my title, even to these, admitted of litigation. A kind of vague
notion possessed me that, once up with the expedition, I should find
my place "somewhere,"--a very Irish idea of a responsible situation. I
trusted to the "making myself generally useful" category for employment,
and to a ready-wittedness never cramped nor restrained by the petty
prejudices of a conscience.

The love of enterprise and adventure is conspicuous among the springs of
action in Irish life, occasionally developing a Wellesley or a Captain
Rock. Peninsular glories and predial outrage have just the same one
origin,--a love of distinction, and a craving desire for the enjoyment
of that most fascinating of all excitements,--whatever perils life.

Without this element, pleasure soon palls; without the cracked skulls
and fractured "femurs," fox-hunting would be mere galloping; a review
might vie with a battle, if they fire blank cartridge in both! Who 'd
climb the Peter Bot, or cross the "petit mulets" of Mont Blanc, if it
were not that a false step or a totter would send him down a thousand
fathoms into the deep gorge below. This playing hide-and-seek with Death
seems to have a great charm, and is very possibly the attraction some
folks feel in playing invalid, and passing their lives amid black
draughts and blue lotions!

I shrewdly suspect this luxury of tempting peril distinguishes man from
the whole of the other animal creation; and if we were to examine it
a little, we should see that it opens the way to many of his highest
aspirings and most noble enterprises. Now, let not the gentle reader
ask, "Does Mr. Cregan include horse-stealing in the list of these
heroic darings?" Believe me, he does not; he rather regarded the act of
appropriation in the present case in the light some noble lords did when
voting away church property,--"a hard necessity, but preferable to being
mulct oneself!" With many a thought like this, I rode out into the now
silent town, and took my way towards Austin.

It is a strange thing to find oneself in a foreign land, thousands of
miles from home, alone, and at night; the sense of isolation is almost
overwhelming. So long as daylight lasts, the stir of the busy world and
the business of life ward off these thoughts,--the novelty of the scene
even combats them; but when night has closed in, and we see above us
the stars that we have known in other lands, the self-same moon by whose
light we wandered years ago, and then