'It was during the Repeal Agitation I enlisted, and our regiment never left the shores of England. We moved about from Manchester to Sheffield, and from Sheffield to York, but never too far from Ireland. I watched the excitement as it grew, and waited the moment till it would come to blows. I was an Irishman before I was a soldier, thought I, and I'll never wear a sabre against my country. I went to the colonel and demanded my discharge. I had saved enough in the saddlery workshop to pay for it. '"Can't give any men their discharge now, especially a useful man like you." 'My resolution was taken on the spot. "All right, sir," I said; "I suppose I must put up with the disappointment." 'That night I deserted and put a letter with the money I had saved to buy myself out in the Post Office, and started for this city. I was always anxious to see foreign parts. I soon ran through my rhino, and then, although I couldn't speak the language, the trade I had at my fingers' ends stood my friend. But the old passion grew on me, and I joined the Foreign Legion in the French Service. I campaigned four years among the Kabyles in Algeria, and then, the Crimean War breaking out, I was taken as volunteer into the battalion of ours that went out with the Army of the East. I served through the awful winters before Sebastopol, served from the Alma to the Tchernaya, and came back with an honourable discharge, and not a scratch on my body. I stopped in Paris again awhile--I make this city my harbour of refuge, the place where I put in to refit always--but the Lombardy campaign of '59 broke out. I didn't care to enter into another engagement under the tricolour--it was too long--so I applied for a commission in a guerrilla corps in the Italian Service, and they were glad to take me on. We finished Austria at the double-quick; I was into the thick of the whole bloody six weeks' work from Turbigo to Solferino, and came off with the medal for military distinction and a sabre-cut on my left elbow. I laid up for awhile, nursing my wound and spending my money in old Paris. In 1860 I was in harness again, but this time a free-lance. I was one of the thousand of Garibaldi, landed with him at Marsala, marched with him through Palermo, crossed over with him to the mainland, fought by his side at the Volturno, and entered Naples in his triumphal procession on the Via Toledo, after he had driven out Bombalino, the dirty Bourbon.' 'Why, you have been a regular soldier of fortune! What a lot of fighting you have seen!' 'There is more to come, on the other side of the ocean. After a short stay in Paris again, I left from Havre by the _Pereire_ for New York; didn't like it, and travelled down South to Carolina. I was there when the first shot was fired at Sumter, and I threw in my fortunes with the Palmetto flag.' 'I wonder at a democrat doing that,' remarked O'Hara. 'Oh! you are of those who imagine the North was fighting to put down slavery in that war,' said his visitor.