The society among which I was thrown sickened, and the drunken uproar almost deafened, me; thus I gladly retired to my pallet, in a miserable garret, which was allotted to the corporal and myself. Drumbirrel, having discovered, through the medium of his brandy-and-water, that the blowsy landlady was absolutely beautiful, lingered behind.
Overcome by the effects of his recent orgie, Mahoney soon dropped asleep, and I was left to my own thoughts.
So I was to be a soldier, after all! It seemed the immutable dictum of fate—of a destiny against which there was no contending; and by this almost atheistical sophistry (rather than by the pressing argument of necessity) I endeavoured for a time to stifle regret, and the stings of a conscience that upbraided me, for deserting my mother in her old age and my sister in her early youth.
But the die was cast, and thus I strove to find consolation in deeming myself a fatalist.
I knew that my mother would weep for me—yea, bitterly; and that how dear my desertion (the whole circumstances of which I might never be able to explain) cost her, would be known only to God and her own gentle heart; and this conviction sank like iron into my soul.
Our quiet little cottage—the peaceful village home I might never see again, came vividly before me. With a swollen heart, and eyes full of bitter tears, I thought I never loved them all so dearly as on the night of that day, the most eventful of my life.
I never closed an eye, and when our drum beat before dawn, in the echoing market-place of Compton Rennel, I started unrefreshed from my tear-wetted pillow, and prepared to march, with other recruits, for the head-quarters of the Scots Fusiliers.
CHAPTER XXIV
SERGEANT DRUMBIRREL.
The regiment which I had joined was entirely composed of Scotsmen, with a very few exceptions, being one of the old national corps which had existed before the union of the countries; but, as twenty men were required to complete the strength before embarkation, the lieutenant-colonel, the Earl of Kildonan, had obtained a beating-order, and sent out parties from his head-quarters, to obtain recruits in England, and hence my meeting with Sergeant Drumbirrel in the little market town of Compton Kennel.