I was standing outside my quarters ready to march, when I noticed a smart-looking, well-dressed young man, more like an American than a Frenchman, eyeing me at a little distance off. There was something about him that excited my curiosity. As he approached rather timidly, I smiled, and said, to relieve his embarrassment, "You are not a Frenchman, I presume?" upon which his hesitation disappeared, and, in unmistakable Tipperary accent, he exclaimed, "No, indeed, Mr. Ryan. I'd make the queer Frenchman, born and reared as I was in the parish of Cullen, and educated near your father's place in the Street of Kilteely, by Mr. William Lundon." As the speaker had uttered all this in one breath, my amazement was considerable. Suddenly, and under such circumstances, to meet a man at Vernon who came from the village of Kilteely, and was acquainted with me, gave me, so to call it, a shock; and I stared at him for some seconds without speaking. The new-comer went on to inform me that his name was Timothy Nihil; that he was an enforced exile from his native land; and that, at the time of the Fenian rising in 1867, he had been the leader of that party which attacked and fired on the Glenbane Police Barracks, near Cullen. He was, in consequence, obliged to flee the country. He had come over to this place, and, being a man of some education and intelligence, had found a situation as Professor of English in the Pension of Vernon; which appointment, he told me, was worth nearly £100 a year to him. Timothy Nihil had been brought up in the National school; and, indeed, went through his classics, as he had said, under Mr. William Lundon, a teacher of great ability in his own line. To him, perhaps, it was owing that my Fenian had a very polished address. Poor fellow! his face lighted up with pleasure when he spoke of "the Old Country"; and when, in answer to his inquiries about different friends, I told him all I knew, he beamed with delight. Rebel though he had been, he was yet a fellow-countryman; and as such I gave him the hand of friendship, and could not but sympathise with him in his exile. With tears in his eyes, he repeated that he could never go back to Ireland again.