At last we were fairly worn out with hunger and fatigue, without a shoe to our feet, or a _scurrick_ in our pockets, and nothing was left for us but to list. Accordingly, we joined the first party that we met, and the sergeant gave us plinty of entertainment, and two pound a man. We were to be attested the next mornin’; but as he didn’t like our looks, he put us in the room where the corplar slept, and took care to lock the door carefully behind him. I guessed as much, and, feaks, I determined the divil another yard we would keep company, if I could help it; and maybe I didn’t succeed? When we were locked in, I produces a bottle of rum, and the corplar--who was a drunken divil--and I finished it by moonlight, hand to fist. I lifts him into bed blind drunk; and when the house was quiet, I wakens Dick Mac-namara, and we opened the windy fair and asy, and lowered ourselves by the blankets to the ground. We travelled night an’ day--exchanged our clothes for stable-jackets--and at last, we had the luck to be taken into the yard of an inn, and there get employment as helpers--and when at Killcrogher they thought we were travellin’ homeward in our own coach, it’s most likely we were grazing the wheels of his chay for some travellin’ bagman. Well, Dick was wispin’ a horse--and the only two things in this world he could do dacently was to warm one after a fox, and wisp him dry afterwards--when in comes one of a recruitin’ party to ask some question about his officer. When he went away I says to Dick in Irish:-- “The divil welcome the last visitor. Wheniver I see a bunch of ribbons in a sodger’s cap, I always get a start, and think that it’s one of the lads we listed with, that’s comin’ to look after his own.” “Feaks! an’ I’m not overly asy in their company ather,” says Dick back to me--and him and I continues talkin’ and laughin’ at how stupid the corplar looked in the mornin’, when he found an open windy and an empty bed. “And so,” says a voice at our elbow, “ye gave his majesty leg-bail, boys!” We gave a start, and looked round, and who was standin’ close to us but a-little dark-visaged gentleman, with a twist in the eyes that didn’t improve him much--and by the whole look of him, the very last man you would meet in a day’s walk, that ye would borrow money to spend in company with. You maybe sure that Dick and I were scared enough. “Egad,” thought I, “we are ketched at last, and this dark divil will split upon us--and then the first march will be to the black-hole for desarchin’; and the second, to the gallows, for the murder of a tailor’s wife, only that we didn’t kill her. Well, I struv to put it off as a joke, but the wee black fellow was too deep for it and he spoke the best of Irish too.