ed me.

I resolved to write home at once to my uncle. I longed to tell him each
incident of my career, and my heart glowed as I thought over the broken
and disjointed sentences which every cotter around would whisper of my
fortunes, far prouder as they would be in the humble deeds of one they
knew, than in the proudest triumphs of a nation's glory.

Indeed, Mike himself gave the current to my thoughts. After riding beside
me for some time in silence, he remarked,--

"And isn't it Father Rush will be proud when he sees your honor's a
captain; to think of the little boy that he used to take before him on the
ould gray mare for a ride down the avenue,--to think of him being a real
captain, six feet two without his boots, and galloping over the French as
if they were lurchers! Peggy Mahon, that nursed you, will be the proud
woman the day she hears it; and there won't be a soldier sober in his
quarters that night in Portumna barracks! 'Pon my soul, there's not a thing
with a red coat on it, if it was even a scarecrow to frighten the birds
from the barley, that won't be treated with respect when they hear of the
news."

The country through which we travelled was marked at every step by the
traces of a retreating army: the fields of rich corn lay flattened beneath
the tramp of cavalry, or the wheels of the baggage-wagons; the roads, cut
up and nearly impassable, were studded here and there with marks which
indicated a bivouac. At the same time, everything around bore a very
different aspect from what we had observed in Portugal; there, the
vindictive cruelty of the French soldiery had been seen in full sway: the
ruined chateau, the burned villages, the desecrated altars, the murdered
peasantry,--all attested the revengeful spirit of a beaten and baffled
enemy. No sooner, however, had they crossed the frontiers, than, as if by
magic, their character became totally changed. Discipline and obedience
succeeded to recklessness and pillage; and instead of treating the natives
with, inhumanity and cruelty, in all their intercourse with the Spaniards
the French behaved with moderation and even kindness. Paying for
everything, obtaining their billets peaceably and quietly, marching with
order and regularity, they advanced into the heart of the country, showing,
by the most irrefragable proof, the astonishing evidences of a discipline
which, by a word, could convert the lawless irregularities of a ruffian
soldiery into the orderly ha