side, "here is
yours." A bed, of that humble kind called a stretcher, placed against
one wall, and a large chest for holding coals against the other,
a bottomless chair, and a shoe-brush with very scanty bristles,
constituted the entire furniture.

It was some time after all the luggage was removed before Mr. Lyndsay
could get rid of the postilion; like all poor men in a like predicament,
he had to bargain and reason and remonstrate, submitting to many a
mortification, and enduring many a sore pang, at the pitiless ribaldry
which knows nothing so contemptible as poverty; at last, after various
reflections on the presumption of people who travel and cannot afford
it, on their vanity, self-conceit, and so forth, the fellow departed,
with what my ears assured me was no contemptible share of my poor
master's purse.

I was sitting alone in my den during this scene, not wishing by my
presence to add anything to his mortification; and, now all was still
and noiseless, I waited for some time expecting to be called,--to be
told of some trifling service to execute, or, at least, to be spoken to;
but no, not a sound, not a murmur, was to be heard.

My own thoughts were none of the brightest: the ceaseless rain that
streamed against the little window, and shut out all prospect of what
was without; the cold and cheerless chamber and the death-like silence
were like lead upon my heart.

I had often, in my reveries at home, fancied that all who were lifted
above the cottier in life must have neither care nor sorrow; that real
want was unknown, save in their class; and that all afflictions of
those more highly placed were of a character too trifling to be deemed
serious; and now suddenly there came to me the thought, What if every
one had his share of grief? I vow, the very suspicion thrilled through
me, and I sat still, dwelling on the sad theme with deep intensity.

As I sat thus, a sigh, low, but distinct, came from the adjoining
chamber. I suddenly remembered my young master, and crept noiselessly to
the door; it stood ajar, and I could see in, and mark everything well.
He was sitting at a table covered with books and writing materials; a
single candle threw its yellow glare over the whole, and lit up with a
sickly tint the travel-worn and tired features of the youth.

As I looked, he leaned his forehead down upon his arm, and seemed either
overcome by sorrow or fatigue; when suddenly a deep-booming bell sent
forth a solemn peal, and made the very chamber vibrate with its din.
Lyndsay started at the sound; a kind of shudder, like a convulsive
throe, shook his limbs; and sitting up on his seat, he pushed back the
falling hair from his eyes, and again addressed himself to his book.
The heavy tolling sounds seemed now no longer to distract, but rather
to nerve him to greater efforts, for he read on with an intense
persistence; turning from volume to volume, and repeatedly noting down
on the paper as he read.

Of a sudden the bell ceased, and Lyndsay arose from the table and passed
into the bedroom, from which he almost instantaneously reappeared,
dressed in his cap and gown,--a new and curious costume in my eyes, but
which at the time was invested with a deep, mysterious interest to me.

I retired silently now to my room, and saw him pass out into the wide
court. I hastened to look out. Already some hundred others in similar
costume were assembled there, and the buzz of voices and the sound of
many feet were a pleasant relief to the desert-like silence of the
court as I had seen it before. The change was, however, of a very brief
duration; in less than a minute the whole assemblage moved off and
entered a great building, whose heavy door closed on them with a deep
bang, and all was still once more.

I now set myself to think by what small services I could render myself
acceptable to my young master. I arranged the scanty furniture into a
resemblance, faint enough, certainly, to comfort, and made a cheerful
fire with the remnant of the roomy coal-box. This done, I proceeded to
put his clothes in order, and actually astonished myself with the skill
I seemed to possess in my new walk. An intense curiosity to know what
was going on without led me frequently to the door which led into the
court; but I profited little by this step. The only figures which met my
eye were now and then some elderly personage clad in his academic robes,
gravely wending towards the "Hall," and the far less imposing cries
of some "college women," as the hags are called who officiate as the
University housemaids.

It was at one of these visits that suddenly I heard the great door
of the "Hall" burst open with a crash, and immediately down the
steps poured the black tide of figures, talking and laughing in
one multifarious din that seemed to fill the very air. Cautiously
withdrawing, I closed the door, and retired; but scarcely had I reached
my room, when young Lyndsay passed through to his own chamber: his cheek
was flushed, and his eyes sparkled with animation, and his whole air and
gesture indicated great excitement.

Having removed his cravat, and bathed his temples with cold water, he
once more sat down before his books, and was soon so immersed in study
as not to hear my footsteps as I entered.

I stood uncertain, and did not dare to interrupt him for some minutes;
the very intensity of his application awed me. Indeed, I believe I
should have retired without a word, had he not accidentally looked
up and beheld me. "Eh!--what!--how is this?" cried he, endeavoring to
recall his mind from the themes before him; "I had forgotten you, my
poor boy, and you have had no breakfast."

"And you, sir?" said I, in reality more interested for him than myself.

"Take this, Con," said he, not heeding my remark, and giving me a piece
of silver from his purse; "get yourself something to eat: to-morrow, or
next day, we shall arrange these things better; for at this moment my
head has its load of other cares."

"But will _you_ not eat something?" said I; "_you_ have not tasted food
since we met."

"We are expected to breakfast with our tutor on the examination
mornings, Con," said he; and then, not seeming to feel the inconsistency
of his acts with his words, he again bent his head over the table,
and lost all remembrance of either me or our conversation. I stole
noiselessly away, and sallied forth to seek my breakfast where I could.

There were few loiterers in the court; a stray student hurrying past,
or an old slipshod hag of hideous aspect and squalid misery, were all I
beheld; but both classes' bestowed most unequivocal signs of surprise
at my country air and appearance, and to my question, where I could buy
some bread and milk, answers the most cynical or evasive were returned.
While I was yet endeavoring to obtain from one of the ancient maidens
alluded to some information on the point, two young men, with velvet
caps and velvet capes on their gowns, stopped to listen.

"I say, friend," cried one, seemingly the younger of the two, "when did
_you_ enter?"

"This morning," said I, taking the question literally.

"Do you hear that, Ward?" continued he to his companion. "What place did
you take?"

"I was on the roof," replied I, supposing the quaere bore allusion to
the mode of my coming.

"Quite classical," said the elder, a tall, good-looking youth; "you
came as did Caesar into Gaul, '_summâ diligentiâ,_' on the top of the
Diligence."

They both laughed heartily at a very threadbare college joke, and were
about to move away, when the younger, turning round, said, "Have you
matriculated?"

"No, sir,--what's that?"

"It's a little ceremony," interposed the elder, "necessary, and indeed
indispensable, to every one coming to reside within these walls. You've
heard of Napoleon, I dare say?"

"Bony, is it?" asked I, giving the more familiar title by which he was
better known to my circle of acquaintance.

"Exactly," said he, "Bony. Now Bony used to call a first battle the
baptism of Glory; so may we style, in a like way, Matriculation to be
the baptism of Knowledge. You understand me, eh?"

"Not all out," said I, "but partly."

"We 'll illustrate by a diagram, then."

"I say, Bob," whispered the younger, "let us find out with whom he is;"
then, turning to me, said, "Where do you live here?"

"Yonder," said I, "where that lamp is."

"Mr. Lyndsay's chambers?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right," cried the younger; "we'll show you the secret of
matriculation."

"Come along, my young friend," said the elder, in the same pompous tone
he had used at first, "let us teach you to drink of that Pierian spring
which 'Labitur et labetur in omne volubile oevum.'"

I believe it was the fluent use of the unknown tongue which at once
allayed any mistrust I might have felt of my new acquaintances; however
that may be, there was something so imposing in the high-sounding
syllables that I yielded at once, and followed them into another and
more remote quadrangle.

Here they stopped under a window, while one gave a loud whistle with his
fingers to his lips; the sash was immediately thrown up, and a handsome,
merry-looking face protruded. "Eh!--what!--Taylor and Ward," cried he,
"what's going on?"

"Come down, Burton; here's a youth for matriculation," cried the
younger.

"All right," cried the other. "There are eight of us here at breakfast;"
and disappearing from the window, he speedily descended to the court,
followed by a number of others, who gravely saluted me with a deep bow,
and solemnly welcomed me within the classic precincts of old Trinity.

"Domine--what's his name?" said the young gentleman called Burton.

"Cregan, sir," replied I, already flattered by the attentions I was
receiving,--"Con Cregan, sir."

"Well, Domine Cregan, come along with us, and never put faith in a
junior sophister. You know what a junior sophister is, I trust?"

"No, sir."

"Tell him, Ward."

"A junior sophister, Mr. Cregan, is one who, being in 'Locke' all day,
is very often locked out all night, and who observes the two rubrics
of the statute '_de vigilantibus et lucentibus_,' by extinguishing both
lamps and watchmen."

"Confound your pedantry!" broke in Burton; "a junior soph, is a man in
his ninth examination."

"The terror of the porters," cried one.

"The Dean's milch cow," added another.

"A credit to his parents, but a debtor to his tailor," broke in a third.

"Seldom at Greek lecture, but no fellow commoner at the Currah," lisped
out Taylor; and by this time we had reached a narrow lane, flanked on
one side by a tall building of gloomy exterior, and on the other by an
angle of the square.

"Here we are, Mr. Cregan; as the poet says, 'this is the place, the
centre of the wood.'"

"Gentlemen sponsors, to your functions!" Scarce were the words out, when
I was seized by above half a dozen pair of strong hands; my legs were
suddenly jerked upwards, and, notwithstanding my attempts to resist, I
was borne along for some yards at a brisk pace. I was already about
to forbear my struggles, and suffer them to play their--as I deemed
it--harmless joke in quiet, when straight in front of me I saw an
enormous pump, at which, and by a double handle, Burton and another were
working away like sailors on a wreck; throwing forth above a yard off, a
jet of water almost enough to turn a mill.

The whole plot now revealed itself to me at once, and I commenced a
series of kickings and plungings that almost left me free. My enemies,
however, were too many and too powerful; on they bore me, and in a
perfect storm of blows, lunges, writhings, and boundings, they held me
fast under the stream, which played away in a frothy current over my
head, face, chest, and legs,--for, with a most laudable impartiality,
they moved me from side to side till not a dry spot remained on my whole
body.



I shouted, I yelled, I swore, and screamed for aid, but all in vain; and
my diabolical tormentors seemed to feel no touch of weariness in their
inhuman pastime; while I, exhausted by my struggles and the continual
rush of the falling water, almost ceased to resist; when suddenly a cry
of "The Dean! the Dean!" was heard; my bearers let go their hold,--down
I tumbled upon the flags, with barely consciousness enough to see
the scampering crew flying in all directions, while a host of porters
followed them in hot pursuit.

"Who are you, sir? What brought you here?" said a tall old gentleman I
at once surmised to be the Dean.

"The devil himself, I believe!" replied I, rising with difficulty under
the weight of my soaked garments.

"Turn him outside the gates, Hawkins!" said the Dean to a porter behind
him. "Take care, too, he never reenters them."

"I 'll take good care of it, sir," said the fellow, as with one strong
hand on my collar, and the closed fingers of the other administering
gentle admonitions to the back of my head, he proceeded to march me
before him through the square; revolving as I went thoughts which,
certes, evinced not one sentiment of gratitude to the learned
university.

My college career was, therefore, more brief than brilliant, for I was
"expelled" on the very same day that I "entered."

With the "world before me where to choose," I stepped out into the
classic precincts of College Green, fully assured of one fact, that
"Town" could scarcely treat me more harshly than "Gown." I felt, too,
that I had passed through a kind of ordeal; that my ducking, like
the ceremonies on crossing the line, was a kind of masonic ordinance,
indispensable to my opening career; and that thus I had got successfully
through one at least of my "trials."

A species of filial instinct suggested to me the propriety of seeing
Newgate, where my father lay, awaiting the arrival of the convict ship
that was to convey him to Van Diemen's Land; and thither I accordingly
repaired, not to enter, but simply to gaze, with a very awestruck
imagination, upon that double-barred cage of human ferocity and crime.

In itself the circumstance has nothing worthy of record, nor should I
mention it, save that to the deep impression of that morning do I owe a
certain shrinking horror of all great crime; that impression has been of
incalculable benefit to me through life.

I strained my eyes to mark if, amid the faces closely pressed against
the strong bars, I could recognize that of my parent, but in vain; there
was a terrible sameness in their features, as if the individual had sunk
in the criminal, that left all discrimination difficult; and so I turned
away satisfied that I had done a son's part most completely.



CHAPTER V. A PEEP AT "HIGH AND LOW COMPANY"

I have often heard it observed that one has as little to do with the
choice of his mode of life as with the name he receives at baptism. I
rather incline to the opinion that this is true. My own very varied and
somewhat dissimilar occupations were certainly far less the result of
any preconceived plan or scheme than the mere "turn-up" of the rolling
die of Fortune.

It was while revolving a species of fatalism in this wise, and calmly
assuring myself that I was not born to be starved, that I strolled along
Merrion Square on the same afternoon of my expulsion from Trinity and
visit to Newgate.

There were brilliant equipages, cavaliers, and ladies on horseback;
handsome houses, with balconies often thronged by attractive-looking
occupants; and vast crowds of gayly dressed persons promenaded within
the square itself, where a military band performed; in fact, there was
more than enough to interest and amuse one of higher pretensions in the
scale of pleasure than myself.

