r I wrote it down in a
note-book I have; and after a while I learned to think of you so often,
and to wish I might meet you, that I had no need of the writing. You
don't seem to remember that I am in your debt, my good fellow. I carried
off your bundle, and, what was worse, it fell overboard and was lost."

"It could n't have any but bad luck," said Rory, thoughtfully; "and
maybe it was just the best thing could happen it."

There was a touch of sorrow in what he said that Tony easily saw; a
hidden grief had been removed, and after a little inducement he led him
on to tell his story; and which, though, narrated in Rory's own words,
it occupied hours, may, happily for my readers, be condensed into a very
few sentences.

Rory had been induced, partly by the glorious cause itself, partly
through the glittering promises of personal advancement, to enlist for
foreign service. A certain Major M'Caskey--a man that, as Rory said,
would wile the birds off the trees--came down to the little village he
lived in at the foot of the Galtee Mountains; and there was not one,
young or old, was not ready to follow him. To hear him talk, as Rory
described, was better than a play. There wasn't a part of the world he
hadn't seen, there was n't a great man in it he did n't know; and "what
beat all," as Rory said, "was the way he had the women on his side." Not
that he was a fine-looking man, or tall, or handsome,--far from it; he
was a little "crith of a cray-ture," not above five feet four or five,
and with red whiskers and a beard, and a pair of eyes that seemed on
fire; and he had a way of looking about him as he went, as much as to
say, "Where's the man that wants to quarrel with me? for I'm ready and
willin'."

"I won't say," added Rory, with a touch of humility, "that one like your
honor would have thought so much of him as we did. I won't say that all
the fine people he knew, and all the wonderful things he did, would
have made your honor admire him, as I, and others like me, did. Maybe,
indeed, you 'd have found out it was lies from beginning to end."

"I'm not so sure of that," muttered Tony; "there are plausible fellows
of that sort that take in men of the world every day!" And Tony sat back
in his chair and puffed his cigar in silence, doubtless recalling one
such adept in his own experience.

"Faix, I'm proud to hear your honor say that!" cried Rory. "I 'm as glad
as a pound-note to know that even a gentleman might have bee