submit
to you, in the first person, and in the words of the original narrator,
believing that such a form of recitation not only gives freshness to
the tale, but in this particular instance, by bringing before me and
steadily fixing in my mind's eye the veteran royalist who himself
related the occurrence which I am about to record, furnishes an
additional stimulant to my memory, and a proportionate check upon my
imagination.

As nearly as I can recollect then, his statement was as follows:

After the fatal battle of the Boyne, I came up in disguise to Dublin,
as did many in a like situation, regarding the capital as furnishing
at once a good central position of observation, and as secure a
lurking-place as I cared to find.

I would not suffer myself to believe that the cause of my royal master
was so desperate as it really was; and while I lay in my lodgings, which
consisted of the garret of a small dark house, standing in the lane
which runs close by Audoen's Arch, I busied myself with continual
projects for the raising of the country, and the re-collecting of the
fragments of the defeated army--plans, you will allow, sufficiently
magnificent for a poor devil who dared scarce show his face abroad in
the daylight.

I believe, however, that I had not much reason to fear for my personal
safety, for men's minds in the city were greatly occupied with public
events, and private amusements and debaucheries, which were, about
that time, carried to an excess which our country never knew before,
by reason of the raking together from all quarters of the empire, and
indeed from most parts of Holland, the most dissolute and desperate
adventurers who cared to play at hazard for their lives; and thus there
seemed to be but little scrutiny into the characters of those who sought
concealment.

I heard much at different times of the intentions of King James and his
party, but nothing with certainty.

Some said that the king still lay in Ireland; others, that he had
crossed over to Scotland, to encourage the Highlanders, who, with Dundee
at their head, had been stirring in his behoof; others, again, said
that he had taken ship for France, leaving his followers to shift for
themselves, and regarding his kingdom as wholly lost, which last was the
true version, as I afterwards learned.

Although I had been very active in the wars in Ireland, and had done
many deeds of necessary but dire severity, which have often since
troubled