While I was thus gazing on this brilliant panorama of the outdoor life
of a great city, and wondering and guessing what precise object thus
brought people together,--for no feature of a market, or a fair, or any
festive occupation solved the difficulty,--I was struck by a class of
characters who seemed to play the subordinate parts of the drama,--a set
of ragged, ill-fed, half-starved boys, who followed in crowds each new
arrival on horseback, and eagerly sought permission to hold his horse
when he dismounted; the contrast of these mangy looking attendants to
the glossy coated and handsomely caparisoned steeds they led about
being too remarkable to escape notice. Although a very fierce rivalry
prevailed amongst them, they seemed a species of organized guild,
who constituted a distinct walk in life, and indignantly resented the
attempt of some two or three "voluntaries" who showed a wish to join the
fraternity.

I sat against the rails of the square, studying with some curiosity
little details of their etiquette, and their strange conventionalities.
A regular corps of them stood in front of me, canvassing with all
the eager volubility of their craft for the possession of a handsome
thoroughbred pony, from which a young officer, in a cavalry undress, was
about to dismount.

"I 'm your own boy, Captain! I'm Tim, sir!" cried one, with a leer of
most familiar intimacy.

"'Tis me towld ye about Miss O'Grady, sir," shouted another, preferring
another and stronger claim.

"I'm the boy caught your mare the day ye was thrown, Captain!"
insinuated a third, exhibiting a want of tact in the reminiscence that
drew down many a scoff upon him from his fellows; for these ragged and
starving curs had a most lively sense of the use of flattery.

"Off with you!--stand off!" said the young dragoon, in a threatening
tone; "let that fellow take my mare;" and he pointed to me as I sat,
a patient but unconcerned spectator of the scene. Had a medical
consultation been suddenly set aside on the eve of a great surgical
operation, and the 'knife' committed to the unpractised hand of a new
bystander, the breach of etiquette and the surprise could scarce have
been greater. The gang stared at me with most undisguised contempt, and
a perfect volley of abuse and irony followed me as I hastened to obey
the summons.

It has been very often my fortune in life to take a position for which I
neither had submitted to the usual probationary study, nor possessed
the necessary acquirement; but I believe this my first step in the
very humble walk of a "horse-boy" gave me more pain than ever did any
subsequent one. The criticisms on my dress, my walk, my country look, my
very shoes,--my critics wore none,--were all poignant and bitter; and I
verily believe, such is the force of ridicule, I should have preferred
the rags and squalor of the initiated, at that moment, to the warm gray
frieze and blue worsted stockings of my country costume.

I listened attentively to the young officer's directions how I was to
walk his mare, and where; and then, assuming a degree of indifference
to sarcasm I was far from feeling, moved away from the spot in sombre
dignity. The captain--the title is generic--was absent about an hour;
and when he returned, seemed so well pleased with my strict obedience to
his orders that he gave me a shilling, and desired me to be punctually
at the same hour and the same place on the day following.

It was now dark; the lamplighter had begun his rounds, and I was just
congratulating myself that I should escape my persecutors, when I saw
them approaching in a body. In an instant I was surrounded, and assailed
with a torrent of questions as to who I was, where I came from,
what brought me there, and, lastly, and with more eagerness than all
besides,--what did "the captain" give me? As I answered this query
first, the others were not pressed; and it being voted that I should
expend the money on the fraternity, by way of entrance-fee, or, as they
termed it, "paying my footing," away we set in a body to a distant part
of the town, remote from all its better and more spacious thoroughfares,
and among a chaos of lanes and alleys called the "Liberties." If the
title were conferred for the excessive and unlimited freedoms permitted
to the inhabitants, it was no misnomer. On my very entrance into it I
perceived the perfect free and easy which prevailed.

A dense tide of population thronged the close, confined passages, mostly
of hodmen, bricklayers' laborers, and scavengers, with old-clothesmen,
beggars, and others whose rollicking air and daring look bespoke more
hazardous modes of life.

My companions wended their way through the dense throng like practised
travellers, often cutting off an angle by a dive through the two
doors of a whiskey shop, and occasionally making a great short-cut by
penetrating through a house and the court behind it,--little exploits
in geography expiated by a volley of curses from the occupants, and
sometimes an admonitory brickbat in addition.

The uniform good temper they exhibited; the easy freedom with which they
submitted to the rather rough jocularities of the passers-by,--the usual
salute being a smart slap on the crown of the head, administered by
the handicraft tool of the individual, and this sometimes being an iron
trowel or a slater's hammer,--could not but exalt them in my esteem
as the most patient set of varlets I had ever sojourned with. To my
question as to why we were going so far, and whither our journey tended,
I got for answer the one short reply,--"We must go to 'ould Betty's.'"

Now, as I would willingly spare as much of this period's recital to my
reader as I can, I will content myself with stating that "ould Betty,"
or Betty Cobbe, was an old lady who kept a species of ordinary for the
unclaimed youth of Dublin. They were fed and educated at her seminary;
the washing cost little, and they were certainly "done" for at the very
smallest cost, and in the most remarkably brief space of time. If ever
these faint memorials of a life should be read in a certain far-off
land, more than one settler in the distant bush, more than one angler in
the dull stream of Swan River, will confess how many of his first sharp
notions of life and manners were imbibed from the training nurture of
Mrs. Elizabeth Cobbe.

Betty's proceedings, for some years before I had the honor and felicity
of her acquaintance, had attracted towards her the attention of the
authorities.

The Colonial Secretary had possibly grown jealous; for she had been
pushing emigration to Norfolk Island on a far wider scale than ever
a cabinet dreamed of; and thus had she acquired what, in the polite
language of our neighbors, is phrased the "Surveillance of the
Police,"--a watchful superintendence and anxious protectorate, for
which, I grieve to say, she evinced the very reverse of gratitude.
Betty had, in consequence, and in requirement with the spirit of the
times--the most capricious spirit that ever vexed plain, old-fashioned
mortals--reformed her establishment; and from having opened her doors,
as before, to what, in the language of East Indian advertisements, are
called "a few spirited young men," she had fallen down to that small
fry who, in various disguises of vagrancy and vagabondage, infest the
highways of a capital.

By these disciples she was revered and venerated; their devotion was the
compensation for the world's neglect, and so she felt it. To train them
up with a due regard to the faults and follies of their better-endowed
neighbors was her aim and object, and to such teaching her knowledge of
Dublin life and people largely contributed.

Her original walk had been minstrelsy; she was the famous ballad-singer
of Drogheda Street, in the year of the rebellion of '98. She had been
half a dozen times imprisoned,--some said that she had even visited
"Beresford's riding-school," where the knout was in daily practice; but
this is not so clear: certain it is, both her songs and sympathy had
always been on the patriotic side. She was the terror of Protestant
ascendency for many a year long.

Like Homer, she sung her own verses; or, if they were made for her, the
secret of the authorship was never divulged. For several years previous
to the time I now speak of, she had abandoned the Muses, save on some
special and striking occasions, when she would come before the world
with some lyric, which, however, did little more than bear the name of
its once famed composer.

So much for the past. Now to the present history of Betty Cobbe.

In a large unceilinged room, with a great fire blazing on the hearth,
over which a huge pot of potatoes was boiling, sat Betty, in a straw
chair. She was evidently very old, as her snow-white hair and lustreless
eye bespoke; but the fire of a truculent, unyielding spirit still warmed
her blood, and the sharp, ringing voice told that she was decided to
wrestle for existence to the last, and would never "give in" until
fairly conquered.

Betty's chair was the only one in the chamber: the rest of the company
disposed themselves classically in the recumbent posture, or sat,
like primitive Christians, cross-legged. A long deal table, sparingly
provided with wooden plates and a few spoons, occupied the middle of the
room, and round the walls were several small bundles of straw, which I
soon learned were the property of private individuals.

"Come along till I show ye to ould Betty," said one of the varlets to
me, as he pushed his way through the crowded room; for already several
other gangs had arrived, and were exchanging recognitions.

"She's in a sweet temper, this evening," whispered another, as we
passed. "The Polis was here a while ago, and took up 'Danny White,' and
threatened to break up the whole establishment."

"The devil a thing at all they'll lave us of our institushuns," said a
bow-legged little blackguard, with the 'Evening Freeman' written round
his hat; for he was an attaché of that journal.

"Ould Betty was crying all the evening," said the former speaker; by
this time we had gained the side of the fireplace, where the old lady
sat.

"Mother! mother, I say!" cried my guide, touching her elbow gently;
then, stooping to her ear, he added, "Mother Betty!"

"Eh! Who's callin' me?" said the hag, with her hand aloft. "I'm here, my
Lord, neither ashamed nor afeard to say my name."

"She's wanderin'," cried another; "she thinks she's in Coort."

"Betty Cobbe! I say. It's me!" said my introducer, once more.

The old woman turned fiercely round, and her dimmed and glassy eyes,
bloodshot from excess and passion, seemed to flare up into an angry
gleam as she said, "You dirty thief! Is it you that's turnin' informer
agin me,--you that I took up--out of yer mother's arms, in Green Street,
when she fainted at the cutting down of yer father? Your father," added
she, "that murdered old Meredith!"

The boy, a hardened and bold-featured fellow, became lividly pale, but
never spoke.

"Yes, my Lord," continued she, still following the theme of her own wild
fancies, "it's James Butterley's boy! Butterley that was hanged!" and
she shook and rocked with a fiendish exultation at the exposure.

"Many of us does n't know what bekem of our fathers!" said a
sly-looking, old-fashioned creature, whose height scarcely exceeded two
feet, although evidently near manhood in point of age.

"Who was yours, Mickey?" cried another.

"Father Glynn, of Luke Street," growled out the imp, with a leer.

"And yours?" said another, dragging me forward, directly in front of
Betty.

"Con Cregan, of Kilbeggan," said I, boldly.

"Success to ye, ma bouchal!" said the old hag; "and so you 're a son of
Con the informer." She looked sternly at me for a few seconds, and then,
in a slower and more deliberate tone, added, "I 'm forty years, last
Lady Day, living this way, and keepin' company with all sorts of
thieves, and rogues, and blaguards, and worse,--ay, far worse besides;
but may I never see Glory if an informer, or his brat, was under the
roof afore!"

The steadfast decision of look and voice as she spoke seemed to
impress the bystanders, who fell back and gazed at me with that kind of
shrinking terror which honest people sometimes exhibit at the contact of
a criminal.

During the pause of some seconds, while this endured, my sense of abject
debasement was at the very lowest. To be the Pariah of such a society
was indeed a most distinctive infamy.

"Are ye ashamed of yer father? Tell me that!" cried the hag, shaking me
roughly by one shoulder.

"It is not here, and before the like of these," said I, looking round at
the ragged, unwashed assemblage, "that I should feel shame! or if I did,
it is to find myself among them!"

"That's my boy! that's my own spirited boy!" cried the old woman,
dragging me towards her. "Faix, I seen the time we 'd have made
somethin' out of you. Howld yer tongues, ye vagabonds! the child's
right,--yer a dirty mean crew! Them!" said she, pointing to me, "them
was the kind of chaps I used to have, long ago; that was n't afeard of
all the Beresfords, and Major Sirr, and the rest of them. Singing every
night on Carlisle Bridge, 'The Wearin' of the Green,' or 'Tra-lal-la,
the French is coming;' and when they wor big and grown men, ready and
willing to turn out for ould Ireland. Can you read, avick?"

"Yes, and write," answered I, proudly.

"To be sure ye can," muttered she, half to herself; "is it an informer's
child,--not know the first rules of his trade!"

"Tear and ages, mother!" cried out the decrepit imp called Mickey, "we
're starvin' for the meat!"

"Sarve it up!" shouted the hag, with a voice of command; and she gave
three knocks with her crutch on the corner of the table.

Never was command more promptly obeyed. A savory mess of that smoking
compound called "Irish stew" was ladled out on the trenchers, and
speedily disposed around the table, which at once was surrounded by
the guests,--a place being made for myself by an admonitory stroke of
Betty's crutch on the red head of a very hungry juvenile who had jostled
me in his anxiety to get near the table.

Our meal had scarcely drawn to its close when the plates were removed,
and preparations made for a new party; nor had I time to ask the reason,
when a noisy buzz of voices without announced the coming of a numerous
throng. In an instant they entered; a number of girls, of every age,
from mere child to womanhood,--a ragged, tattered, reckless-looking set
of creatures, whose wild, high spirits not even direst poverty could
subdue. While some exchanged greetings with their friends of the other
sex, others advanced to talk to Betty, or stood to warm themselves
around the fire, until their supper, a similar one to our own, was got
ready. My curiosity as to whence they came in such a body was satisfied
by learning that they were employed at the "Mendicity Institution"
during the day, and set free at nightfall to follow the bent of
their own, not over well-regulated, tastes. These creatures were the
ballad-singers of the city; and, sometimes alone, sometimes in company
with one of the boys, they were wont to take their stand in some public
thoroughfare, not only the character of the singer, but the poetry
itself, taking the tone of the street; so that while some daring bit of
town scandal caught the ears of College Green, a "bloody murder" or a
"dying speech" formed the attraction of Thomas Street and the "Poddle."

Many years afterwards, in the checkered page of my existence, when I
have sat at lordly tables and listened to the sharpened wit and polished
raillery of the high-born and the gifted, my mind has often reverted
to that beggar horde, and thought how readily the cutting jest was
answered, how soon repartee followed attack--what quaint fancies, what
droll conceits, passed through those brains, where one would have deemed
there was no room for aught save brooding guilt and sad repining.

As night closed in, the assembly broke up; some issued forth to their
stations as ballad-singers; some, in pure vagabond spirit, to stroll
about the streets; while others, of whom I was one, lay down upon the
straw to sleep, without a dream, till daylight.



