uld have gone mad but for the cook, and his words of comfort, and his
tidbits, and nice books which he brought me out of the library, which
were the "Calendars of Newgate," and the "Lives of Irish Rogues and
Raparees," the only English Books in the library. However, at the end of
three years, the ould thaif of a rector, wishing to look at them books,
missed them from the library, and made a perquisition about them, and the
thaif of a porter said that he shouldn't wonder if I had them, saying
that he had once seen me reading; and then the rector came with others to
my cell, and took my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me how
I came by them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again till
the blood ran down my back; and making some perquisition, they at last
accused the cook of having carried the books to me, and the cook not
denying, he was given warning to leave next day, but he left that night,
and took me away with him; for he stole the key, and came to me and cut
my chain through, and then he and I escaped from the religious house
through a window--the cook with a bundle, containing what things he had.
No sooner had we got out than the honest cook gave me a little bit of
money and a loaf, and told me to follow a way which he pointed out, which
he said would lead to the sea; and then, having embraced me after the
Italian way, he left me, and I never saw him again. So I followed the
way which the cook pointed out, and in two days reached a seaport called
Chiviter Vik, {303a} terribly foot-foundered, and there I met a sailor
who spoke Irish, and who belonged to a vessel just ready to sail for
France; and the sailor took me on board his vessel, and said I was his
brother, and the captain gave me a passage to a place in France called
Marseilles; and when I got there, the captain and sailor got a little
money for me and a passport, and I travelled across the country towards a
place they directed me to called Bayonne, from which, they said I might,
perhaps, get to Ireland. Coming, however, to a place called Pau, all my
money being gone, I enlisted into a regiment called the Army of the
Faith, which was going into Spain, for the King of Spain had been
dethroned and imprisoned by his own subjects, as perhaps you may have
heard; and the King of France, who was his cousin, was sending an army to
help him, under the command of his own son, whom the English called
Prince Hilt, {303b} because when he was tol