A very small cloak-bag held all my effects, and with this slung at my saddle I rode out of the town just as the church clock was striking twelve. It was a calm, starlight night, and once a short distance from the town, as noiseless and still as possible; a gossoon, one of the numerous scouts we employed in conveying letters or bringing intelligence, trotted along on foot beside me to show the way, for there was a rumour that some of the Royalist cavalry still loitered about the passes to capture our despatch bearers, or make prisoners of any stragglers from the army. These gossoons, picked up by chance, and selected for no other qualification than because they were keen-eyed and swift of foot, were the most faithful and most worthy creatures we met with. In no instance were they ever known to desert to the enemy, and, stranger still, they were never seen to mix in the debauchery and excesses so common to all the volunteers of the rebel camp. Their intelligence was considerable, and to such a pitch had emulation stimulated them in the service, that there was no danger they would not incur in their peculiar duties. My companion on the present occasion was a little fellow of about thirteen years of age, and small and slight even for that; we knew him as ‘Peter,’ but whether he had any other name, or what, I was ignorant. He was wounded by a sabre-cut across the hand, which nearly severed the fingers from it, at the bridge of Castlebar, but, with a strip of linen bound round it, now he trotted along as happy and careless as if nothing ailed him. I questioned him as we went, and learned that his father had been a herd in the service of a certain Sir Roger Palmer, and his mother a dairymaid in the same house, but as the patriots had sacked and burned the ‘Castle,’ of course they were now upon the world. He was a good deal shocked at my asking what part his father took on the occasion of the attack, but for a very different reason than that which I suspected. ‘For the cause, of course!’ replied he, almost indignantly; ‘why wouldn’t he stand up for ould Ireland!’ ‘And your mother--what did she do?’ He hung down his head, and made no answer till I repeated the question. ‘Faix,’ said he slowly and sadly, ‘she went and towld the young ladies what was goin’ to be done, and if it hadn’t been that the “boys” caught Tim Haynes, the groom, going off to Foxford with a letter, we’d have had the dragoons down upon us in no time! They hanged Tim, but they let the young ladies away, and my mother with them, and off they all went to Dublin.’ ‘And where’s your father now?’ I asked. ‘He was drowned in the bay of Killala four days ago. He went with a party of others to take oatmeal from a sloop that was wrecked in the bay, and an English cruiser came in at the time and fired on them; at the second discharge the wreck and all upon it went down!’