off went the musket, bang!--and down fell the
general, smack on the ground, senseless. Well the orderly ran out at this,
and took him up and examined his wound; but it wasn't a wound at all, only
the wadding of the gun. For my father--God be kind to him!--ye see, could
do nothing right; and so he bit off the wrong end of the cartridge when he
put it in the gun, and, by reason, there was no bullet in it. Well, from
that day after they never got a sight of him; for the instant that the
general dropped, he sprang over the bridge-wall and got away; and
what, between living in a lime-kiln for two months, eating nothing but
blackberries and sloes, and other disguises, he never returned to the army,
but ever after took to a civil situation, and drive a hearse for many
years."

How far Mike's narrative might have contributed to the support of his
theory, I am unable to pronounce; for his auditory were, at some distance
from Cork, made to descend from their lofty position and join a larger body
of recruits, all proceeding to the same destination, under a strong escort
of infantry. For ourselves, we reached the "beautiful city" in due time,
and took up our quarters at the Old George Hotel.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CORK.

The undress rehearsal of a new piece, with its dirty-booted actors, its
cloaked and hooded actresses _en papillote_, bears about the same relation
to the gala, wax-lit, and bespangled ballet, as the raw young gentleman
of yesterday to the epauletted, belted, and sabretasched dragoon, whose
transformation is due to a few hours of head-quarters, and a few interviews
with the adjutant.

So, at least, I felt it; and it was with a very perfect concurrence in his
Majesty's taste in a uniform, and a most entire approval of the regimental
tailor, that I strutted down George's Street a few days after my arrival in
Cork. The transports had not as yet come round; there was a great doubt of
their doing so for a week or so longer; and I found myself as the
dashing cornet, the centre of a thousand polite attentions and most kind
civilities.

The officer under whose orders I was placed for the time was a great friend
of Sir George Dashwood's, and paid me, in consequence, much attention.
Major Dalrymple had been on the staff from the commencement of his military
career, had served in the commissariat for some time, was much on foreign
stations; but never, by any of the many casualties of his life, had he seen
what could