CHAPTER VI. VIEWS OF LIFE

When I woke the next morning, it was a few minutes before I could
thoroughly remember where I was and how I came there; my next thought
was the grateful one, that if the calling was not a very exaltued one,
I had at least secured a mode of living, and that my natural acuteness,
and, better still, my fixed resolve within me "to get forward in the
world," would not permit me to pass my days in the ignoble craft of
a "horse-boy." I found that the "walk," like every other career, had
certain guiding rules and principles by which it was regulated. Not only
were certain parts of the town interdicted to certain gangs, but it was
a recognized rule that when a particular boy was singled out habitually
by any gentleman that no other should endeavor to supplant him. This was
the less difficult as a perfect community of property was the rule of
the order; and all moneys were each night committed to the charge of
"old Betty," with a scrupulous fidelity that would have shamed many a
"joint-stock company."

The regular etiquette required that each youth should begin his career
in the north side of the city, where the class of horsemen was of a less
distinguished order, and the fees proportionably lower. Thence he
was promoted to the Four Courts; from which, as the highest stage, he
arrived at Merrion Square and its neighborhood. Here the visitors were
either the young officers of the garrison, the Castle officials, or a
wealthy class of country gentlemen, all of whom gave sixpences; while
in the cold quarter of northern Dublin, penny-pieces were the only
currency. If the public differed in these three places, so did the
claims of the aspirant: a grave, quiet, almost sombre look being the
grand qualification in the one, while an air of daring effrontery was
the best recommendation in the other. For while the master in
chancery or the "six clerk" would only commit his bobtailed pony to a
discreet-faced varlet of grave exterior, the dashing aide-de-camp on his
thoroughbred singled out the wild imp with roguish eye and flowing hair,
that kept up with him from the barrack in a sharp canter, and actually
dived under a carriage-pole and upset an apple-stall to be "up" in
time to wait on him; and while yet breathless and blown, was ready with
voluble tongue to give him the current news of the neighborhood,--who
was in the Square, or out dining; who had arrived, or why they were
absent. To do this task with dexterity and tact was the crowning
feature of the craft, and in such hasty journalism some attained a high
proficiency; seasoning their scandal with sly bits of drollery or quaint
allusions to the current topics of the day. To succeed in this, it
was necessary to know the leading characters of the town and the
circumstances of their private history; and these I set myself to learn
with the assiduity of a study. Never did a Bath Master of the Ceremonies
devote himself more ardently to the investigation of the faults and
foibles of his company; never did young lady, before coming out, more
patiently pore over Debrett, than did I pursue my researches into Dublin
life and manners; until at last, what between oral evidence and shrewd
observation, I had a key to the secret mysteries of nearly every
well-known house in the city.

None like me to explain why the father of the dashing family in
Stephen's Green only appeared of a Sunday; how the blinds of No. 18 were
always drawn down at three o'clock; and what meant the hackney-coach
at the canal bridge every Thursday afternoon. From the gentleman that
always wore a geranium leaf in his coat, to the lady who dropped her
glove in the Square, I knew them all. Nor was it merely that I possessed
the knowledge, but I made it to be felt. I did not hoard my wealth
like a miser, but I came forth like a great capitalist to stimulate
enterprise and encourage credit. Had I been a malicious spirit, there is
no saying what amount of mischief I might have worked, what discoveries
anticipated, what awkward meetings effected. I was, however, what the
French call a "bon diable," and most generously took the side of
the poor sinner against the strong spirit of right. How many a poor
subaltern had been put in arrest for wearing "mufti," had I not been
there to apprise him the town-major White was coming. How often have I
saved a poor college-man from a heavy fine, who, with his name on the
sick-list, was flirting in the "Square." How have I hastened, at the
risk of my neck, between crashing carriages and prancing horses, to
announce to a fair lady lounging in her britzska that the "Counsellor,"
her husband, was unexpectedly returning from court an hour earlier than
his wont. I have rescued sons from fathers, daughters from mothers; the
pupil from his guardian, the debtor from his creditor,--in a word, was a
kind of ragged guardian angel, who watched over the peccadilloes of the
capital. My "amour propre"--if such an expression of such a quality may
be conceded to one like me--was interested in the cause of all who did
wrong. I was the Quixote of all deceivers.

With "Con on the look-out," none feared surprise; and while
my shrewdness was known to be first-rate, my honesty was alike
unimpeachable. It may readily be believed how, with acquirements
and talents like these, I no longer pursued the humble walk of
"horse-holder;" indeed, I rarely touched a bridle, or, if I did so, it
was only to account for my presence in such localities as I might need
an excuse to loiter in. I was at the head of my profession; and the
ordinary salutation of the cavaliers, "Con, get me a fellow to hold this
mare," showed that none presumed to expect the ignoble service at my own
hands.

To some two or three of my early patrons, men who had noticed me in my
obscurity, I would still condescend to yield this attention,--a degree
of grateful acknowledgment on my part which they always rewarded most
handsomely. Among these was the young officer whose pony I had held on
the first night of my arrival. He was an Honorable Captain De Courcy,
very well-looking, well-mannered, and very poor,--member of the
Commander-in-Chief's staff, who eked out his life by the aid of his
noble birth and his wits together.

At the time I speak of, his visits to Merrion Square were devoted to the
cause of a certain Mrs. Mansergh, the young and beautiful wife of an
old red-faced, foul-mouthed Queen's Counsel, at least forty years her
senior. The scandal was, that her origin had been of the very humblest,
and that, seen by accident on circuit, she had caught the fancy of the
old lawyer, a well-known connoisseur in female beauty. However that
might be, she was now about two years married, and already recognized as
the reigning beauty of the viceregal court and the capital.

The circumstances of her history,--her low origin, her beauty, and the
bold game she played,--all invested her with a great interest in my
eyes. I used to flatter myself that there was a kind of similarity in
at least our early fortunes; and I enlisted myself in her cause with an
ardor that I could not explain to myself. How often, as she passed in
her splendid barouche,--the best-appointed and handsomest equipage
of the capital,--have I watched her as, wrapped in her Cashmere, she
reclined in all the voluptuous indolence of her queenly state; glorying
to think that _she_,--she, whose proud glance scarce noticed the
obsequious throng that bowed with uncovered heads around her,--that she
was perhaps not better nurtured than myself. Far from envious jealousy
at her better fortune, I exulted in it; she was a kind of beacon set on
a hill to guide and cheer me. I remember well, it was an actual
triumph to me one day, as the Viceroy, a gay and dashing nobleman, not
overscrupulous where the claim of beauty was present, stopped, with all
his glittering staff, beside her carriage, and in playful raillery began
to chide her for being absent from the last drawing-room. "We missed you
sadly, Mrs. Mansergh," said he, smiling his most seductive smile. "Pray
tell my friend Mansergh that he shows himself a most lukewarm supporter
of the Government who denies us the fairest smiles of the capital."

"In truth, my Lord, he would not give me a new train, and I refused to
wear the old one," said she, laughing.

"Downright disloyalty, upon my honor," said the Viceroy, with well
got-up gravity.

"Don't you think so, my Lord?" rejoined she; "so I even told him that
I 'd represent the case to your Excellency, who, I 'm sure, would not
refuse a velvet robe to the wife, while you gave a silk gown to the
husband."

"It will be the very proudest of my poor prerogatives," said he, bowing,
while a flash of crimson lit up his pleased features. "Your favorite
color is--"

"I should like to wear your Lordship's," said she, with a look the most
finished coquette might envy, so admirably blended were trust and timid
bashfulness.

What he replied I could not catch. There was a flattering courtesy,
however, in his smile, and in the familiar motion of the hand with which
he bade "good-bye," that were enough to show me that he, the haughty
mirror of his sovereign, did not think it beneath him to bandy
compliments and exchange soft looks with the once humble beauty. From
that time out, my whole thoughts day and night were centred in her; and
I have passed hours long, fancying all the possible fortunes for which
destiny might intend her. It seemed to me as though she was piloting out
the course for me in life, and that her success was the earnest of my
own. Often, when a ball or a great reception was given by her, have
I sat, cold, shivering, and hungry, opposite the house, watching with
thrilling interest all the equipages as they came, and hearing the high
and titled names called aloud by the servants, and thinking to myself,
"Such are _her_ associates _now_. These great and haughty personages are
here to do honor to _her_, their lovely hostess; and _she_, but a
few years back, if report spoke truly, was scarcely better off than I
was--I--myself."

Only they who have a sanguine, hopeful temperament will be able to
understand how the poor houseless, friendless boy--the very outcast
of the world, the convict's child--could ever dare to indulge in such
day-dreams of future greatness. But I had set the goal before my eyes;
the intermediate steps to it I left to fortune. The noble bearing and
polished graces of the high and wealthy, which to my humble associates
seemed the actual birthright of the great, I perceived could all be
acquired. There was no prescriptive claim in any class to the manners
of high breeding; and why should not I, if fortune favored, be as good
a gentleman as the best? In other particulars, all that I had observed
showed me no wondrous dissimilarity of true feeling in the two classes.
The gentleman, to be sure, did not swear like the common fellow; but on
the racecourse or the betting-ground I had seen, to the full, as much
deceit as ever I witnessed in my "own order." There was faithlessness
beneath Valenciennes lace and velvet as well as beneath brown stuff and
check; and a spirit of backbiting, that we ragged folk knew nothing of,
seemed a current pastime in better circles.

What, then, should debar me from that class? Not the manners, which I
could feign, nor the vices, which I could feel. To be like them, was
only to be of them,--such, at least, was then my conviction and my
theory.

Any one who will take the pains to reflect on and analyze the mode of
thinking I have here mentioned, will see how necessarily it tends rather
to depress those above than to elevate those beneath. I did not purpose
to myself any education in high and noble sentiments, but simply the
performance of a part which I deemed easy to assume. The result soon
began to tell. I felt a degree of contemptuous hatred for the very
persons I had once revered as almost demigods. I no longer looked up to
the "gentleman" as such by right divine, but by accident; and I fostered
the feeling by the writings of every radical newspaper I could come
at. All the levelling doctrines of socialism, all the plausibilities
of equality, became as great truths to me; and I found a most ready
aptitude in my mind to square the fruits of my personal observation to
these pleasant theories. The one question recurred every morning as I
arose, and remained unanswered each night as I lay down, "Why should
I hold a horse, and why should another man ride one?" I suppose the
difficulty has puzzled wiser heads; indeed, since I mooted it to myself,
it has caused some trouble in the world; nor, writing now as I do in the
year of grace '48, do I suppose the question is yet answered.

I have dwelt perhaps too long on this exposition of my feelings; but
as my subsequent life was one of far more action than reflection, the
indulgent reader will pardon the prosiness, not simply as explaining the
history which follows, but also as affording a small breathing-space in
a career where there were few "halts."

I have said that I began to conceive a great grudge against all who
were well off in life, and against none did I indulge this aversion
more strongly than "the captain," my first patron,--almost my only one.
Though he had always employed me,--and none ever approached him save
myself,--he had never condescended to the slightest act of recognition
beyond the tap on my head with his gold-mounted whip, and a significant
nod where to lead his pony. No sign of his, no look, no gesture, ever
confessed to the fact that I was a creature of his own species, that I
had had a share in the great firm which, under the name of Adam and Co.,
has traded so long and industriously.

If I were sick, or cold, or hungry, it mattered not; my cheek might be
sunk with want or care, my rags might drip with rain, or freeze with
sleet,--he never noticed them; yet if the wind played too roughly with
his Arab's mane, or the silky tasselled tail, he saw it at once. If her
coat stirred with the chill breeze, he would pat and pet her. It was
evident enough which had the better existence.

If these thoughts chafed and angered me at first, at least they served
to animate and rouse my spirit. He who wants to rise in life must feel
the sharp spur of a wrong,--there is nothing like it to give vigor and
energy to his motions. When I came to this conclusion, I did not wait
long to put the feeling into action; and it was thus--But a new chapter
of my life deserves a new chapter of my history.



CHAPTER VII. A BOLD STROKE FOR AN OPENING IN THE WORLD

As regular as the day itself did I wait at the corner of Merrion Square,
at three o'clock, the arrival of Captain De Courcy, who came punctual
to the instant; indeed, the clatter of the pony's hoofs as he cantered
along always announced the striking of the Post-office clock. To
dismount, and fling me the bridle, with a short nod of the head in the
direction he wished me to walk the animal, was the extent of recognition
ever vouchsafed me; and as I never ventured upon even a word with
him, our intercourse was of the simplest possible kind. There was an
impassive quietude about his pale cold features that awed me. I never
saw him smile but once; it was when the mare seized me by the shoulder,
and tore with her teeth a great piece of my ragged coat away. Then,
indeed, he did vouchsafe to give a faint, listless smile, as he said to
his pampered nag, "Fie, fie! What a dirty feeder you are!"

Very little notice on his part, the merest act of recognition, a look, a
monosyllable, would have been enough to satisfy me,--anything, in short,
which might acknowledge that we were part of the same great chain, no
matter how many links might lie between us.

I do not wish it to be inferred that I had any distinct right to such
an acknowledgment, nor that any real advantage would have accrued to me
from obtaining it,--far from that; very little consideration might
have induced me to be contented with my station; and, if so, instead of
writing these notes in a boudoir with silk hangings, and--but this is
anticipating with a vengeance! And now to go back.

After three hours of a cold wait, on a rainy and dreary afternoon, the
only solace to my hunger being the imaginative one of reflecting on the
pleasure of those happy mortals who were sitting down to dinner in the
various houses along the Square, and fancying to myself the blessed
state of tranquillity it must impart to a man's nature to see a meal of
appetizing excellence, from which no call of business, no demand of any
kind could withdraw him. And what speculations did I indulge in as to
the genial pleasantry that must abound,--the happy wit, the joyous ease
of such gatherings when three or four carriages at a door would bespeak
the company at such a dinner-party!

