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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--'

She never finished the word, for, maddened by the continual
recurrence of that odious monosyllable, I shouted to her to 'hold
tight by my waist,' and, giving Daisy the spur, in a minute sprang
with Nora over the parapet into the deep water below. I don't know
why, now--whether it was I wanted to drown myself and Nora, or to
perform an act that even Captain Quin should crane at, or whether I
fancied that the enemy actually was in front of us, I can't tell
now; but over I went. The horse sank over his head, the girl
screamed as she sank and screamed as she rose, and I landed her,
half fainting, on the shore, where we were soon found by my uncle's
people, who returned on hearing the screams. I went home, and was
ill speedily of a fever, which kept me to my bed for six weeks; and
I quitted my couch prodigiously increased in stature, and, at the
same time, still more violently in love than I had been even before.
At the commencement of my illness, Miss Nora had been pretty
constant in her attendance at my bedside, forgetting, for the sake
of me, the quarrel between my mother and her family; which my good

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