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their good qualities on trust.

I then went on to assure him that I should recommend the Government to
permit the range of frontier towns to preserve a complete neutrality;
by scarcely any possibility could the war come to their doors; and that
there was neither sound policy nor humanity in sending them to seek it
elsewhere. I will not stop to recount all the arguments I employed to
enforce my opinions, nor how learnedly I discussed every question
of European politics. The syndic was amazed at the vast range of my
acquirements, and could not help confessing it.

My interview ended by persuading him not to send on his levies of men
till he had received further instructions from Munich; to supply my
advanced guards with the rations and allowances intended for the others;
and lastly, to advance me the sum of one hundred and seventy crown
thalers, on the express pledge that the main body of my 'marauders,'
as I took opportunity to style them, should take the road by Kempen and
Durcheim, and not touch on the village of Wangheim at all.

When discussing this last point, I declared to the syndic that he was
depriving himself of a very imposing sight; that the men, whatever might
be said of them in point of character, were a fine-looking, daring set
of rascals, neither respecting laws nor fearing punishment, and that our
band, for a newly-formed one, was by no means contemptible. He resisted
all these seducing prospects, and counted down his dollars with the air
of a man who felt he had made a good bargain. I gave him a receipt in
all form, and signed Maurice Tiernay at the foot of it as stoutly as
though I had the _Grand Livre de France_ at my back.

Let not the reader rashly condemn me for this fault, nor still more
rashly conclude that I acted with a heartless and unprincipled spirit
in this transaction. I own that a species of Jesuistry suggested the
scheme, and that while providing for the exigencies of my own comrades,
I satisfied my conscience by rendering a good service in return. The
course of war, as I suspected it would, did sweep past this portion
of the Bavarian Tyrol without inflicting any heavy loss. Such of the
peasantry as joined the army fought under Austrian banners, and Wangheim
and the other border villages had not to pay the bloody penalty of a
divided allegiance. I may add, too, for conscience' sake, that while
travelling this way many years after, I stopped a day at Wangheim to
point out its pictur