At last, out came my captain, with a haste and flurry of manner quite
unusual. He did not, as was his constant custom, pass his hand along the
mare's neck to feel her coat, nor did he mutter a single word of coaxing
to her as he mounted. He flung himself with a jerk into the saddle, and,
rapping my knuckles sharply with the gold knob of his whip, pettishly
cried, "Let her go, sirrah!" and cantered away. I stood for some moments
motionless, my mind in that strange state when the first thought of
rebellion has entered, and the idea of reprisal has occurred. I was
about to go away, when the drawing-room window, straight above me, was
opened, and a lady stepped out upon the balcony. It was too dark to
discern either her features or her dress; but a certain instinct told me
it was Mrs. Mansergh. "Are you Captain De Courcy's boy?" said she, in a
sweet and subdued voice. I replied in the affirmative, and she went on:
"You know his quarters at the Royal Hospital? Well, go there at once,
as speedily as you can, and give him this note." She hesitated for a
second, as if uncertain what to say, and then added, "It is a note he
dropped from his pocket by accident."

"I'll do it, ma'am," said I, catching the letter and the half-crown,
which she had half inserted in the envelope to give it weight. "You
may trust me perfectly." Before the words were well uttered, she had
retired, the window was closed, the curtain drawn, and, except the
letter and the coin in my fingers, nothing remained to show that the
whole had not been a trick of my foolish brain.

My immediate impulse was to fulfil my mission; I even started off at
full speed to do so. But as I turned the corner of the Square, the glare
of a bright gas-lamp suggested the temptation of at least a look at
my despatches; and what was my astonishment to find that on this note,
which had been dropped by "accident" from the captain's pocket, the
superscription was scarcely dry,--in the very act of catching, I had
blotted the words! This, of course, was no affair of mine; but it
evinced deception,--and deception at certain moments becomes a dangerous
injury. There are times when the mind feels deceit to be an outrage. The
stormy passions of the fury-driven mob, reckless and headstrong, show
this; and the most terrible moment in all political convulsions is when
the people feel, or even suspect, that they have been tricked. My frame
of mind was exactly in that critical stage. A minute before, I was
ready to yield any obedience, tender any service; and now, of a
sudden,--without the slightest real cause, or from anything which could
in the remotest way affect me,--I had become a rebel. Let the reader
forgive the somewhat tedious analysis of a motive, since it comes from
one who has long studied the science of moral chemistry, and made most
of his experiments--as the rule directs--in "ignoble bodies."

My whole resolve was changed: I would not deliver the note. Not that I
had any precise idea wherefore, or that I had the least conception what
other course I should adopt; I was a true disciple of revolt: I rebelled
for very rebellion's sake.

Betty Cobbe's was more than usually brilliant on that evening. A
race, which was to come off at Kingstown the next day, had attracted a
numerous company, in the various walks of horse-boys, bill-carriers, and
pickpockets, all of whom hoped to find a ready harvest on the morrow.
The conversation was, therefore, entirely of a sporting character.
Anecdotes of the turf and the ring went round, and in the many curious
devices of roguery and fraud might be read the prevailing taste of
that select company. Combinations were also formed to raise the rate of
payment, and many ingenious suggestions thrown out about turning cattle
loose, slacking girths, stealing curb-chains, and so on, from that
antagonistic part of the public who preferred holding their horses
themselves than intrusting them to the profession.

The race itself, too, engrossed a great share of interest; and a certain
Fergusson was talked of with all the devotedness and affection of a dear
friend. Nor, as I afterwards learned, was the admiration a merely blind
one, as he was a most cunning adept in all the wily stratagems by which
such men correct the wilful ways of Fortune.

How my companions chuckled over stories of "rotten ditches" that were
left purposely to betray the unwary; swinging gates that would open at
the least touch, and inevitably catch the horse that attempted to clear,
if the hoof but grazed them; bog-holes, to swamp, and stone fences, to
smash,--had their share of approval; but a drain dug eight feet deep,
and that must certainly break the back of the horse, if not of the rider
also, who made a "mistake" over it, seemed the triumph which carried
away the suffrages of the whole assembly.

Now, although I had seen far more of real sport and horsemanship than
the others, these narratives were for the most part new to me; and I
listened with a high interest to every scheme and trick by which cunning
can overreach and outmanoeuvre simplicity. The admiration of adroit
knavery is the first step on the road to fraud; and he who laughs
heartily at a clever trick, seldom suspects how he is "booking himself"
for the same road. For my own part, neither were my principles so fixed,
nor my education so careful, that I did not conceive a very high respect
for the rogue, and a very contemptuous disdain for his victim.

Morning came, and a bright sunny one it was, with a keen frost and that
kind of sharp air that invigorates and braces both mind and body. The
crisp, clear outline of every tree and building seen against the deep
blue sky; the sparkling river, with its clean bed of bright gravel; and
the ruddy faces one meets,--are all of a nature to suggest pleasant and
cheerful thoughts. Even we--we, with our frail fragments and chapped
hands--felt it, and there was an alacrity of movement and a bounding
step, a gay laugh and a merry voice, everywhere. All set out for
Kingstown, in the neighborhood of which the race was to come off. I
alone remained behind, resisting every entreaty of my companions to join
them,--I cannot yet say why I did so. It was partly that long habit had
made my attendance upon "the Captain" a duty; partly, perhaps, that some
vague notion that the letter, of which I still kept possession, should
be delivered by me at last.

The town was quite empty on that day,--not a carriage, nor a horseman
to be seen. There were very few on foot, and the Square was deserted of
all, save its nursery population. I never felt a more tedious morning.
I had full time, as I loitered along all alone, to contrast my solitude
with the enjoyment my companions were at that same moment pursuing.

True to the instant, Captain De Courcy cantered up, his face a thought
graver and more stern than I had ever seen it before. As he dismounted,
my hand, in holding his stirrup, soiled the brilliant polish of his
lacquered boot; he perceived it, and rewarded my awkwardness with a
smart cut of his whip. A minute before I had made up my mind to give him
the note; now, torture itself would not have torn it from me.

I followed him with my eyes till he entered the house,--not over
distinctly, it is true, for they were somewhat blinded by tears that
would, in spite of me, come forth. The sensation was a most painful one;
and I am heartily glad to confess I have seldom experienced a recurrence
of it. Scarcely was the hall-door closed on him, when I remembered that
he would soon hear of the note, which I had failed to deliver, and that,
in all likelihood, a heavy punishment awaited me. My offence was a grave
one: what was to be done? Turn the mare loose and fly, or patiently
await my fate? Either were bad enough; the latter certainly the less
advisable of the two. A third course soon suggested itself, doubtless
inspired by that most mischief-working adage which says that one may be
"as well hanged for the sheep as the lamb."

I therefore voted for the "larger animal;" and to satisfy myself that
I was honest to my own convictions, I immediately proceeded to act upon
them. I led the mare quietly along to the angle of the Square, and then,
turning into the next street, I shortened the stirrups, mounted, and
rode off.

"Set a beggar on horseback--" says the proverb; and although the
consequence is only meant figuratively, I have a suspicion that it might
bear a literal reading. I rode away, at first, at a trot, and then,
striking into a brisk canter, I took the road to Kingstown, whither,
even yet, some horsemen were hastening.

Every stride of the bounding animal elevated my spirits and nerved my
courage. The foot-passengers, that plodded wearily along, I looked down
upon as inferior; with the horsemen on either side I felt a kind of
equality. How differently does one view life from the saddle and from
the ground! The road became more thronged as I advanced, thicker crowds
pressed eagerly forward, and numerous carriages obstructed the way. At
another moment, perhaps, I should have attracted attention; but stranger
sights were passing at every instant, and none troubled their heads
about the "ragged urchin on the thoroughbred."

The crowd at last became so dense that horsemen were fain to desert
the high road, and take short cuts wherever an open gate or an easily
crossed fence opened the way. Following a group of well-mounted
gentlemen, I cleared a low wall into a spacious grass field, over which
we cantered, and beyond this, by leaping an easy ditch, into another of
the same kind, till at length we saw the vast crowds that blackened a
hill in front, and, beneath them, could distinguish the fluttering
flags that marked the course, and the large floating standard of the
winning-post.

What a grand sight was that! For what is so imposing a spectacle as vast
myriads of people stirred by one interest, and animated by one absorbing
passion? Every one has nowadays seen something of the kind, therefore
I shall not linger to tell of the impression it made upon my youthful
senses. The first race had already come off; but the second, and the
great event of the day, was yet to take place.

It was a steeplechase by "gentlemen riders" over a very severe line of
country; several fences of most break-neck character having been added
to the natural difficulties of the ground.

Mounted on my splendid barb, I rode boldly forward till I reached the
field through which the first ditch ran,--a deep and wide trench, backed
by a low rail,--a very formidable leap, and requiring both stride and
strength to clear it.

"Some of 'em will tail off, when they sees that!" said an English groom,
with a knowing wink; and the words were only out when, at a "slapping
canter," the riders were seen coming down the gently sloping hill. Three
rode nearly abreast; then came a single horseman; and, after him, an
indiscriminate mass, whose bright and party-colored jackets glowed like
a rainbow.

I watched them with a breathless interest; as they came nearer they
widened the space between them, and each cast a rapid but stealthy
glance at his neighbor. One--he rode a powerful black horse--took the
lead, and, dashing at the leap, his horse rose too soon, and fell,
chested against the opposite bank, the rider under him; the next swerved
suddenly round and balked; the third did the same; so that the leading
horseman was now he who rode alone at first. Quickening his speed as he
came on, he seemed actually to fly; and when he did take the fence, it
was like the bound of a cannon-shot,--up, and over at once! Of the
rest, some two or three followed well; others pulled short up; while the
larger share, in various forms of accident and misfortune, might be seen
either struggling in the brook, or endeavoring to rescue their horses
from the danger of broken legs and backs.

I did not wait to watch them; my interest was in those who gallantly
led onward, and who now, some four in number, rode almost abreast. Among
these, my favorite was the sky-blue jacket who had led the way over the
dyke; and him did I follow with straining eyes and palpitating heart.
They were at this moment advancing towards a wall,--a high and strong
one, and I thought, in the slackened pace and more gathered-up stride, I
could read the caution a difficult leap enforced.

A brown jacket with white sleeves was the first to charge it; and after
a tremendous scramble, in which the wall, the horse, and the rider were
all tumbling together, he got over; but the animal went dead lame, and
the rider, dismounting, led him off the ground.

Next came blue-jacket; and just at the very rise his mare balked, and,
at the top of her speed, ran away along the side of the wall. A perfect
roar of angry disappointment arose from the multitude, for she was
the favorite of the country people, who were loudly indignant at this
mischance.

"The race is sold!" cried one.

"Beatagh"--this was the rider--"pulled her round himself! the mare never
was known to refuse a fence!"

"I say you're both wrong!" cried a third, whose excited manner showed
he was no indifferent spectator of the scene. "She never will take her
first wall fairly; after that she goes like a bird!"

"What a confounded nuisance to think that no one will lead her over the
fence! Is there not one here will show her the way?" said he, looking
around.

"There's the only fellow I see whose neck can afford it!" said another,
pointing to me. "He, evidently, was never born to be killed in a
steeplechase."

"Devilish well mounted he is, too!" remarked some one else.

"Hallo, my smart boy!" said he who before alluded to the mare as a
bolter, "try your nag over that wall yonder,--go boldly. Let her
have her head, and give her a sharp cut as she rises. Make way there,
gentlemen! Let the boy have fair play, and I 'll wager a five-pound note
he does it! You shall have half the stakes too, if you win!" added he.
These were the last words I heard; for the crowd, clearing in front,
opened for me to advance, and without a moment's hesitation of any kind,
I dashed my heels to the mare's flanks, and galloped forward. A loud
shout, and a perfect shower of whips on the mare's quarter from
the bystanders, put all question of pulling up beyond the reach of
possibility. In a minute more I was at the wall, and, ere I well knew,
over it. A few seconds after, the blue-jacket was beside me. "Well done,
my lad! You've earned twenty guineas if I win the race! Lead the way a
bit, and let your mare choose her ground when she leaps." This was all
he said; but such words of encouragement never fell on my ears before.



Before us were the others, now reduced to three in number, and evidently
holding their stride and watching each other, never for a moment
suspecting that the most feared competitor was fast creeping up behind
them. One fence separated us, and over this I led again, sitting my mare
with all the composure of an old steeplechaser. "Out of the way, now!"
cried my companion, "and let _me_ at them!" and he tore past me at a
tremendous pace, shouting out, as he went by the rest, "Come along, my
lads! I 'll show the way!"

And so he did! With all their efforts, and they were bold ones, they
never overtook him afterwards. His mare took each fence flying, and as
her speed was much greater than the others', she came in full half a
minute in advance. The others arrived all together, crest fallen and
disappointed, and, like all beaten men, receiving the most insulting
comments from the mob, who are somewhat keen critics on misfortune. I
came last, for I had dropped behind when I was ordered; but, unable
to extricate my mare from the crowd, was compelled to ride the whole
distance with the rest. If the losing horsemen were hooted and laughed
at, _my_ approach was a kind of triumphal entry. "There's the chap that
led over the wall! That little fellow rode the best of them all!" "See
that ragged boy on the small mare; he could beat the field this minute!"

"'T is fifty guineas in goold ye ought to have, my chap!" said
another,--a sentiment the unwashed on all sides seemed most heartily to
subscribe to.

