of the sergeant; and from the angry and reproachful looks cast by him on the tinker's treasure, I could read at once the history of her countenance and his defeat. I must candidly confess that it gave me pleasure; why, I knew not it is even to myself an indifinable sensation :-but so it was.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"Help! help! unhand me, ruffians!"

ON a review of my party's strength, I found that a màrch, and speedy one, to head-quarters was unavoidable; and I felt, alas! that this march was to be the last! the term fast approached when the regiment was to be inspected and passed. Í seemed to awake from a dream of pleasure, as I viewed the course which stern duty prescribed; nor was I left long to indulge in my own speculations; for the post of that morning brought me one of the circulars addressed to all the recruiting officers of the regiment, ordering them to repair to head-quarters with their parties and recruits before the 10th of that month, two days of which had already elapsed: a piece of in telligence which I thought proper to confine to my own keeping, for obvious reasons. I more than suspected that some of my recruits only waited the expenditure of the last shilling of their bounty to spare me the trouble of their further custody; and with so many facilities to escape, I am only surprised that the watchfulness of my sergeant and party was so successful as to prevent a single desertion.

The grand recruiting party, hitherto stationed at Dublin having to pass within four miles of my quarters, it occurred to me that as the gentlemen volunteers from the metropolis would be pretty strongly guarded, their march through Somerston would afford me a very favourable opportunity of proceeding to head-quarters with every prospect of security. I lost no time in communicating with the commanding-officer there, in order to arrange for the junction of my party with his; and every thing was settled before even my sergeant was intrusted with the knowledge of it. I then set seriously to work to wind up all the concerns of my little establishment. Nothing had been suffered to run into arrear; the widow's tally against the recruits having been cast up and paid every Sunday morning.

The weekly and monthly pay-lists were with equal regularity paid up and receipted; so that all matters were in such a state as, without exciting particular attention, left me free to march at a few hours' notice. At each parade I ordered all the party to appear in marching order; and every day moved them a mile or two out of the village towards the Dublin road, by way of practice.

On all these occasions my tinker's wife never left her husband's side; and the anxiety she betrayed to screen him from observation, by interposing her own person when any stranger chanced to cross our path, did not escape my eye.

That more than one of my recruits had previously enjoyed the sweets of His Majesty's bounty, I had very little doubt; but so long as I could make a safe delivery of the person of the hero at head-quarters, my mind had no qualms on the score of morality. Besides, it could not be expected that I would insist on any poor fellow convicting himself by confessing himself a deserter: I therefore received his preference of me as a compliment, and determined, as far as in me lay, that the compliment should not be an empty one. While allowing them, therefore, the full enjoyment of the recruit's privilege, in dissipating the wages of their servitude, I left them to take care of their souls, and took on myself the care of their bodies.

The time now approached when I should bid farewell to my comely widow, who, little dreaming of her separation from her "Cushla-ma-chree," as she called me, was every day bestowing on me fresh proofs of her fondness and (O, woman!) her gratitude!

One evening, having accompanied old Robin to his cottage door, attended by my faithful escort, Cromwell, I was on my return, and when within half a furlong of our quarters, was alarmed by the almost stiffed shrieks of a female in distress. Drawing my sword, I flew to the spot from whence the noise proceeded, Cromwell bounding in advance; and after a minute's run, came in time to rescue from brutal outrage the tinker's wife!

Two of my recruits, whom I always suspected to be deserters, neither of them twenty years of age, had formed a scheme for deserting that night, and had so far worked on the fears of the wife of the man of pots and kettles, as to induce her to enter into their plans. A place was mentioned where they were to meet. The wife was to retire first from the house, the others to join her as they found opportunities for escaping; they undertaking to bring over Rafferty to their plan. The unfortunate young woman repaired to the appointed rendezvous, momentarily expecting her husband and his associates, when she was joined by the two youths. Such characters were not very scrupulous about moral obligations; and drunkenness

assisting the suggestions of depraved minds, they proceeded to that violence which my presence alone prevented their completing. The wretched woman had been almost strangled in her resistance to the ruffians, and in her struggle had been divested of a great portion of her already too scanty garments. She appeared fully sensible of her preserver's identity; but probably recollecting the cause of her being in that situation, she was struck dumb with shame-with gratitude-with selfreproach! Seizing one of the men by the collar, into which I firmly twisted my hand, I had much difficulty in restraining my canine ally from tearing the other to pieces. Already had he been seized by Cromwell, whose fangs were fixed on his neck, sufficiently protected by his stock and collar to save his life. With my sword to the throat of the other I called lustily for help, and in a few minutes the corporal and my drunken, but attached Husho, were by my side, armed.

