, thou didst put the
crowning stone to thy strange deeds, by that strange history of thyself,
penned by thine own hand in the robber tongue. Thou mightest have been
better employed, David!--but the ruling passion was strong with thee,
even in the jaws of death. Thou mightest have been better employed!--but
peace be with thee, I repeat, and the Almighty's grace and pardon.

CHAPTER IX.

Napoleon--The Storm--The Cove--Up the Country--The Trembling
Hand--Irish--Tough Battle--Tipperary Hills--Elegant Lodgings--A
Speech--Fair Specimen--Orangemen.

Onward, onward! and after we had sojourned in Scotland nearly two years,
the long continental war had been brought to an end, Napoleon was humbled
for a time, and the Bourbons restored to a land which could well have
dispensed with them; we returned to England, where the corps was
disbanded, and my parents with their family retired to private life. I
shall pass over in silence the events of a year, which offer little of
interest as far as connected with me and mine. Suddenly, however, the
sound of war was heard again, Napoleon had broken forth from Elba, and
everything was in confusion. Vast military preparations were again made,
our own corps was levied anew, and my brother became an officer in it;
but the danger was soon over, Napoleon was once more quelled, and chained
for ever, like Prometheus, to his rock. As the corps, however, though so
recently levied, had already become a very fine one, thanks to my
father's energetic drilling, the Government very properly determined to
turn it to some account, and, as disturbances were apprehended in Ireland
about this period, it occurred to them that they could do no better than
despatch it to that country.

In the autumn of the year 1815 we set sail from a port in Essex; we were
some eight hundred strong, and were embarked in two ships, very large,
but old and crazy; a storm overtook us when off Beachy Head, in which we
had nearly foundered. I was awakened early in the morning by the howling
of the wind, and the uproar on deck. I kept myself close, however, as is
still my constant practice on similar occasions, and waited the result
with that apathy and indifference which violent sea-sickness is sure to
produce. We shipped several seas, and once the vessel missing
stays--which, to do it justice, it generally did at every third or fourth
tack--we escaped almost by a miracle from being dashed upon the foreland.
On the