"Be my soul, I 'd rather be lookin' at him than the gentlemen!" said a
very tattered individual, with a coat like a transparency. These, and
a hundred similar comments, fell like hail-drops around; and I believe
that in my momentary triumph I actually forgot all the dangers and
perils of my offence.

It is a great occasion for rejoicing among the men of rags and
wretchedness when a member of their own order has achieved anything
like fame. The assertion of their ability to enter the lists with "their
betters" is the very pleasantest of all flatteries. It is, so to say,
a kind of skirmish, before that great battle which, one day or other,
remains to be fought between the two classes which divide mankind,--
those who have, and those who have not.

I little suspected that I was, to use the cant so popular at present,
"the representative of a great principle" in my late success. I took all
the praises bestowed, most literally, to myself, and shook hands with
all the dirty and tattered mob, fully convinced that I was a very fine
fellow.

"Mister Beatagh wants to see the boy that led him over the ditch,"
shouted out a huge, wide-shouldered, red-faced ruffian, as he shoved the
crowd right and left to make way for the approach of the gentleman who
had just won the race.

"Stand up bowld, avic!" whispered one in my ear, "and don't be ashamed
to ax for your reward."

"Say ten guineas!" muttered another.

"No; but twenty!" growled out a third.

"And lashings of drink besides, for the present company!" suggested a
big-headed cripple about two feet high.

"Are you the lad that took the fence before me?" cried out a
smart-looking, red-whiskered young man, with a white surtout loosely
thrown over his riding costume.

"Yes, sir," I replied, half modestly and half assured.

"Who are you, my boy, and where do you come from?"

"He's one of Betty Cobbe's chickens!" shouted out an old savage-faced
beggar-man, who was terribly indignant at the great misdirection of
public sympathy; "and a nice clutch they are!"

"What is it to you, Dan, where the crayture gets his bread?" rejoined an
old newsvender, who, in all likelihood, had once been a parlor boarder
in the same seminary.

"Never mind _them_, but answer me, my lad!" said the gentleman. "If you
are willing to take service, and can find any one to recommend you--"

"Sure, we'll all go bail for him--to any amount!" shouted out the little
crippled fellow, from his "bowl;" and certainly a most joyous burst of
laughter ran through the crowd at the sentiment.

"Maybe ye think I'm not a householder," rejoined the fellow, with a grin
of assumed anger; "but have n't I my own sugar hogshead to live in, and
devil receave the lodger in the same premises!"

"I see there 's no chance of our being able to settle anything here,"
said the gentleman. "These good people think the matter more their own
than ours; so meet to-morrow, my lad, at Dycer's, at twelve o'clock, and
bring me anything that can speak for your character." As he said these
few words he brushed the crowd to one side with his whip, and forcing
his way, with the air of a man who would not be denied, left the place.

"And he 's laving the crayture without givin' him a farden!" cried one
of the mob, who suddenly saw all the glorious fabric of a carouse and a
drunken bout disappear like a mirage.

"Oh, the 'tarnal vagabond" shouted another, more indignantly; "to desart
the child that a-way,--and he that won the race for him!"

"Will yez see the little crayture wronged?" said another, who appeared
by his pretentious manner to be a practised street orator. "Will yez
lave the dissolute orphan--" he meant "desolate"--"to be chayted out
of his pater money? Are yez men at all? or are yez dirty slaves of the
bloody 'stokessy that's murderin' ould Ireland'?"

"We'll take charge of the orphan, and of you too, my smart fellow, if
you don't brush off pretty lively!" said a policeman, as, followed by
two others, he pushed through the crowd with that cool determination
that seems to be actually an instinct with them. Then, laying a strong
hand on my collar, he went on: "How did you come by that mare, my lad?"

"She belongs to Captain De Courcy, of the Royal Hospital," said I, doing
my utmost to seem calm and collected.

"We know that already; what we want to hear is, what brought you here
with her? It was n't Captain De Courcy's orders?"

"No, sir. I was told to hold her for him, and--and--"

"And so you rode off with her,--out with it, it saves time, my lad. Now,
let me ask you another question: Have you any notion of the crime you
have just committed? Do you know that it amounts to horse-stealing? And
do you know what the penalty is for that offence?"

"No, sir; I know neither one nor the other," said I, resolutely; "and,
if I did, it doesn't matter much. As well to live upon prison diet as to
starve in the streets!"

"He's a bad 'un; I told ye that!" remarked another of the policemen.
"Take him off, Grimes!" and so, amid a very general but subdued murmur
of pity and condolence from the crowd, I was dragged away on one side,
while the mare was led off on another.

It was a terrible tumble down, from being a hero to an embryo felon;
from being cheered by the populace, to being collared by a policeman!
As we went along towards Dublin on a jaunting-car, I was regaled by
interesting narratives of others who had begun life like myself, and
took an abrupt leave of it in a manner by no means too decorous. The
peculiarity of anecdote which pertains to each profession was strongly
marked in these officers of the law; and they appeared to have
studied the dark side of human nature with eyes the keenest and most
scrutinizing.

I wish I could even now forget the long and dreary hours of the night
that ensued, as I lay, with some fifty others, in the jail of the
station-house. The company was assuredly not select, nor their manners
at all improved by the near approach of punishment. It seemed as if all
the disguises of vice were thrown off at once, and that iniquity stood
forth in its own true and glaring livery. I do not believe that the
heart can ever experience a ruder shock than when an unfledged criminal
first hears himself welcomed into the "Masonry" of guilt. To be claimed
by such associates as a fellow-laborer, to be received as one of the
brethren into the guild of vice, is really an awful blow to one's
self-esteem and respect; to feel yourself inoculated with a disease
whose fatal marks are to stamp you like this one or that, sends a
shuddering terror through the heart, whose cold thrill is never, in a
life-long afterwards, thoroughly eradicated.

There should be a quarantine for suspected guilt, as for suspected
disease; and the mere doubt of rectitude should not expose any
unfortunate creature to the chances of a terrible contagion! I do not
affect by this to say that I was guiltless,--not in the least; but my
crime should scarcely have classified me with the associates by whom
I was surrounded. Nor was a night in such company the wisest mode of
restoring to the path of duty one who might possibly have only slightly
deviated from the straight line.

When morning came I was marched off, with a strong phalanx of other
misdoers, to the College Street office, where a magistrate presided
whose bitterest calumniators could never accuse of any undue leanings
towards mercy. By him I had the satisfaction of hearing a great variety
of small offences decided with a railroad rapidity, only interrupted now
and then by a whining lamentation over the "lenity of the legislature,"
that never awarded one tithe of the suitable penalty, and bewailing his
own inability to do more for the criminal than send him to prison for
two months with hard labor, and harder diet to sweeten it.

At last came my name; and as I heard it shouted aloud, it almost choked
me with a nervous fulness in the throat. I felt as though I was the
greatest criminal in the universe, and that the whole vast assemblage
had no other object or aim there than to see me arraigned for my
offence.

I was scarcely ordered to advance before I was desired to stand back
again, the prosecutor, Captain De Courcy, not being in court. While a
policeman was, therefore, despatched by the magistrate to request that
he would have the kindness to appear,--for the captain was an honorable
and an aide-de-camp, titles which the sitting justice knew well how to
respect,--other cases were called and disposed of. It was nigh three
o'clock when a great bustle in the outer court and a tremendous falling
back of the dense crowd, accompanied by an ostentatious display of
police zeal, heralded a group of officers, who, with jingling spurs and
banging sabretaches, made their way to the bench, and took their seats
beside the justice. Many were the courtesies interchanged between the
magistrate and the captain: one averring that the delay was not in
the slightest degree inconvenient; the other professing the greatest
deference for the rules of court; neither bestowing a thought upon him
most deeply concerned of all.

A very brief narrative, delivered by the captain with a most military
abruptness, detailed my offence; and, although not exaggerated in the
slightest degree, the occasional interruptions of the magistrate served
very considerably to magnify its guilt,--such as "Dear me! a favorite
mare; a pure Arab; a present from your noble father, Lord Littlemore;
infamous treatment; abominable case; abandoned young scoundrel!" and so
on; closing with the accustomed peroration of regret that, as hanging
was now done away with, he feared that the recorder could only award me
a transportation for life!

"Have you anything to say, sirrah?" said he at last, turning towards me;
"or would you rather reserve your observations for another time? as I
shall certainly commit you for trial at the commission."

"I have only to suggest," said I, with an air of most insolent
composure, "that you are probably mistaken in your law. The offence with
which I stand charged amounts, at most, to the minor one of breach of
trust."

"What! have we got a lawyer in the dock?" said the magistrate, reddening
with fear and anger together.

"I have enjoyed some opportunities of legal study, your worship," said
I, "and am happy to state that my opinion in the present instance will
not discredit the assertion. The case stands thus: I am employed by the
Honorable Captain De Courcy to perform a particular duty, which is of
the distinct nature of a trust; that trust, whose importance I do not
seek to extenuate in the slightest, I fail in. I will not plead the
strong temptation of a race and a great spectacle. I will not allege, as
perhaps I might, the example of my companions, then revelling in all the
pleasures of the day. I will simply say that no one fact can be adduced
to favor the suspicion of a meditated robbery; and that my conduct, so
palpably open and public, rejects the least assumption of the kind, and
at the utmost can establish nothing beyond what I am willing to plead
guilty to,--a breach of trust."

"Listen to the Attorney-General! By the hokey, it's himself they 've in
the dock!" said one.

"That's the chap can give them chapter and varse!" cried another.

"Silence there! Keep silence in the court!" said the justice, now really
warm with passion. "I'd have you to know, sirrah," said he, addressing
me, "that your pettifogging shrewdness is anything but favorable to you
in the unfortunate position in which you stand. I shall commit you
for trial, and would advise you--it is the only piece of advice I
'll trouble you with--to charge some more skilful advocate with your
defence, and not intrust it to the knavish flippancy of conceit and
chicanery."

"I mean to have counsel, your worship," said I, resolutely; for my blood
was up, and I would have argued with the twelve judges. "I mean to
have one of the first and most eminent at the bar for my defence. Mr.
Mansergh, of Merrion Square, will not refuse my brief when he sees the
fee I can offer him."

A regular roar of laughter filled the court; the impudence of my speech,
and my thus introducing the name of one of the very first men at the
bar, as likely to concern himself for such a miserable case and object,
was too much for any gravity; and when the magistrate turned to comment
upon my unparalleled assurance and impertinence to Captain De Courcy, he
discovered that the honorable captain had left his place.

Such was the fact! The dashing aide-de-camp was at that moment standing
in earnest converse with myself beside the dock.

"May I speak with this boy in another room, your worship?" said he,
addressing the court.

"Certainly, Captain De Courcy! Sergeant Biles, show Captain De Courcy
into my robing-room."

The honorable captain did not regain his composure immediately on
finding himself alone with me; on the contrary, his agitation was such
that he made two or three efforts before he could utter the few words
with which he first addressed me.

"What did you mean by saying that Mr. Mansergh would defend you? and
what was the fee you alluded to?" were the words.

"Just what I said, sir," said I, with the steady assurance a confidence
of victory gives. "I thought it was better to have able counsel; and as
I know I have the means of recompensing him, the opportunity was lucky."

"You don't pretend that you could afford to engage one like him, my
lad?" said he, affecting, but very poorly, an air of easy composure.
"What could you give him?"

"A note, sir; and although it never issued from the Bank, one not
without value!"

The captain became deadly pale; he made one step towards the door, and
in a low voice of ill-restrained anger said, "I'll have you searched,
sirrah! If anything belonging to me is found upon you--"

"No fear, sir," said I, composedly; "I have taken precautions against
that; the note is safe!"

He threw himself upon a chair, and stared at me steadily for some
minutes without a word. There we were, each scanning the other, and
inwardly calculating how to win the game we were playing.

"Well," said he, at last; "what are your terms? You see I give in."

"And so best," said I; "it saves time. I ask very little from your
honor,--nothing more, in fact, than to have this charge dismissed. I
don't mean to wear rags all my life, and consort with vagabonds, and
so I dislike to have it said hereafter that I was ever arraigned or
committed for an offence like this. You must tell the justice that
it was some blunder or mistake of your orders to me; some accidental
circumstance or other,--I don't much care what, or how; nor will he,
if the explanation comes from _you!_ This done, I 'll place the note in
your hand within half an hour, and we need never see much more of each
other."

"But who is to secure me that you keep your promise?"

"You must trust to me," said I, carelessly; "I have no bail to give."

"Why not return now, with the policeman, for the note, before I speak to
the justice?"

"Then who is to go bail for _you?_" said I, smiling.

"You are a cool fellow, by Jove!" cried he, at the steady impudence
which I maintained in the discussion.

"I had need be," replied I, in a voice very different from the feigned
hardihood of my assumed part. "The boy who has neither a home nor
a friend in the world has little else to rely on, save the cold
recklessness of what may befall him!"

I saw a curl of contempt upon the captain's lip at the energy of this
speech; for now, when, for the first time between us, a single genuine
sentiment broke from me, he deemed it "cant."

"Well!" cried he, "as you wish; I'll speak to the justice, and you shall
be free."

He left the room as he spoke, but in a few moments reentered it, saying,
"All is right! You are discharged! Now for _your_ share of the bargain."

"Where will your honor be in half an hour?"

"At the Club, Foster Place."

"Then I 'll be there with the note," said I.



