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Fitzsimons, after his abuse of
me, left the room growling, but not hostile; his wife insisted that
we should shake hands, and he promised not to molest me. Indeed, I
owed the fellow nothing; and, on the contrary, had his acceptance
actually in my pocket for money lost at play. As for my friend Mrs.
Fitzsimons, she sat down on the bed and fairly burst out crying. She
had her faults, but her heart was kind; and though she possessed but
three shillings in the world, and fourpence in copper, the poor soul
made me take it before I left her--to go--whither? My mind was made
up: there was a score of recruiting-parties in the town beating up
for men to join our gallant armies in America and Germany; I knew
where to find one of these, having stood by the sergeant at a review
in the Phoenix Park, where he pointed out to me characters on the
field, for which I treated him to drink.

I gave one of my shillings to Sullivan the butler of the
Fitzsimonses, and, running into the street, hastened to the little
alehouse at which my acquaintance was quartered, and before ten
minutes had accepted His Majesty's shilling. I told him frankly that
I was a young gentleman in difficulties; that I had killed an
officer in a duel, and was anxious to get out of the country. But I
need not have troubled myself with any explanations; King George was
too much in want of men then to heed from whence they came, and a
fellow of my inches, the sergeant said, was always welcome. Indeed,
I could not, he said, have chosen my time better. A transport was
lying at Dunleary, waiting for a wind, and on board that ship, to
which I marched that night, I made some surprising discoveries,
which shall be told in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OF MILITARY GLORY

I never had a taste for anything but genteel company, and hate all
descriptions of low life. Hence my account of the society in which I
at present found myself must of necessity be short; and, indeed, the
recollection of it is profoundly disagreeable to me. Pah! the
reminiscences of the horrid black-hole of a place in which we
soldiers were confined; of the wretched creatures with whom I was
now forced to keep company; of the ploughmen, poachers, pickpockets,
who had taken refuge from poverty, or the law (as, in truth, I had
done myself), is enough to make me ashamed even now, and it calls
the blush into my old cheeks to think I was ever forced to keep such
company. I should have fallen into despair, but that, luckily,
events occurred to rouse my spirits, and in some measure to console
me for my misfortunes.

The first of these consolations I had was a good quarrel, which took
place on the day after my entrance into the transport-ship, with a
huge red-haired monster of a fellow--a chairman, who had enlisted to
fly from a vixen of a wife, who, boxer as he was, had been more than
a match for him. As soon as this fellow--Toole, I remember, was his
name--got away from the arms of the washerwoman his lady, his

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