with a sorrowful
gesture of the hands. "When the Wexford boys was up, and the Kildare
chaps, and plenty more ready to come in from the North, then, indeed, a
few thousand French down here in the West would have made a differ; but
what's the good in it now? The best men we had are hanged, or in jail;
some are frightened; more are traitors! 'Tis too late--too late!"

"But not too late for a large force, landing in the North, to rouse the
island to another effort for liberty."

"Who would be the gin'ral?" asked he, suddenly.

"Napper Tandy, your own countryman," replied I, proudly.

"I wish ye luck of him!" said he, with a bitter laugh; "'tis more like
mocking us than any thing else the French does be, with the chaps they
sent here to be gin'rals. Sure it isn't Napper Tandy, nor a set of young
lawyers, like Tone and the rest of them, we wanted. It was men that knew
how to drill and manage troops--fellows that was used to fightin'; so
that when they said a thing, we might believe that they understhood it,
at laste. I'm ould enough to remimber the 'Wild Geese,' as they used to
call them--the fellows that ran away from this to take sarvice in
France; and I remimber, too, the sort of men the French were that came
over to inspect them--soldiers, real soldiers, every inch of them: and a
fine sarvice it was. Volle-face!" cried he, holding himself erect, and
shouldering his stick like a musket; "marche! Ha, ha! ye didn't think
_that_ was in me; but I was at the thrade long before you were born."

"How is this," said I, in amazement, "you were not in the French army?"

"Wasn't I, though? maybe I didn't get that stick there." And he bared
his breast as he spoke, to show the cicatrix of an old flesh-wound from
a Highlander's bayonet. "I was at Fontenoy!"

The last few words he uttered, with a triumphant pride, that I shall
never forget. As for me, the mere name was magical. "Fontenoy" was like
one of those great words which light up a whole page of history; and it
almost seemed impossible that I should see before me a soldier of that
glorious battle.

"Ay, faith!" he added, "'tis more than fifty, 'tis nigh sixty years now
since that, and I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was in the
regiment 'Tourville;' I was recruited for the 'Wellon,' but they
scattered us about among the other corps afterward, because we used now
and then to be fighting and quarrelin' among one an' other. Well, it was
the Wellons that gained the bat