He nodded, and walked out. I watched him as he went; but he neither
spoke to a policeman, nor did he turn his head round to see what became
of me. There was something in this that actually awed me. It was a trait
so unlike anything I had ever seen in others that I at once perceived it
was "the gentleman's" spirit, enabling him to feel confidence even in a
poor ragged street wanderer as I was. The lesson was not lost on me. My
life has been mainly an imitative one, and I have more than once seen
the inestimable value of "trusting."

No sooner was I at large than I speeded to Betty's, and was back
again long before the half-hour expired. I had to wait till near five,
however, before he appeared; so sure was he of my keeping my word that
he never troubled himself about me. "Ha!" said he, as he saw me, "long
here?"

"Yes, sir, about an hour;" and I handed him the note as I spoke.

He thrust it carelessly into his sabretache, and, pulling out a crown
piece, chucked it towards me, saying, "Good-bye, friend; if they don't
hang you, you 'll make some noise in the world yet."

"I mean it, sir," said I, with a familiar nod; and so, genteelly
touching my cap in salute, I walked away.



CHAPTER VIII. A QUIET CHOP AT 'KILLEEN'S' AND A GLANCE AT A NEW
CHARACTER

I looked very wistfully at my broad crown piece as it lay with its
honest platter face in the palm of my hand, and felt, by the stirring
sensations it excited within me, some inklings of his feelings who
possesses hundreds of thousands of them. Then there arose in my mind the
grave question how it was to be spent; and such a strange connection is
there between what economists call supply and demand, that, in place
of being, as I esteemed myself a few minutes back, "passing rich," I at
once perceived that I was exceeding poor, since to effect any important
change in my condition, five shillings was a most inadequate sum. It
would not buy me more than a pair of shoes; and what use in repairing
the foundation of the edifice, when the roof was in ruin?--not to speak
of my other garments, to get into which, each morning, by the same
apertures as before, was a feat that might have puzzled a harlequin.

I next bethought me of giving an entertainment to my brethren at
Betty's; but, after all, they had shown little sympathy with me in my
late misfortune, and seemed rather pleased to be rid of a dangerous
professional rival. This, and a lurking desire to leave the fraternity,
decided me against this plan.

Then came the thought of entertaining myself, giving myself a species
of congratulatory dinner on my escape; and, in fact, commemorating the
event by anticipating the most fashionable mode now in use.

I canvassed the notion with all the skill and fairness I could summon,
starting the various objections against it, and answering them with what
seemed to myself a most judicial impartiality.

"Who does a man usually entertain," said I, "but his intimate friends?"
Those whose agreeability is pleasing to him, or whose acquaintance is
valuable from their station and influence. Now, with whom had I such
an unrestrained and cordial intercourse as myself? Whose society never
wearied, whose companionship always interested me? My own! And who, of
all the persons I had ever met with, conceived a sincere and heartfelt
desire for my welfare, preferring it to all others? "Con Cregan, it is
you," said I, enthusiastically. "In you my confidence is complete. I
believe you incapable of ever forgetting me. Come, then, and let us
pledge our friendship over a flowing bowl."

Where, too, was the next doubt? With a crown to spend, I was not going
to descend to some subterranean den among coalheavers, newsvenders,
and umbrella-hawkers. But how was I to gain access to a better-class
ordinary,--that was the difficulty,--who would admit the street-runner,
in his rags, into even a brief intimacy with his silver forks and
spoons? And it was precisely to an entertainment on such a scale as a
good tavern could supply that I aspired. It was to test my own feelings
under a new stimulant,--just as I have often since seen grave people
experiment upon themselves with laughing-gas and magnetism and the fumes
of ether.

"It may be too much for you, Con," said I, as I went along; "there's no
knowing what effect it may have on your nerves.

"Remember that your system is not attuned to such variations. Your
vagaries may prove extravagant, and the too sudden elevation may disturb
your naturally correct judgment." Against these doubts I pleaded the
necessity of not being ungrateful to myself, not refusing a very proper
acknowledgment of my own skill and astuteness; and, lastly, I suggested
a glancing kind of hope that, like those famed heroes who dated their
great fortune to having gone to sleep beneath the shadow of some charmed
tree, or near the ripple of a magic fountain, that I, too, should arise
from this banquet with some brilliant view of life, and see the path to
success, bright and clear before me, through the hazy mists of fancy.

As I reasoned thus, I passed various ordinaries, stopping with a kind
of instinct at each, to gaze at the luscious rounds of beef so daintily
tricked out with sprigs of parsley; the appetizing cold sirloins, so
beautifully stratified with fat and lean; with hams that might tempt
a rabbi; not to speak of certain provocative little paragraphs about
"Ox-tail and Gravy ready at all hours." "Queer world it is," said I;
"and there are passing at every instant, by tens and twenties, men
and women and children, famishing and hungry, who see all these things
separated from them by a pane of window-glass; and yet they only gather
their rags more closely together, clench their thin lips tighter, and
move on. Not that alone; but here am I, with means to buy what I want,
and yet I must not venture to cross that threshold, as though my rags
should be an insult to their broadcloth." "Move on, youngster," quoth a
policeman at this moment, and thus put an end to my soliloquy.

Wearied with rambling, and almost despairing of myself, I was about
to cross Carlisle Bridge, when the blazing effulgence of a great
ruby-colored lamplight attracted my attention, over which, in bright
letters, ran the words, "Killeen's Tavern and Chop House," and beneath:
"Steak, potatoes, and a pint of stout, one shilling and fourpence."
Armed with a bold thought, I turned and approached the house.

Two or three waiters, in white aprons, were standing at the door, and
showed little inclination to make way for me as I advanced.

"Well," cried one, "who are you? Nobody sent for you."

"Tramp, my smart fellow," said the other; "this an't your shop."

"Is n't this Killeen's?" said I, stoutly.

"Just so," said the first, a little surprised at my coolness.

"Well, then, a young gentleman from the college sent me to order dinner
for him at once, and pay for it at the same time."

"What will he have?"

"Soup, and a steak, with a pint of port," said I; just the kind of
dinner I had often heard the old half-pay officers talking of at the
door of the Club in Foster Place.

"What hour did he say?"

"This instant. He's coming down; and as he starts by the mail at seven,
he told me to have it on the table when he came."

"All right; four-and-six," said the waiter, holding out his hand for the
money.

I gave him my crown piece; and as he fumbled for the sixpence I
insinuated myself quietly into the hall.

"There's your change, boy," said the waiter; "you need n't stop."

"Will you be so good, sir," said I, "to write 'paid' on a slip of paper
for me, just to show the gentleman?"

"Of course," said he, taken possibly by the flattering civility of my
address; and he stepped into the bar, and soon reappeared with a small
scrap of paper, with these words: "Dinner and a pint of port, 4s.
6d.--paid."

"I'm to wait for him here, sir," said I, most obsequiously.

"Very well, so you can," replied he, passing on to the coffee-room.

I peeped through the glass door, and saw that in one of the little
boxes into which the place was divided, a table was just spread, and a
soup-tureen and a decanter placed on it. "This," thought I, "is for
me;" for all the other boxes were already occupied, and a great buzz of
voices and clashing of plates and knives going on together.

"Serve the steak, sir," said I, stepping into the room and addressing
the head-waiter, who, with a curse to me to "get out of that," passed
on to order the dish; while I, with an adroit flank movement, dived into
the box, and, imitating some of the company, spread my napkin like a
breastplate across me. By a great piece of fortune the stall was the
darkest in the room, so that when seated in a corner, with an open
newspaper before me, I could, for a time at least, hope to escape
detection.

"Anything else, sir?" cried a waiter, as he uncovered the soup, and
deposited the dish of smoking beef-steak.

"Nothing," responded I, with a voice of most imposing sternness, and
manfully holding up the newspaper between us.

The first three or four mouthfuls I ate with a faint heart; the fear
of discovery, exposure, and expulsion almost choked me. A glass of
port rallied, a second one cheered, and a third emboldened me, and I
proceeded to my steak in a spirit of true ease and enjoyment. The
port was most insidious; place it wherever I would on the table, it
invariably stole over beside me, and, in spite of me, as it were, the
decanter would stand at my elbow. I suppose it must be in reality a very
gentlemanlike tipple; the tone of sturdy self-reliance, the vigorous air
of command, the sense of absolutism it inspires, smack of Toryism;
and as I sipped, I felt myself rising above the low prejudices I once
indulged in against rank and wealth, and insensibly comprehending the
beauty of that system which divides and classifies mankind.

The very air of the place, the loud, overbearing talk, the haughty
summons to the waiter, the imperious demand for this or that requisite
of the table, all conspired to impress me with the pleasant sensation
imparted to him who possesses money. Among the various things called
for on every side, I remarked that mustard seemed in the very highest
request. Every one ate of it; none seemed to have enough of it. There
was a perpetual cry, "Mustard! I say, waiter, bring me the mustard;"
while one very choleric old gentleman, in a drab surtout and a red
nose, absolutely seemed bursting with indignation as he said, "You don't
expect me to eat a steak without mustard, sir?"--a rebuke at which the
waiter grew actually purple.

Now, this was the very thing I had myself been doing,--actually eating
"a steak without mustard!" What a mistake, and for one who believed
himself to be in every respect conforming to the choicest usages of high
life! What was to be done? The steak had disappeared; no matter, it was
never too late to learn, and so I cried out, "Waiter, the mustard here!"
in a voice that almost electrified the whole room.

I had scarcely concealed myself beneath my curtain,--"The Times,"--when
the mustard was set down before me, with a humble apology for
forgetfulness. I waited till he withdrew, and then helping myself to the
unknown delicacy, proceeded to eat it, as the phrase is, "neat." In my
eagerness, I swallowed two or three mouthfuls before I felt its effects;
and then a sensation of burning and choking seized upon me. My tongue
seemed to swell to thrice its size; my eyes felt as if they would
drop out of my head; while a tingling sensation, like "frying," in my
nostrils, almost drove me mad; so that after three or four seconds of
silent agony, during which I experienced about ten years of torture,
unable to endure more, I screamed out that "I was poisoned," and, with
wide-open mouth and staring eyes, ran down the coffee-room.

Never was seen such an uproar! Had an animal from a wild-beast menagerie
appeared among the company, the consternation could scarce be greater;
and in the mingled laughter and execrations might be traced the
different moods of those who resented my intrusion. "Who is this fellow?
How did he get in? What brought him here? What's the matter with him?"
poured in on all sides,--difficulties the head-waiter thought it better
to deal with by a speedy expulsion than by any lengthened explanation.

"Get a policeman, Bob!" said he to the next in command; and the order
was given loud enough to be heard by me.

"What the devil threw him amongst us?" said a testy-looking man in green
spectacles.

"I came to dine, sir," said I; "to have my steak and my pint of wine, as
I hoped, in comfort, and as one might have it in a respectable tavern."

A jolly burst of laughter stopped me, and I was obliged to wait for its
subsidence to continue.

"Well, sir! I paid for my dinner--"

"Is that true, Sam?" said a shrewd-looking man to the waiter.

"Quite true, sir! he paid four-and-sixpence, saying that the dinner was
for a College gentleman."

"I have been in College," said I, coolly; "but no matter, the thing
is simple enough: I am here in a house of public entertainment, the
proprietors of which have accepted my money for a specific purpose;
and putting aside the question whether they can refuse admission to any
well-conducted individual (see Barnes _versus_ MacTivell, in the 8th
volume Term Reports; and Hobbes against Blinkerton, Soaker, and others,
in the Appendix), I contend that my presence here is founded upon
contract."

Another and still louder roar of mirth again stopped me, and before I
could resume, the company had gathered round me, in evident delight at
my legal knowledge; and in particular, he of the spectacles, who was a
well-known attorney of the Court of Conscience.

"That fellow's a gem!" said he. "Hang me if he's not equal to Bleatem!
Sam, take care what you do; he 's the chap to have his action against
you! I say, my man, come and sit down here, and let us have a little
chat together."

"Most willingly, sir," responded I. "Waiter, bring my wine over to this
table." This was the signal for another shout, of which I did not deign
to take the slightest notice.

"I'll wager a hundred oysters," exclaimed one of the party, among whom I
now seated myself, "that I have seen him before! Tell me, my lad,
didn't you ride over the course yesterday, and cut out the work for Mr.
Beatagh?"

I bowed an assent. "Who the devil is he?" cried two or three together;
and my appearance and manner did not check the audible expression of
this sentiment.

"A few words will suffice, gentlemen," said I, "on that head. My father
was an estated gentleman, of small, but unincumbered fortune, which he
lost by an unfortunate speculation; he accordingly went abroad--"

"To Norfolk Island!" suggested one, with a wink.

"Exactly," responded I, "a Colonial appointment; leaving me, like
Norval, not exactly on the Grampian Hills, but in a worse place, in the
middle of the bog of Allen; my sole dependence being in certain legal
studies I had once made, and a natural taste for getting forward
in life; which, with a most enthusiastic appreciation of good
company,"--here I bowed politely all round,--"are, I flatter myself, my
chief characteristics."

After a little, but most good-humored, quizzing about my present
occupation and future prospects, they, with far more politeness than
might be expected, turned the conversation upon other matters,
and kindly permitted me to throw in from time to time my
observations,--remarks which I could see, from their novelty, at least,
seemed often to surprise them.

At length the hour of separating arrived, and I arose to bid the company
good-night, which I performed with a very fair imitation of that quiet
ease I had often studied in the young guardsmen about town.

"What do you bet that he has neither home to shelter him, nor bed to
sleep on, this night?" whispered one to his neighbor.

"What are you writing there, Cox?" said another, to the keen-eyed man,
who was pencilling something on a card.

