you are only a boy!'

'If ever I meet him again,' I roared out with an oath, 'you shall see
which is the best man of the two. I'll fight him with sword or with
pistol, captain as he is. A man indeed! I'll fight any man--every man!
Didn't I stand up to Mick Brady when I was eleven years old?--Didn't I
beat Tom Sullivan, the great hulking brute, who is nineteen?--Didn't I
do for the Scotch usher? O Nora, it's cruel of you to sneer at me so!'

But Nora was in the sneering mood that night, and pursued her sarcasms;
she pointed out that Captain Quin was already known as a valiant
soldier, famous as a man of fashion in London, and that it was mighty
well of Redmond to talk and boast of beating ushers and farmers' boys,
but to fight an Englishman was a very different matter.

Then she fell to talk of the invasion, and of military matters
in general; of King Frederick (who was called, in those days, the
Protestant hero), of Monsieur Thurot and his fleet, of Monsieur Conflans
and his squadron, of Minorca, how it was attacked, and where it was; we
both agreed it must be in America, and hoped the French might be soundly
beaten there.

I sighed after a while (for I was beginning to melt), and said how much
I longed to be a soldier; on which Nora recurred to her infallible 'Ah!
now, would you leave me, then? But, sure, you're not big enough for
anything more than a little drummer.' To which I replied, by swearing
that a soldier I would be, and a general too.

As we were chattering in this silly way, we came to a place that has
ever since gone by the name of Redmond's Leap Bridge. It was an old high
bridge, over a stream sufficiently deep and rocky, and as the mare Daisy
with her double load was crossing this bridge, Miss Nora, giving a loose
to her imagination, and still harping on the military theme (I would lay
a wager that she was thinking of Captain Quin)--Miss Nora said, 'Suppose
now, Redmond, you, who are such a hero, was passing over the bridge, and
the inimy on the other side?'

'I'd draw my sword, and cut my way through them.'

'What, with me on the pillion? Would you kill poor me?' (This young lady
was perpetually speaking of 'poor me!')

'Well, then, I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd jump Daisy into the river,
and swim you both across, where no enemy could follow us.'

'Jump twenty feet! you wouldn't dare to do any such thing on Daisy.
There's the Captain's horse, Black George, I've heard say that Captain
Qui--'