“Marc, have you any money?”
“Not a rap—but plenty for the taking it. I never go to Boyle upon a message, but there are half-a-dozen crimps at my heels; and every recruiting party that passes by, eyes me as if I had the cockade already mounted.”
“If you are determined, Marc, I shall say nothing more; but before you choose your regiment, let me know, and probably the Colonel may stand your friend.”
“That I will, Master Hector. But, Holy Virgin, what an uproar the house will be in when they miss me in the morning! The priest roaring here—my lady sending there—Kitty singing wirrestrue ** in the dairy—and the ould Colonel delighted at the rookawn, and shouting Devil mend her!”
* A holy lake in the north of Ireland.
** “Och wrestrue,” an Irish lamentation.
I laughed heartily at Mare’s fanciful description of a scene, which his absence would so certainly occasion.
“I must be off,” continued the fosterer, “and mind, Master Hector, we’ll meet when you least expect it.”
I slipped a bank-note into the fosterer’s hands—Marc disappeared—and I sought my pillow. Where Mr. O’Toole bestowed himself, I know not—but it was an eventful night for both. I, about to make my first start upon the stage of life, and honest Marc Antony flying from a choice of evils—matrimony or penance.
A lovelier morning never broke than that on which I took my departure from Kilcullen. It was late in September. The hoar-frost curled gently upwards, yielding to the earliest sunbeams, as I rode from the stable-yard. Every thing was exciting to the spirits: the blackbird whistled in the copse, the partridge was calling from the stubble, the sheep-bells tinkled merrily, and all seemed happy and rejoicing.
Never did a lighter-bosomed gentleman quit his father’s house. Here was I, a holder of the king’s commission, master of the best fencer in Roscommon, one hundred pounds in my pocket, a case of pistols at my saddle-bow; while, with a loose arm and a stout heart, I found myself jogging fairly on, though “half the world were sleeping.”