"There, that's my address, my boy,--12, Stafford Street: Jeremiah Cox.
Come to me about ten to-morrow."

Another, while he was speaking, made an effort to slip a half-crown into
my hand,--a measure I felt it becoming to decline with a prompt, but
courteous, refusal. Indeed, I had so identified myself with the part I
was performing that I flung down my only sixpence on the table for the
waiter, and, with a last salutation to the honorable company, walked
out. I have a perfect memory of every circumstance of the evening, and
I recollect that my swaggering exit was as free from any semblance of
concern or care as though a carriage waited for me outside to convey me
to a luxurious home!

It has often been a fancy of mine through life to pass the entire of a
summer night out of door; to wander either through the moonlit roads
of some picturesque country, or in the still more solitary streets of
a great city. I have always felt on these occasions as though one were
"stealing a march" upon the sleeping world,--gaining so many more hours
of thought and reflection, which the busy conflict of life renders so
often difficult.

The hours of the night seem to typify so many stages of existence,--only
reversing the natural order of age, and making the period of deep
reflection precede the era of sanguine hope; for if the solemn closing
in of the darkness suggests musing, so do the rosy tints and fresh air
of breaking day inspire the warm hopefulness of youth. If "the daylight
sinking" invites the secret communing of the heart, "the dawning of
morn" glows with energetic purpose and bold endeavor.

To come back to myself. I left the tavern without a thought whither I
should turn my steps. It was a calm night, with a starry sky and a mild,
genial air, so that to pass the hours until morning without shelter was
no great privation. One only resolve I had formed,--never to go back to
Betty's. I felt that I had sojourned over long in such companionship; it
was now time some other, and more upward, path should open before me.

Following the course of the Liffey, I soon reached the quay called the
North Wall, and at last arrived at the bluff extremity which looks out
upon the opening of the river into the Bay of Dublin. The great expanse
was in deep shadow, but so calm the sea that the two lighthouses were
reflected in long columns of light in the tranquil water. The only sound
audible was the low, monotonous plash of the sea against the wall, or
the grating noise of a chain cable, as the vessel it held surged slowly
with the tide. The sounds had something plaintive in them, that soon
imparted a tone of sadness to my mind; but it was a melancholy not
unpleasing; and I sat down upon a rude block of stone, weaving strange
fancies of myself and my future.

As I sat thus, my ear, grown more acute by habit, detected the light
clank of a chain, and something like a low thumping sound in the water
beneath me; and on peering down, I discovered the form of a small boat,
fastened to a ring in the wall, and which from time to time grated
against the strong masonry. There it lay, with a pair of light oars
run under the thwarts, and its helm flapping to and fro, inert and
purposeless, like myself! So at least I fancied it; and soon began
conceiving a strange parallel between it and me. I was suddenly startled
from these musings by the sound of feet rapidly approaching.

I listened, and could hear a man coming towards me at full speed. I sat
down beneath the shadow of the wall, and he passed me unnoticed, and
then, springing up on the parapet, he gave a loud, shrill whistle,
waiting a few seconds as if for the reply. He was silent, and then
repeated it; but still in vain,--no answer came. "Blast them!" muttered
he, "the scoundrels will not show a light!" A third time did he whistle;
but though the sounds might be heard a mile off, neither sight nor sound
ever responded to them. "And that rascal, too, to have left the boat at
such a moment!" Just as he uttered these words, he sprang down from
the wall, and caught sight of me, as I lay, affecting sleep, coiled up
beneath it.

With a rude kick of his foot on my side he aroused me, saying, "D--n the
fellow! is this a time for sleeping? I told you to keep a sharp look-out
for me here! What! who are you?" cried he, as I stood upright before
him.

"A poor boy, sir, that has no roof to shelter him," said I, plaintively.

He bent his head and listened; and then, with a horrible curse,
exclaimed, "Here they are! here they come! Can you pull an oar, my lad?"

"I can sir," answered I.

"Well, jump down into the punt there, and row her round the point to
the stairs. Be quick! down with you! I have cut my hand, and cannot help
you. There, that 's it, my lad! catch the ring; swing yourself a little
more to the right; her gunwale is just beneath your foot; all right now!
well done! Be alive now! give way, give way!" And thus encouraging me,
he walked along the parapet above me, and in a few minutes stood fast,
calling out, but in a lower and more cautious voice, "There! close in,
now a strong pull--that 's it!" and then, hastily descending a narrow
flight of steps, he sprang into the boat, and seated himself in the
stern. "Hush! be still!" cried he; "do not stir! they'll never see us
under the shadow of the wall!"

As he spoke, two dark figures mounted the wall, straight above our
heads, and stood for some seconds as it were peering into the distance.

"I 'll swear I saw him take this way," cried one, in a deep low voice.

"If he were the Devil himself, he could not escape us here," said the
other, with an accent of vindictive passion.

"And he is the Devil," said the former speaker.

"Pooh, nonsense, man! any fellow who can win at dice, or has a steady
finger with a pistol, is a marvel for you. Curses on him! he has given
us the slip somehow."

"I'd not wonder, Harry, if he has taken the water; he swims like a
duck!"

"He could not have sprung from a height like that without a plash, and
we were close enough upon his heels to hear it; flash off some powder in
a piece of paper: it is dark as pitch here."

While the men above were preparing their light, I heard a slight stir
in the stern of the boat. I turned my head, and saw my companion coolly
fitting a cap on his pistol; he was doing it with difficulty, as he was
obliged to hold the pistol between his knees, while he adjusted the cap
with his left hand; the right hand he carried in the breast of his coat.
Nothing could be more calm and collected than his every movement, up to
the instant when, having cocked the weapon, he lay back in the boat, so
as to have a full stare at the two dark figures above us.

At last, the fuse was ready, and, being lighted, it was held for a few
seconds in the hand, and then thrown into the air. The red and lurid
glare flashed full upon two savage-looking faces, straight above our
heads, and for an instant showed their figures with all the distinctness
of noonday. I saw them both, as if by a common impulse, lean over the
parapet and peer down into the dark water below, and I could have almost
sworn that we were discovered; my companion evidently thought so too,
for he raised his pistol steadily, and took a long and careful aim. What
a moment was that for me, expecting at every instant to hear the report,
and then the heavy fall of the dead man into the water! My throat was
full to bursting. The bit of burning paper of the fuse had fallen on my
companion's pistol-hand; but though it must have scorched him, he never
stirred, nor even brushed it off. I thought that by its faint flicker,
also, we might have been seen. But no, it was plain they had not
perceived us; and it was with a delight I cannot describe that I saw
one and then the other descend from the wall, while I heard the words,
"There's the second time above five hundred pounds has slipped from us.
D--n the fellow! but if I hang for him, I'll do it yet!"

"Well, you've spoiled his hand for hazard for a while, anyhow, Harry!"
said the other. "I think you must have taken his fingers clean off!"

"The knife was like a razor," replied the other, with a laugh; "but he
struck it out of my hand with a blow above the wrist; and, I can tell
you, I 'd as soon get the kick of a horse as a short stroke of the same
closed fist."

They continued to converse as they moved away, but their words only
reached me in broken, unconnected sentences. From all I could glean,
however, I was in company with one of enormous personal strength and
a most reckless intrepidity. At last, all was still; not a sound to be
heard on any side; and my companion, leaning forward, said, "Come, my
lad, pull me out a short distance into the offing; we shall soon see a
light to guide us!"

In calm, still water I could row well. I had been boat-boy to the priest
at all his autumn fishing excursions on the Westmeath lakes, so that I
acquitted myself creditably, urged on, I am free to confess, by a very
profound fear of the large figure who loomed so mysteriously in the
stern. For a time we proceeded in deep silence, when at last he said,
"What vessel do you belong to, boy?"

"I was never at sea, sir," replied I.

"Not a sailor! How comes it, then, you can row so well?"

"I learned to row in fresh water, sir."

"What are you? How came you to be here to-night?"

"By merest chance, sir. I had no money to pay for a bed. I have neither
home nor friends. I have lived, by holding horses, and running errands,
in the streets."

"Picking pockets occasionally, I suppose, too, when regular business was
dull!"

"Never!" said I, indignantly.

"Don't be shocked, my fine fellow," said he, jeeringly; "better men than
ever you 'll be have done a little that way. I have made some lighter
this evening myself, for the matter of that!"

This confession, if very frank, was not very reassuring; and so I made
no answer, but rowed away with all my might.

"Well!" said he, after a pause, "luck has befriended me twice to-night;
and sending you to sleep under that wall was not the worst turn of the
two. Ship your oars there, boy, and let us see if you are as handy a
surgeon as you are a sailor! Try and bind up these wounded fingers of
mine, for they begin to smart with the cold night air."

"Wait an instant," cried he; "we are safe now, so you may light this
lantern;" and he took from his pocket a small and most elegantly
fashioned lantern, which he immediately lighted.

I own it was with a most intense curiosity I waited for the light to
scan the features of my singular companion; nor was my satisfaction
inconsiderable when, instead of the terrific-looking fellow--half bravo,
half pirate--I expected, I perceived before me a man of apparently
thirty-one or two, with large but handsome features and gentlemanly
appearance. He had an immense beard and moustache, which united at
either side of the mouth; but this, ferocious enough to one unaccustomed
to it, could not take off the quiet regularity and good-humor of his
manly features. He wore a large-brimmed slouched felt hat that shaded
his brows, and he seemed to be dressed with some care, beneath the rough
exterior of a common pilot-coat,--at least, he wore silk stockings and
shoes, as if in evening-dress. These particulars I had time to
note, while he unwound from his crippled hand the strips of a silk
handkerchief which, stiffened and clotted with blood, bespoke a deep and
severe wound.

If the operation were often painful even to torture, he never winced, or
permitted the slightest expression of suffering to escape him. At last
the undressing was completed, and a fearful gash appeared, separating
the four fingers almost entirely from the hand. The keenness of the cut
showed that the weapon must have been, as the fellow averred, sharp as
a razor. Perhaps the copious loss of blood had exhausted the vessels,
or the tension of the bandage had closed them; for there was little
bleeding, and I soon succeeded, with the aid of his cravat, in making a
tolerable dressing of the wound, and by filling up the palm of the hand
as I had once seen done by a country surgeon in a somewhat similar case.
The pain was relieved by the gentle support afforded.

"Why, you are a most accomplished vagrant!" said he, laughing, as he
watched the artistic steps of my proceeding. "What's your name?--I mean,
what do you go by at present? for of course a fellow like you has a
score of aliases."

"I have had only one name up to this," said I,--"Con Cregan."

"Con Cregan! sharp and shrewd enough it sounds too!" said he. "And what
line of life do you mean to follow, Master Con? for I suspect you have
not been without some speculations on the subject."

"I have thought of various things, sir; but how is a poor boy like me to
get a chance? I feel as if I could pick up a little of most trades; but
I have no money, nor any friends."

"Money--friends!" exclaimed he, with a burst of bitterness quite unlike
his previous careless humor. "Well, my good fellow, I had both one and
the other,--more than most people are supposed to have of either; and
what have they brought me to?" He held up his maimed and blood-clotted
hand as he spoke this with a withering scorn in every accent.

"No, my boy; trust one who knows something of life,--the lighter you
start, the easier your journey! He that sets his heart on it, can always
make money; and friends, as they are called by courtesy, are still more
easily acquired."

This was the first time I had ever heard any one speak of the game of
life as such; and I cannot say what intense pleasure the theme afforded
me. I am certain I never stopped to consider whether his views were
right or not, whether the shrewd results of a keen observer, or the
prejudices of a disappointed man. It was the subject, the matter
discussed, delighted me.

My companion appeared to feel that he had a willing listener, and went
freely on, canvassing the various roads to success, and with a certain
air of confidence in all he said that to me seemed quite oracular.
"What a fellow am I," said he at last, "to discourse in this strain to
a street urchin whose highest ambition is to outrun his ragged
competitors, and be first 'in,' for the sixpence of some cantering
cornet! Pull ahead, lad, there's the light at last; and hang me if
they're not two miles out."

The contemptuous tone of the last few words effectually repressed
any desire I might have had for further colloquy; and I rowed away in
silence, putting forth all my strength and skill, so that the light
skiff darted rapidly and steadily through the water.



CHAPTER IX. SIR DUDLEY BROUGHTON

Steadily, and with all the vigor I could command, I pulled towards
the light. My companion sat quietly watching the stars, and apparently
following out some chain of thought to himself; at last he said, "There,
boy, breathe a bit; there's no need to blow yourself; we 're all safe
long since; the 'Firefly' is right ahead of us, and not far off either.
Have you never heard of the yacht?"

"Never, sir."

"Nor of its owner, Sir Dudley Broughton?"

"No, sir, I never heard the name."

"Well, come," cried he, laughing, "that is consolatory. I 'm not half so
great a reprobate as I thought myself! I did not believe till now that
there was an urchin of your stamp living who could not have furnished at
least some anecdotes for a memoir of me! Well, my lad, yonder, where you
see the blue light at the peak, is the 'Firefly,' and here, where I sit,
is Sir Dudley Broughton. Ten minutes more will put us alongside, so, if
you're not tired, pull away."

"No, Sir Dudley," said I, for I was well versed in the popular tact of
catching up a name quickly, "I am able to row twice as far."

"And now, Master Con," said he, "we are going to part. Are you too young
a disciple of your craft for a glass of grog; or are you a follower of
that new-fangled notion of pale-faced politicians, who like bad coffee
and reason better than whiskey and fun?"

"I'll take nothing to drink, Sir Dudley," said I. "I have dined and
drunk well to-day, and I'll not venture further."