The delinquents were marched off, and the poor gipsy left with me to tell her story. She strongly asserted the innocence of the tinker; that the whole scheme was of the two lads' forming; but she confessed that, anxious to get poor Rafferty away, she had consented to it, and the blame was attributable entirely to her. She would have told me more; but I already suspected (erroneously, however,) that the tinker was a claimable character by more than one recruiting party in the county. I stopped her history, being desirous, as far as I was concerned, to confirm him in his irreclaimability. We jogged on for some time. Strange thoughts flashed across my mind, as I placed my handkerchief over her now naked neck and shoulders. I thought, ""Tis not alone that Cæsar's wife be honest, but she should appear so. ." It just then occurred to me that the tinker's wife in escaping from the frying-pan might tumble into the fire: so, to avoid accident, I despatched the handsome gipsy in advance, to be the herald of her own safety. And well it was I did; for the poor tinker, roused to a pitch of desperation by the hasty statement of his wife's danger, and the treachery towards me his benefactor, was with difficulty restrained from taking summary vengeance on all within his reach, when the appearance of his worst, or better half, calmed the tumult of his soul.

My entrance shortly after imposed silence on all. Ordering the tinker and his wife to follow me to the parlour at the other extremity of the house, I prepared myself to sit in judgment on the apparently guilty pair; but the beauty of the nearly half-naked gipsy pleaded too powerfully in her favour, to need the advocacy of my own ever placable heart. Her devotion to the rugged tinker appeared inexplicable; yet there was in it that dash of romance which is ever attractive to the

young and inexperienced mind. Poor Rafferty stood before me sobbing like a bear, yet bursting to exculpate himself; his muscles seemed to shrink with his spirits, and once more I beheld the unfortunate left leg curtailed of its fair proportions. I expected nothing less than a reference to his deformity as his plea for seeking his discharge; but I wronged him: he stood before me in silence, as if awaiting his sentence.

As my eyes turned involuntarily on those of his penitent and weeping wife, I reflected, that if he did meditate desertion, it was at her persuasion, and could easily imagine the irresistible influence which such a being was capable of exercising over a man of ardent passions and desperate character. Condensing all I wished to impress on him in a short sentence, I said, "Rafferty, I assisted you in distress, I saved your wife from shame and dishonour, I now trust to your HONOUR. Let me not be again deceived." He still sobbed, and remained fixed on the floor, muttering, "Only hear me, sir;" until I more than once desired him to depart, promising to forget the past, and trust him as he should prove himself deserving. The wife first found a tongue to thank me; but her soft and lisping voice was as dangerous as the glance of her tearful eye; so I dismissed them both as graciously as a certain flurry, which I could not account for, would allow; and solaced myself after my night's adventure with the good cheer and company of my kind landlady; who every day could discover some new virtue in me to form a theme for her admiration, and an excuse for her fondness. But that which seemed to give her heart the greatest delight was my apparent abhorrence of the unfortunates of her own sex, who hung about my party like flies "round the honey-pot," so long as the tide of prodigality was in full flow: to say the truth, she became bitterly uncharitable towards that unhappy race, particularly when they ventured on the boldness of drinking the Captain's health, to quicken the circulation of an additional pint of the native.

The necessary preparations for the march awakened the poor widow to the sense of her approaching loss. She was but half the woman she had been in size and spirits, but even that half was quite enough for any moderate man. My sergeant, who had long formed deep designs on the tender widow's heart and tenement, seeing that his occupation as a crimp was on the wane, seriously turned his attention to the civil duties of landlord of the Red Lion; and had during the last week devoted himself with unusual diligence to the arrangement and settlement of all old scores; and which zeal the grateful widow acknowledged by certain little treats in her own back room; given with such cordiality, that the sergeant already fancied himself the man of the house." But poor Macnab was

66

doomed to disappointment! Like an old soldier, he endeavoured to corrupt the garrison before he sounded the summons to surrender; but the widow's power of self-command over her passions was greater than her interested lover calculated on, and he was not the man of sufficient powers of persuasion, or person, to carry the outworks sword in hand.

I saw what was going forward, and inwardly wished the sergeant success; for although a regular crimp, he was not altogether a bad fellow. He found a salve for all compunctious visitations of conscience in the reflection that what he did was for the good of his Majesty's service, and that the end sanctified the means. He would have robbed the infant child of its last parent, or the helpless widow of her only son and support, by any stratagem, so that he could add one recruit to the royal ranks. He was unprincipled from habit, not from choice, and would, I am persuaded, have made a very jovial and honest host of the Lion; but the landlady, who was "well to do in the world," was determined to have a "man for her money;” and it must be confessed that poor Macnab's person, before he was made up for the parade, exhibited fearful signs of the ravages of an ill-spent youth. His face, however, like a showy lying title-page, pledged itself to more than the volume could redeem it was round and shining, like the sun on the dial of a tap-room clock. Liquor, good living, and a tight stock kept it in a regular glow; while the reckless cheerful temper of its owner enriched it with a constant smile. Then he could sing, and tell stories of the MARQUIS OF GRANBY, NAPPER TANDY, GENERAL ELLIOT, JULIUS CAESAR, and the DUKE OF YORK; with all of whom he swore he had served, and would long since have been made a captain by the Duke; but His Royal Highness said," Macnab, my boy," says he, "I would have given you a captaincy at the siege of Valenceeny, but if I did,

me but I should have lost the best sergeant in my army!" "Well said, sergeant," cried Husho. "Blow me from the muzzle of a twenty pounder if it's not fact," vociferated the sergeant. But neither song, nor story, nor swagger, could find due favour in the eyes or breast of the widow; and poor serjeant Macnab abandoned the siege in despair.