"I wish ye luck of him!" said he, with a bitter laugh; "'tis more like mocking us than any thing else the French does be, with the chaps they sent here to be gin'rals. Sure it isn't Napper Tandy, nor a set of young lawyers, like Tone and the rest of them, we wanted. It was men that knew how to drill and manage troops--fellows that was used to fightin'; so that when they said a thing, we might believe that they understhood it, at laste. I'm ould enough to remimber the 'Wild Geese,' as they used to call them--the fellows that ran away from this to take sarvice in France; and I remimber, too, the sort of men the French were that came over to inspect them--soldiers, real soldiers, every inch of them: and a fine sarvice it was. Volle-face!" cried he, holding himself erect, and shouldering his stick like a musket; "marche! Ha, ha! ye didn't think _that_ was in me; but I was at the thrade long before you were born." "How is this," said I, in amazement, "you were not in the French army?" "Wasn't I, though? maybe I didn't get that stick there." And he bared his breast as he spoke, to show the cicatrix of an old flesh-wound from a Highlander's bayonet. "I was at Fontenoy!" The last few words he uttered, with a triumphant pride, that I shall never forget. As for me, the mere name was magical. "Fontenoy" was like one of those great words which light up a whole page of history; and it almost seemed impossible that I should see before me a soldier of that glorious battle. "Ay, faith!" he added, "'tis more than fifty, 'tis nigh sixty years now since that, and I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was in the regiment 'Tourville;' I was recruited for the 'Wellon,' but they scattered us about among the other corps afterward, because we used now and then to be fighting and quarrelin' among one an' other. Well, it was the Wellons that gained the battle; for after the English was in the village of Fontenoy, and the French was falling back upon the heights near the wood--arrah, what's the name of the wood?--sure I'll forget my own name next. Ay, to be sure, Verzon--the 'wood of Verzon.' Major Jodillon--that's what the French called him, but his name was Joe Wellon--turned an eight-pounder short round into a little yard of a farm-house, and, making a breach for the gun, he opened a dreadful fire on the English column. It was loaded with grape, and at half-musket range, so you may think what a peppering they got. At last the column halted, and lay down; and Joe seen an officer ride off to the rear, to bring up artillery to silence our guns. A few minutes more, and it would be all over with us. So Joe shouts out as loud as he could, 'Cavalry there! tell off by threes, and prepare to charge!' I needn't tell you that the devil a horse nor a rider was within a mile of us at the time; but the English didn't know that; and, hearin' the order, up they jumps, and we heerd the word passin', 'Prepare to receive cavalry!' They formed