e ye 're too straight in
the back, and your walk is too regular, and your toes turns in too much,
for a sailor; the very way you hould a switch in your hand would betray
you!'

'So it seems, then, I must try some other disguise,' said I, 'if I 'm to
keep company with people as shrewd as you are.'

'You needn't,' said he, shaking his head doubtfully; 'any that wants to
betray ye wouldn't find it hard.'

I was not much flattered by the depreciating tone in which he dismissed
my efforts at personation, and walked on for some time without speaking.

'Yez came too late, four months too late,' said he, with a sorrowful
gesture of the hands. 'When the Wexford boys was up, and the Kildare
chaps, and plenty more ready to come in from the north, then, indeed, a
few thousand French down here in the west would have made a differ; but
what's the good in it now? The best men we had are hanged or in gaol;
some are frightened; more are traitors! 'Tis too late--too late!'

'But not too late for a large force landing in the north, to rouse the
island to another effort for liberty.'

'Who would be the gin'ral?' asked he suddenly.

'Napper Tandy, your own countryman,' replied I proudly.

'I wish ye luck of him!' said he, with a bitter laugh; ''tis more like
mocking us than anything else the French does be, with the chaps they
sent here to be gin'rals. Sure it isn't Napper Tandy, nor a set of young
lawyers like Tone and the rest of them, we wanted. It was men that knew
how to drill and manage troops--fellows that was used to fightin'; so
that when they said a thing, we might believe that they understhood it,
at laste. I 'm ould enough to remimber the "Wild Geese," as they used
to call them--the fellows that ran away from this to take sarvice in
France; and I remimber, too, the sort of men the French were that came
over to inspect them--soldiers, real soldiers, every inch of them. And a
fine sarvice it was. _Volte-face!_ cried he, holding himself erect, and
shouldering his stick like a musket, _marche!_ Ha, ha! ye didn't think
that was in me; but I was at the thrade long before you were born.'

'How is this?' said I, in amazement; 'you were not in the French army?'

'Wasn't I, though? maybe I didn't get that stick there.' And he bared
his breast as he spoke, to show the cicatrix of an old flesh-wound from
a Highlander's bayonet. 'I was at Fontenoy!'

The last few words he uttered with a triumphant pride that I shall never
forget.