sophy, and his liberality, and his military genius, I, who
have served him, and been, as it were, behind the scenes of which that
great spectacle is composed, can only look at it with horror. What
a number of items of human crime, misery, slavery, go to form that
sum-total of glory! I can recollect a certain day about three weeks
after the battle of Minden, and a farmhouse in which some of us entered;
and how the old woman and her daughters served us, trembling, to wine;
and how we got drunk over the wine, and the house was in a flame,
presently; and woe betide the wretched fellow afterwards who came home
to look for his house and his children!

CHAPTER V. BARRY FAR FROM MILITARY GLORY

After the death of my protector, Captain Fagan, I am forced to confess
that I fell into the very worst of courses and company. Being a rough
soldier of fortune himself, he had never been a favourite with the
officers of his regiment; who had a contempt for Irishmen, as Englishmen
sometimes will have, and used to mock his brogue, and his blunt uncouth
manners. I had been insolent to one or two of them, and had only been
screened from punishment by his intercession; especially his successor,
Mr. Rawson, had no liking for me, and put another man into the
sergeant's place vacant in his company after the battle of Minden.
This act of injustice rendered my service very disagreeable to me; and,
instead of seeking to conquer the dislike of my superiors, and win their
goodwill by good behaviour, I only sought for means to make my situation
easier to me, and grasped at all the amusements in my power. In a
foreign country, with the enemy before us, and the people continually
under contribution from one side or the other, numberless irregularities
were permitted to the troops which would not have been allowed in more
peaceable times. I descended gradually to mix with the sergeants, and to
share their amusements: drinking and gambling were, I am sorry to say,
our principal pastimes; and I fell so readily into their ways, that
though only a young lad of seventeen, I was the master of them all in
daring wickedness; though there were some among them who, I promise you,
were far advanced in the science of every kind of profligacy. I should
have been under the provost-marshal's hands, for a dead certainty, had
I continued much longer in the army: but an accident occurred which took
me out of the English service in rather a singular manner.

The ye