et of beggarly cavaliers, would not have any Irishry among
them. I scorned to deny my lineage, and indeed my tongue would have soon
betrayed me, had I done so; and the name I listed under was that of
James Moriarty. One name is as good as another when you are going to the
wars; and no name is, perchance, the best of any. As James Moriarty,
after perfecting myself in musket-drill, and the pike-exercise, in our
winter quarters at Dunkirk, I was entered in the Gardes Francais, a
portion of the renowned Maison du Roy, or Household Troops, and as such
went through the second Rhenish campaign, taking my share, and a liberal
one too, in killing my fellow-Christians, burning villages, and
stealing poultry. Nay, through excessive precaution, lest my sex should
be discovered, I made more pretensions than the rest of my Comrades to
be considered a lady-killer, and the Captain of my Company, Monsieur de
la Ribaldiere, did me the honour to say that no Farmer's Daughter was
safe from 'Le Bel Irlandais,' or Handsome Irishman, as they called me.
Heaven help us! From whom are the Farmer's daughters, or the Farmers
themselves safe in war time?

"When peace was declared, I found that I had risen to the dignity of
Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an assured strut and swagger,
nobody dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains.
I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis;
but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was
glad enough, when the alternative was given me, of accompanying my
Captain, Monsieur de la Ribaldiere, to Paris, as his Valet de Chambre,
or of mouldering away, without hope of Promotion, in some country
barrack, to choose the former, and led, for a year or two, a gay, easy
life enough in the French Capital. But, alas! that which I had hidden
from a whole army in the field, I could not keep a secret from one
rubbishing, penniless, popinjay of a Captain in the Gardes Francaises. I
told this miscreant, de la Ribaldiere, that I was a woman; for I was mad
and vain enough to Love him. These are matters again, child, that you
cannot understand; but I have said enough when I declare that if ever
there was power in the Curse of Cromwell to blight a Wicked Man, that
curse ought to light upon Henri de la Ribaldiere.

"I took a disgust to the male attire after this; but being yet in the
prime of my womanhood, and as fond as ever of athletic diversions, I
engag