ford Haven, but afterwards landed at Bristol, and thence by
land to Plymouth again, and to the Isle of Wight;" losing on this
expedition "poor Joram, a pretty boy, who died of the smallpox." In
the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Sterne and her family remained till the Vigo
Expedition returned home; and during her stay there "poor Joram's loss
was supplied by the birth of a girl, Anne," a "pretty blossom," but
destined to fall "at the age of three years." On the return of the
regiment to Wicklow, Roger Sterne again sent to collect his family
around him. "We embarked for Dublin, and had all been cast away by a
most violent storm; but, through the intercession of my mother, the
captain was prevailed upon to turn back into Wales, where we stayed
a month, and at length got into Dublin, and travelled by land to
Wicklow, where my father had, for some weeks, given us over for lost."
Here a year passed, and another child, Devijeher--so called after the
colonel of the regiment--was born. "From thence we decamped to stay
half a year with Mr. Fetherston, a clergyman, about seven miles from
Wicklow, who, being a relative of my mother's, invited us to his
parsonage at Animo.[1]" From thence, again, "we followed the regiment
to Dublin," where again "we lay in the barracks a year." In 1722 the
regiment was ordered to Carrickfergus. "We all decamped, but got no
further than Drogheda; thence ordered to Mullingar, forty miles west,
where, by Providence, we stumbled upon a kind relation, a collateral
descendant from Archbishop Sterne, who took us all to his castle, and
kindly entertained us for a year." Thence, by "a most rueful journey,"
to Carrickfergus, where "we arrived in six or seven days." Here, at
the age of three, little Devijeher obtained a happy release from his
name; and "another child, Susan, was sent to fill his place, who also
left us behind in this weary journey." In the "autumn of this year, or
the spring of the next"--Sterne's memory failing in exactitude at the
very point where we should have expected it to be most precise--"my
father obtained permission of his colonel to fix me at school;" and
henceforth the boy's share in the family wanderings was at an end. But
his father had yet to be ordered from Carrickfergus to Londonderry,
where at last a permanent child, Catherine, was born; and thence to
Gibraltar, to take part in the Defence of that famous Rock, where the
much-enduring campaigner was run through the body in a duel, "about