e
of me altogether. O'Leary himself had been educated at Saint Omer,
and was a splendid fellow. He was very popular on the countryside,
and it was owing to my being with him that I was admitted to the
houses of the gentry around, whereas, had I remained in the
farmhouse in which O'Carroll first placed me, I should only have
associated with the sons of other tenants."

"It looked, at any rate, as if he wished to make a gentleman of
you, Kennedy."

"Yes, I suppose my father had asked him to do so. At any rate, I
was infinitely better off than I should have been if he had taken
me in at Kilkargan, for in that case I should have had no
associates, whatever. As it was, I scarcely ever exchanged a word
with him, until that last meeting. He sent down, by one of his
servants, the letter to the Duc de Noailles, and a bag containing
money for my outfit here, and for the purchase of a horse,
together with a line saying that he had done his duty by me, and
had no desire to hear from me in the future. I was inclined to
send the money back to him, but Father O'Leary persuaded me not to
do so, saying that I must be in a position to buy these things, if
I obtained a commission; and that, no doubt, the money had been
given me, not for my own sake, but because he felt that he owed it
to me, for some service rendered to him by my father."

"It was an ungracious way of doing it," O'Sullivan said, "but, in
your circumstances, I should have taken the money had it come from
the old one himself. It is, perhaps, as well that it should have
been done in such a manner that you may well feel you owe no great
gratitude towards such a man."

"And how did you get over here?"

"There was no great difficulty about that. In spite of the
activity of the English cruisers, constant communication is kept
up between Ireland and France, and fortunately I had, a short time
before, made the acquaintance of one of your officers, who was
over there, in disguise, gathering recruits for the Brigade."

"Yes, there are a good many agents in Ireland engaged in that
work. There is no difficulty in obtaining recruits, for there is
scarcely a young Irishman who does not long to be with his
countrymen, who have won such credit out here, and many abstain
from joining only because they do not know how to set about it.
The work of the agents, then, is principally to arrange means for
their crossing the channel. It is well that the supply is steadily
kept up, for, I