‘I knew it well all along,’ said he coolly; ‘the way you stood in the room, your step as you walked, and, above all, how you believed me when I spoke of the spring-tides, and the moon only in her second quarter, I saw you never was a sailor, anyhow. And so I set a-thinking what you were. You were too silent for a pedlar, and your hands were too white to be in the smuggling trade; but when I saw your boots, I had the secret at once, and knew ye were one of the French army that landed the other day at Killala.’ ‘It was stupid enough of me not to have remembered the boots!’ said I, laughing. ‘Arrah, what use would it be,’ replied he; ‘sure ye ‘re too straight in the back, and your walk is too regular, and your toes turns in too much, for a sailor; the very way you hould a switch in your hand would betray you!’ ‘So it seems, then, I must try some other disguise,’ said I, ‘if I ‘m to keep company with people as shrewd as you are.’ ‘You needn’t,’ said he, shaking his head doubtfully; ‘any that wants to betray ye wouldn’t find it hard.’ I was not much flattered by the depreciating tone in which he dismissed my efforts at personation, and walked on for some time without speaking. ‘Yez came too late, four months too late,’ said he, with a sorrowful gesture of the hands. ‘When the Wexford boys was up, and the Kildare chaps, and plenty more ready to come in from the north, then, indeed, a few thousand French down here in the west would have made a differ; but what’s the good in it now? The best men we had are hanged or in gaol; some are frightened; more are traitors! ‘Tis too late--too late!’ ‘But not too late for a large force landing in the north, to rouse the island to another effort for liberty.’ ‘Who would be the gin’ral?’ asked he suddenly. ‘Napper Tandy, your own countryman,’ replied I proudly. ‘I wish ye luck of him!’ said he, with a bitter laugh; ‘‘tis more like mocking us than anything 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. _Volte-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?’