for the present hardship.

"And the captain, Master Tom; you say he's an agreeable man?" said
Darby, alluding to my late companion on the coach, whose merits I was
never tired of recapitulating.

"Oh, delightful! He has travelled everywhere, and seems to know
everybody and everything. He 's very rich, too; I forget how many houses
he has in England, and elephants without number in India."

"Faix, you were in luck to fall in with him!" observed Darby.

"Yes, that I was I I 'm sure he 'll do something for me; and for you
too, Darby, when he knows you have been so kind to me."

"Me! What did I do, darling? and what could I do, a poor piper like me?
Wouldn't it be honor enough for me if a gentleman's son would travel the
road with me? Darby M'Keown's a proud man this day to have you beside
him."

A ruined cabin in the road, whose blackened walls and charred timbers
denoted its fate, here attracted my companion's attention. He stopped
for a second or two to look on it; and then, kneeling down, he muttered
a short prayer for the eternal rest of some one departed, and taking
up a stone, he threw it on a heap of similar ones which lay near the
doorside.

"What happened there, Darby?" said I, as he resumed his way.

"They wor out in the thrubles!" was his only reply, as he cast a glance
behind, to perceive if any one had remarked him.

Though he made no further allusion to the fate of those who once
inhabited the cabin, he spoke freely of his own share in the eventful
year of 'Ninety-eight' justifying, as it then seemed to me, every step
of the patriotic party, and explaining the causes of their unsuccess so
naturally and so clearly that I could not help following with interest
every detail of his narrative, and joining in his regrets for the
unexpected and adverse strokes fortune dealt upon them. As he warmed
with his subject, he spoke of France with an enthusiasm that I soon
found contagious. He told me of the glorious career of the French armies
in Italy and Austria; and of that wonderful man, of whom I then
heard for the first time, as spreading a halo of victory over his
nation,--contrasting, as he went on, the rewards which awaited heroism
and bravery in that service with the purchased promotion in ours,
artfully illustrating his position by a reference to myself, and what
my fortunes would have been if born under that happier sky. "No elder
brother there," said he, "to live in affluence, while the younger ones