need not have troubled myself with any explanations; King George was
too much in want of men then to heed from whence they came, and a
fellow of my inches, the sergeant said, was always welcome. Indeed,
I could not, he said, have chosen my time better. A transport was
lying at Dunleary, waiting for a wind, and on board that ship, to
which I marched that night, I made some surprising discoveries,
which shall be told in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OF MILITARY GLORY

I never had a taste for anything but genteel company, and hate all
descriptions of low life. Hence my account of the society in which I
at present found myself must of necessity be short; and, indeed, the
recollection of it is profoundly disagreeable to me. Pah! the
reminiscences of the horrid black-hole of a place in which we
soldiers were confined; of the wretched creatures with whom I was
now forced to keep company; of the ploughmen, poachers, pickpockets,
who had taken refuge from poverty, or the law (as, in truth, I had
done myself), is enough to make me ashamed even now, and it calls
the blush into my old cheeks to think I was ever forced to keep such
company. I should have fallen into despair, but that, luckily,
events occurred to rouse my spirits, and in some measure to console
me for my misfortunes.

The first of these consolations I had was a good quarrel, which took
place on the day after my entrance into the transport-ship, with a
huge red-haired monster of a fellow--a chairman, who had enlisted to
fly from a vixen of a wife, who, boxer as he was, had been more than