I could stand it no longer: I could not run away if I wished; a crowd was collecting around me, and so I sprang at the smallest of the recruits, whom I thought I could master, and seized him by the throat; but a smart crack given with a hank of linen yarn by some hand behind soon made me quit my prey; another crack from another quarter quickly followed. I turned round to see my executioners, when I was suddenly wheeled back by the application of a third hank. This cracking, like a feu de joie, increased every moment, and was accompanied with vociferous laughs. In short, they pounded me almost to a jelly with hanks of linen yarn, which lay ready to their hands on all the cars around us. At length, stooping down between two cars, I had the pleasure of seeing the whole of my recruits, drawn up by O’Mealy—for it appeared he was their real captain—march regularly by me, every fellow in turn saluting any part of me he thought proper with a hank of yarn;—and with a shout I still remember of “A George! a George! long life to our colonel!” they quitted the fair—as I learned, to take forcible possession of a house and farm from which one of them had been ejected—which feat I afterward heard they regularly performed that very night, with the addition of roasting the new proprietor in his own kitchen.
Though I had no bones broken, some of my flesh took pretty much the colour and consistence of what cooks call aspic jelly. I was placed on a low garron, and returned to Turlow at night, sick, sore, and sorry. There I pretended I was only fatigued, and had taken cold; and after experiencing the kind hospitality of Mrs. Fitzgerald—then a most interesting young lady—on the fourth day, at an early hour of a frosty morning, old Matthew Querns and I mounted our horses, without my having obtained any thing more for my trouble, and money spent in the recruiting service, than a sound beating. A return carriage of Lord Altamont’s having overtaken me on the road, I entered it, and was set down at the little inn at Hallymount, where I remained some days with Mr. Jennings and family, recovering from my bruises, and sighing over the wreck of my fondly anticipated glories as a renowned colonel at the head of my regiment, plundering a pagoda and picking precious stones out of an idol. But, alas! having lost all the remaining cash out of my pocket during the scuffle at Castlebar, instead of a lac of rupees, I found myself labouring under a complete lack of guineas, and was compelled to borrow sufficient from Candy, the innkeeper at Ballynasloe, to carry me home by easy stages. Thus did my military ardour receive its definitive cooling: no ice-house ever chilled champaign more effectually. I, however, got quite enough of hospitality at Turlow, and quite enough of thrashing at Castlebar, to engraft the whole circumstances on my memory.
This journey gave me an opportunity of inspecting all the scenes of Mr. George Robert Fitzgerald’s exploits. The cave in which he confined his father, showed to me by Hughy Hearn, was concealed by bushes, and wrought under one of the old Danish moats, peculiar, I believe, to Ireland. Yet, in the perpetration of that act of brutality, almost of parricide, he kept up the singular inconsistency of his character. Over the entrance to the subterraneous prison of his parent a specimen of classic elegance is exhibited by this inscription graven on a stone:
Intus ager dulces—vivoque
Sedilia Saxo—Nympharumque domus.
A NIGHT JOURNEY.
Mr. Fitzgerald’s agent and attorney—Capriciousness of courage—Jack tar, his intrepidity—New lights—Sailors and saints—Description of Mr. T—— —His temerity in court and timorousness out of it—Regularly retained by Fitzgerald—Starts with him on a journey to Turlow—Travelling companions—The eloquent snore—Mr. T——’s apprehensions—A daylight discovery—Double escape of the solicitor—His return to Dublin—Mr. Brecknock, his successor—Fate of that individual—The “murderer murdered.”
Mr. T——, a solicitor of repute in Dublin, had been selected by George Robert Fitzgerald to transact all his law and other business, as his attorney and agent.
The choice was extremely judicious:—Fitzgerald had made a secret vow, that while he existed, he never would encourage such a nest of tricksters and extortioners as attorneys, by paying any bill of cost, right or wrong, long or short; and to carry this pious vow into full execution, so far as regarded one attorney, he could not have made a better selection than that above stated.
There are few qualities of the human mind more capricious than courage; and I have known many instances in my passage through life, wherein men have been as courageous as a lion on one occasion, and as timorous as a little girl on others. I knew an English general who had never failed to signalise himself by intrepidity and contempt for death or fracture when engaged with the enemy, and was yet the most fearful being in the world lest he should be overset in a mail-coach. I have known men ready to fight any thing by daylight, run like hares in the night-time from the very same object. The capriciousness of courage is, indeed, so unaccountable, that it has ever been to me a source of amusing reflection. Not being myself of a very timorous disposition, and though I cannot say I ever experienced great fear of actual death in any proper reasonable way by the hands of a Christian—nay, even should it be a doctor—I always felt the greatest dread of getting a bite from the teeth of a mastiff, and never passed the heels of a horse without experiencing strong symptoms of cowardice. I always felt much stouter by daylight too than in the night-time.