"As you please; only I say you 're wrong not to victual the ship
whenever you stand in-shore. No matter; put your hand into this vest
pocket,--you 'll find some shillings there: take them, whatever they be.
You'll row the boat back with one of my people; and all I have to say
is, if you do speak of me, as no doubt you will and must, don't say
anything about these smashed fingers; I suppose they'll get right one of
these days, and I 'd rather there was no gossip about them."

"I 'll never speak of it--I--"

"There, now, that's enough; no swearing, or I know you'll break your
promise. Back water a little; pull the starboard oar,--so; here we are
alongside."

Sir Dudley had scarce done speaking when a hoarse voice from the yacht
challenged us. This was replied to by a terrific volley of imprecations
on the stupidity of not sooner showing the light, amid which Sir Dudley
ascended the side and stood upon the deck. "Where's Halkett?" cried
he, imperiously. "Here, sir," replied a short, thickset man, with a
sailor-like shuffle in his walk. "Send one of the men back with the
gig, and land that boy. Tell the fellow, too, he's not to fetch Waters
aboard, if he meets him: the scoundrel went off and left me to my fate
this evening; and it might have been no pleasant one, if I had not found
that lad yonder."

"We have all Sam Waters' kit on board, Sir Dudley," said Halkett; "shall
we send it ashore?"

"No. Tell him I'll leave it at Demerara for him; and he may catch the
yellow fever in looking after it," said he, laughing.

While listening to this short dialogue I had contrived to approach a
light which gleamed from the cabin window, and then took the opportunity
to count over my wealth, amounting, as I supposed, to some seven or
eight shillings. Guess my surprise to see that the pieces were all
bright yellow gold,--eight shining sovereigns!

I had but that instant made the discovery, when the sailor who was to
put me on shore jumped into the boat and seated himself.

"Wait one instant," cried I. "Sir Dudley--Sir Dudley Broughton!"

"Well, what's the matter?" said he, leaning over the side.

"This money you gave me--"

"Not enough, of course! I ought to have known that," said he,
scornfully. "Give the whelp a couple of half-crowns, Halkett, and send
him adrift."

"You 're wrong, sir," cried I, with passionate eagerness; "they are gold
pieces,--sovereigns."

"The devil they are!" cried he, laughing; "the better luck yours. Why
did n't you hold your tongue about it?"

"You bid me take some shillings, sir," answered I.

"How d--d honest you must be! Do you hear that, Halkett? The fellow had
scruples about taking his prize-money! Never mind, boy, I must pay for
my blunder,--you may keep them now."

"I have pride, too," cried I; "and hang me if I touch them."

He stared at me, without speaking, for a few minutes, and then said, in
a low, flat voice, "Come on deck, lad." I obeyed; and he took a lighted
lantern from the binnacle, and held it up close to my face, and then
moved it so that he made a careful examination of my whole figure.

"I 'd give a crown to know who was your father," said he, dryly.

"Con Cregan, of Kilbeggan, sir."

"Oh, of course, I know all that. Come, now, what say you to try a bit of
life afloat? Will you stay here?"

"Will you take me, sir?" cried I, in ecstasy.

"Halkett, rig him out," said he, shortly. "Nip the anchor with the ebb,
and keep your course down channel." With this he descended the cabin
stairs and disappeared, while I, at a signal from Halkett, stepped down
the ladder into the steerage. In the mean while it will not be deemed
digressionary if I devote a few words to the singular character into
whose society I was now thrown, inasmuch as to convey any candid
narrative of my own career I must speak of those who, without
influencing the main current of my life, yet certainly gave some impulse
and direction to its first meanderings.

Sir Dudley Broughton was the only son of a wealthy baronet, who,
not from affection or overkindness, but out of downright indolent
indifference, permitted him, first as an Eton boy, and afterwards as
a gentleman commoner of Christ Church, to indulge in every dissipation
that suited his fancy. An unlimited indulgence, a free command of
whatever money he asked for, added to a temper constitutionally
headstrong and impetuous, soon developed what might have been expected
from the combination. He led a life of wild insubordination at school,
and was expelled from Oxford. With faculties above rather than beneath
mediocrity, and a certain aptitude for acquiring the knowledge most in
request in society, he had the reputation of being one who, if he had
not unhappily so addicted himself to dissipation, would have made a
favorable figure in the world. After trying in vain to interest himself
in the pursuits of a country life, of which the sporting was the
only thing he found attractive, he joined a well-known light cavalry
regiment, celebrated for numbering among its officers more fast men than
any other corps in the service. His father, dying about the same
time, left him in possession of a large fortune, which, with all his
extravagance, was but slightly encumbered. This fact, coupled with his
well-known reputation, made him popular with his brother officers, most
of whom, having run through nearly all they possessed, saw with pleasure
a new Croesus arrive in the regiment. Such a man as Broughton was just
wanted. One had a charger to get off; another wanted a purchaser for
his four-in-hand drag. The senior captain was skilful at billiards; and
every one played "lansquenet" and hazard.

Besides various schemes against his purse, the colonel had a still
more serious one against his person. He had a daughter, a handsome,
fashionable-looking girl, with all the manners of society, and a great
deal of that tact only to be acquired in the very best foreign
society. That she was no longer in the fresh bloom of youth, nor with a
reputation quite spotless, were matters well known in the regiment; but
as she was still eminently handsome, and "the Count Radchoffsky" had
been recalled by the emperor from the embassy of which he was secretary,
Lydia Delmar was likely, in the opinions of keen-judging parties,
to make a good hit with "some young fellow who did n't know town."
Broughton was exactly the man Colonel Delmar wanted,--good family, a
fine fortune, and the very temper a clever woman usually contrives to
rule with absolute sway.

There would be, unfortunately, no novelty in recording the steps by
which such a man is ruined. He did everything that men do who are bent
upon testing Fortune to the utmost. He lent large sums to his "friends;"
he lost larger ones to them. When he did win, none ever paid him, except
by a good-humored jest upon his credit at Coutts's. "What the devil do
you want with money, Sir Dudley?" was an appeal he could never reply to.
He ran horses at Ascot, and got "squeezed;" he played at "Crocky's," and
fared no better; but he was the favorite of the corps. "We could never
get on without Dudley," was a common remark; and it satisfied him that,
with all his extravagance, he had made an investment in the hearts at
least of his comrades. A few months longer of this "fast" career would,
in all likelihood, have ruined him. He broke his leg by a fall in a
steeplechase, and was thus driven, by sheer necessity, to lay up, and
keep quiet for a season. Now came Colonel Delmar's opportunity; the
moment the news reached Coventry, he set off with his daughter to
Leamington. With the steeplechasing, hazard-playing, betting, drinking,
yachting, driving Sir Dudley, there was no chance of even time for their
plans; but with a sick man on the sofa, bored by his inactivity, hipped
for want of his usual resources, the game was open. The Colonel's visit,
too, had such an air of true kindness!

Broughton had left quarters without leave; but instead of reprimands,
arrests, and Heaven knows what besides, there was Colonel Delmar, the
fine old fellow, shaking his finger in mock rebuke, and saying, "Ah,
Dudley, my boy, I came down to give you a rare scolding; but this sad
business has saved you!" And Lydia also, against whom he had ever felt a
dislike,--that prejudice your boisterous and noisy kind of men ever feel
to clever women, whose sarcasms they know themselves exposed to,--why,
she was gentle good-nature and easy sisterlike kindness itself! She did
not, as the phrase goes, "nurse him," but she seldom left the room where
he lay. She read aloud, selecting with a marvellous instinct the very
kind of books he fancied,--novels, tales of every-day life, things of
whose truthfulness he could form some judgment; and sketches wherein the
author's views were about on a level with his own. She would sit at the
window, too, and amuse him with descriptions of the people passing in
the street; such smart shrewd pictures were they of watering-place folks
and habits, Dudley never tired of them! She was unsurpassed for the
style with which she could dress up an anecdote or a bit of gossip; and
if it verged upon the free, her French education taught her the
nice perception of the narrow line that separates "libertinage" from
indelicacy.

So far from feeling impatient at his confinement to a sofa, therefore,
Broughton affected distrust in his renovated limb for a full fortnight
after the doctor had pronounced him cured. At last he was able to drive
out, and soon afterwards to take exercise on horseback, Lydia Delmar and
her father occasionally accompanying him.

People will talk at Leamington, as they do at other places; and so
the gossips said that the rich--for he was still so reputed in the
world--the "rich" Sir Dudley Broughton was going to marry Miss Delmar.

Gossip is half-brother to that all-powerful director called "Public
Opinion;" so that when Sir Dudley heard, some half-dozen times every
day, what it was reputed he would do, he began to feel that he ought to
do it.

Accordingly, they were married; the world--at least the Leamington
section of that large body--criticising the match precisely as it struck
the interests and prejudices of the class they belonged to.

Fathers and mothers agreed in thinking that Colonel Delmar was a shrewd
old soldier, and had made an "excellent hit." Young ladies pronounced
Liddy--for a girl who had been out eight years--decidedly lucky.
Lounging men at club doors looked knowingly at each other as they joked
together in half sentences, "No affair of mine; but I did not think
Broughton would have been caught so easily." "Yes, by Jove!" cried
another, with a jockey-like style of dress, "he 'd not have made so
great a mistake on the 'Oaks' as to run an aged nag for a two-year old!"

"I wonder he never heard of that Russian fellow!" said a third.

"Oh, yes!" sighed out a dandy, with an affected drawl; "poor dear Liddy
did indeed catch a 'Tartar '!"

Remarks such as these were the pleasant sallies the event provoked;
but so it is in higher and greater things in life! At the launch of a
line-of-battle ship, the veriest vagrant in Tags fancies he can predict
for her defeat and shipwreck!

The Broughtons were now the great people of the London season, at least
to a certain "fast" set, who loved dinners at the Clarendon, high play,
and other concomitant pleasures. _Her_ equipages were the most perfect;
_her_ diamonds the most splendid; while _his_ dinners were as much
reputed by one class, as _her_ toilet by another.

Loans at ruinous interest; sales of property for a tithe of its value;
bills renewed at a rate that would have swamped Rothschild; purchases
made at prices proportionate to the risk of non-payment; reckless
waste everywhere; robbing solicitors, cheating tradesmen, and dishonest
servants! But why swell the list, or take trouble to show how the ruin
came? If one bad leak will cause a shipwreck, how is the craft to mount
the waves with every plank riven asunder?

If among the patriarchs who lend at usury, Broughton's credit was
beginning to ebb, in the clubs at the West End, in the betting-ring,
at Crockford's, and at Tattersall's, he was in all the splendor of his
former fame. Anderson would trust him with half his stable. Howell and
James would send him the epergne they had designed for a czar. And so
he lived. With rocks and breakers ahead, he only "carried on" the faster
and the freer.



Not that he knew, indeed, the extent, or anything approaching the
extent, to which his fortune was wrecked. All that he could surmise on
the subject was founded on the increased difficulty he found in raising
money,--a circumstance his pliant solicitor invariably explained by
that happy phrase, the "tightness of the money market." This completely
satisfied Sir Dudley, who, far from attributing it to his own almost
exhausted resources, laid all the blame upon some trickery of foreign
statesmen, some confounded disturbance in Ireland, something that the
Foreign Secretary had done, or would not do; and that thus the money
folk would not trust a guinea out of their fingers. In fact, it was
quite clear that to political intrigue and cabinet scheming all Sir
Dudley's difficulties might fairly be traced!

It was just at this time that the Count Radchoffsky arrived once more in
London in charge of a special mission, no longer the mere secretary of
embassy, driving about in his quiet cab, but an envoy extraordinary,
with cordons and crosses innumerable. He was exactly the kind of man
for Broughton's "set," so that he soon made his acquaintance, and was
presented by him to Lady Broughton as a most agreeable fellow, and
something very distinguished in his own country.

She received him admirably: remembered to have met him, she thought,
at Lord Edenbury's but he corrected her by saying it was at the Duke
of Clifton's,--a difference of testimony at which Broughton laughed
heartily, saying, in his usual rough way, "Well, it is pretty clear you
didn't make much impression on each other."

The Russian noble was a stranger to the turf. In the details of
arranging the approaching race, in apportioning the weights and ages
and distances, Broughton passed his whole mornings for a month, sorely
puzzled at times by the apathy of his Northern friend, who actually
never obtruded an opinion, or expressed a wish for information on the
subject.

Sir Dudley's book was a very heavy one too. What "he stood to win" was a
profound secret; but knowing men said that if he lost, it would be such
a "squeeze" as had not been known at Newmarket since the Duke of York's
day.

Such an event, however, seemed not to enter into his own calculations;
and so confident was he of success that he could not help sharing his
good fortune with his friend Radchoffsky, and giving him something in
his own book. The count professed himself everlastingly grateful, but
confessed that he knew nothing of racing matters, and that, above all,
his Majesty the Emperor would be excessively annoyed if a representative
of his in any way interfered with the race; in fact, the honor of the
Czar would be tarnished by such a proceeding. Against such reasonings
there could be no opposition; and Broughton only took to himself all the
benefits he had destined for his friend.

At last the eventful day came; and although Sir Dudley had arranged that
Lady Broughton should accompany him to the course, she was taken with
some kind of nervous attack that prevented her leaving her bed. Her
husband was provoked at this ill-timed illness, for he was still vain
of her appearance in public; but knowing that he could do nothing for
hysterics, he sent for Doctor Barham, and then with all speed he started
for the race.

Among the friends who were to go along with him, the count had promised
to make one; but despatches--that admirable excuse of diplomatists, from
the 

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