ill, thinking it best to be quiet; but
the rest, with an ubbubboo, like the blowing up of a powder-magazine,
sprang up, brandishing their sticks; for these fellows always carry
sticks with them even to bed, and not unfrequently spring up in their
sleep, striking left and right."

"Did you take the deserters?" said the officer.

"Yes," said my father; "for we formed at the end of the room, and charged
with fixed bayonets, which compelled the others to yield notwithstanding
their numbers; but the worst was when we got out into the street; the
whole district had become alarmed and hundreds came pouring down upon
us--men, women, and children. Women, did I say!--they looked fiends,
half-naked, with their hair hanging down over their bosoms; they tore up
the very pavement to hurl at us sticks rang about our ears, stones, and
Irish--I liked the Irish worst of all, it sounded so horrid, especially
as I did not understand it. It's a bad language."

"A queer tongue," said I, "I wonder if I could learn it?"

"Learn it!" said my father; "what should you learn it for?--however, I am
not afraid of that. It is not like Scotch, no person can learn it, save
those who are born to it, and even in Ireland the respectable people do
not speak it, only the wilder sort, like those we have passed."

Within a day or two we had reached a tall range of mountains running
north and south, which I was told were those of Tipperary; along the
skirts of these we proceeded till we came to a town, the principal one of
these regions. It was on the bank of a beautiful river, which separated
it from the mountains. It was rather an ancient place, and might contain
some ten thousand inhabitants--I found that it was our destination; there
were extensive barracks at the farther end, in which the corps took up
its quarters; with respect to ourselves, we took lodgings in a house
which stood in the principal street.

"You never saw more elegant lodgings than these, captain," said the
master of the house, a tall, handsome, and athletic man, who came up
whilst our little family were seated at dinner late in the afternoon of
the day of our arrival; "they beat anything in this town of Clonmel. I
do not let them for the sake of interest, and to none but gentlemen in
the army, in order that myself and my wife, who is from Londonderry, may
have the advantage of pleasant company, a genteel company; ay, and
Protestant company, captain. It did my heart good when