eye, saying, "I will go
there, and become an honest man!" But thou wast not to go there,
David--the blood which thou hadst shed in Scotland was to be required of
thee; the avenger was at hand, the avenger of blood. Seized, manacled,
brought back to thy native land, condemned to die, thou wast left in thy
narrow cell, and told to make the most of thy time, for it was short: and
there, in thy narrow cell, and thy time so short, thou didst put the
crowning stone to thy strange deeds, by that strange history of thyself,
penned by thy own hand in the robber tongue. Thou mightest have been
better employed, David!--but the ruling passion was strong with thee,
even in the jaws of death. Thou mightest have been better employed!--but
peace be with thee, I repeat, and the Almighty's grace and pardon.

CHAPTER IX

Napoleon--The Storm--The Cove--Up the Country--The Trembling
Hand--Irish--Tough Battle--Tipperary Hills--Elegant Lodgings--A
Speech--Fair Specimen--Orangemen.

Onward, onward! and after we had sojourned in Scotland nearly two years,
{88} the long Continental war had been brought to an end, Napoleon was
humbled for a time, and the Bourbons restored to a land which could well
have dispensed with them; we returned to England, where the corps was
disbanded, and my parents with their family retired to private life. I
shall pass over in silence the events of a year, which offer little of
interest as far as connected with me and mine. Suddenly, however, the
sound of war was heard again, Napoleon had broken forth from Elba, and
everything was in confusion. Vast military preparations were again made,
our own corps was levied anew, and my brother became an officer in it;
but the danger was soon over, Napoleon was once more quelled, and chained
for ever, like Prometheus, to his rock. As the corps, however, though so
recently levied, had already become a very fine one, thanks to my
father's energetic drilling, the Government very properly determined to
turn it to some account, and, as disturbances were apprehended in Ireland
about this period, it occurred to them that they could do no better than
despatch it to that country.

In the autumn of the year 1815, we set sail from a port in Essex; {89a}
we were some eight hundred strong, and were embarked in two ships, very
large, but old and crazy; a storm overtook us when off Beachy Head, in
which we had nearly foundered. I was awakened early in the morning by
the how