CHAPTER XIII.

IN WHICH RORY REMEMBERS THE OLD SAYING OF 'PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT.'

WHEN Rory could not give the countersign nor produce a pass the sentinel told him he was his prisoner, and must remain in his custody until the guard should be relieved; to which Rory made not the least objection.

To all the soldier's questions as to where he had been and what brought him out at that hour of the night, Rory gave ready but evasive answers, until, the first moment of surprise being past, he had time to invent such replies as would least embarrass hita in any subsequent examination he might undergo; and was so far successful, that the soldier believed him to be a peasant who was abroad at that hour through his own ignorance.

Rory now thought of General Hoche's letter, and began to feel uneasy at the possession of such a document. Under the surveillance of the sentinel he could not well manage to tear it; and even if he had, it being found near the spot, would prove a suspicious circumstance against him. In this dilemma, an ingenious thought occurred to him. Stooping, as it were to rub his leg, he soiled his fingers with the mud upon his shoes, and then introducing his hand into the pocket which held the letter, he dabbled it with the dirt to take off its look of freshness, and doubled it together in narrow folds, so as to resemble those billets of paper which the Irish peasantry so commonly stick in their hats for the purpose of lighting their pipes. This, the thin texture of the foreign paper enabled him the better to do; and Rory then stuck the dangerous document into his hatband, where he trusted to its remaining without exciting suspicion.

In about half an hour the guard was relieved, and Rory was handed over to the patrol, who marched him into the guard-house of the barrack, up to whose very walls it was his ill-luck to have directed his steps on leaving the colonel's house. Rory entered the place of durance with the greatest composure, and began talking to the soldiers with the most admirable nonchalance.

'Faix, I'm glad I had the luck to fall in with you!' said he.

'for I didn't know where in the world to go; and here I amn undher a good roof, with a fine fire in the place.'

The soldiers did not attend to him much, but crowded round the fire, while the sergeant went to make his report to the officer of the guard that a prisoner had been brought in.

This officer happened to be a very raw ensign, who having lately joined, and being moreover by nature a consequential coxcomb, was fond of giving himself all the airs in which a position of authority could permit him to indulge, much to his own per sonal delight and the good of his Majesty's service.

When the sergeant had announced his own presence before his superior officer by the respectful enunciation of 'Plaze your honour,' he stood as upright as his own halberd-and he had just about as much brains,—with his arms and hands stuck straight and close to his side, until the ensign thought fit to lift his gooseberry eyes from the novel he was reading. When he vouchsafed to look at the sergeant, he said, 'What's your business?'

"The pattherowl, your honour, has tuk a presner.' 'Where did they make the arrest?'

"The rest, your honour there's no more o' them, your honour.' 'I say, where did they capture him?'

'Oh ! they did nothing to him, your honour, until they have your honour's ordhers.'

'Confound you! I say where did they take him?'

"They have tuk him into the guard-house, your honour.'
"You horrid individual! I mean, where was he found ?'
"In the sthreet, your honour.'
"You beast! What street?'

'Butthermilk-street, your honour.'

'Near the barrack?'

"Yis, your honour.'

'Has he any accomplices?'

"We have not searched him yet, your honour.'

'Confound you !—I mean, was he in company?'

'Yis, your honour; he says he was in company, but they turned

Lim out, your honour.'

"Then he was alone?'

"Yis, your honour.'

'Have you searched him?'

'Demneetion, sir! You should always search a prisoner the first thing you don't know but a prisoner may have concealed arms or treasonable papers on his person. Search him directly.'

" Yis, your honour,' said the sergeant, raising his arm like the handle of a pump, and when he had it at full length, doubling it up from his elbow till his hand, as flat as a fish-knife, touched his head: then deliberately reversing all these motions until his arm was back again at his side, he turned on his heel, and was leaving the room, when the ensign, calling him back again, said, with an air of great authority,

'I never expect to hear of such a gross breach of discipline and neglect of duty again; never report a prisoner in my presence without being able to answer all such important questions as I have been asking you; and for this purpose let your first duty be always to search him directly. Go, now, and report to me again when the person of this prisoner has undergone rigid inspection. Retire!'

'Yis, your honour,' said the serjeant, repeating his salute with his usual solemnity, and stalking from the room into the guardhouse.

Now, the room where the officer sat was a small apartment partitioned off the guard-house; and Rory, whose ears were open, heard every word of the officer's magniloquence and the serjeant's stupidity; and so soon as he heard the order about searching, and the words 'treasonable papers,' he thought that to let the letter remain in existence would be only running an unnecessary risk; so he very deliberately approached the fire, and having taken Hoche's letter from his hatband, he spoke to some soldiers who were sitting round the hearth all unmindful of what was going forward between the officer and the serjeant, and, handing them the letter twisted up in the form of a match for lighting a pipe, he said,

'I beg your pardon for being so throublesome, gintlemen, but would you oblige ine to light this taste of paper for me to kindle my pipe for indeed it's mighty cowld, and I'm lost with the

wet.'

One of the soldiers did as he required; for the request was so natural, and Rory's manner so cool, that no suspicion was awakened of the importance of the document on whose destruction Rory's life or death depended, and the lighted paper was

handed to him over the shoulders of the party that enclosed the fire, and Rory lighted his pipe with a self-possession that would have done honour to an American Indian. From the wetting the letter had sustained while exposed in Rory's hat, it burned slowly; so, when he heard the serjeant coming from the officer's room, and his feigned match not yet consumed, he leaned over the back of the soldier who had obliged him, and saying, 'Thank you kindly, sir,' he threw the remainder of the paper into the fire, just as the serjeant returned to execute the ensign's order.

The search instituted upon Rory's person produced no evidence against him. When it was over, he sat down and smoked his pipe very contentedly. In a few minutes another prisoner made his appearance, when a second party, who had been relieving guard, came in. This man was making loud protestations that he was not the person the soldiers took him for; but his declarations to this effect seemed to produce no belief on the part of the guard.

'I wonder you were not afraid to come to the place again, after having escaped once before,' said one of the sentinels who brought him in.

'I tell you again, I never was there before,' said the man. 'Bother i' said the sentinel, 'you won't do an old soldier that way.'

'By this and that,' said the prisoner.

'Whisht, whisht!' said the soldier ; sure we were looking for you before; however, you contrived to give us the slip.'

'I gave you no slip, said the prisoner; 'I tell you again, 'twas the first time I was tre

'Fudge!' said the soldier: 'how did the bell ring?' 'Divil a bell I rung,' said the man.

Rory understood in an instant how this mystification took place: he suspected at once this must be Darby, who had thrown the pebbles that startled Betty so much; and, while he laughed in his sleeve at the poor husband being mistaken for the person who had disturbed the colonel's house, he continued to smoke his pipe with apparent indifference to all that was going forward, and did not as much as look up at the prisoner. It was absurd and whimsical enough, certainly, that Betty should first have mistaken him for Darby, and then that Darby should be mistaken by the soldiers for him. Darby still continued to protest his

Innocence of any previous approach to the house; but the soldiers could not be persuaded out of their senses, as they themselves said; and so the affair concluded by Darby being desired to sit down beside his fellow-prisoner.

Rory now looked at him, to see what sort of a bargain Betty had made in a husband, and, to his surprise, he beheld one of the men he had seen in the cellar. A momentary look of recognition passed between them, and then they withdrew their eyes, lest the bystanders should notice their intelligence.

'Where will the adventures of this night end!' thought Rory to himself.

But all adventures must have an end at last, and this chapter of Rory's accidents came to a close next morning; in the meantime, however, Rory stretched himself on the guard-bed when he had finished his pipe, and slept soundly. It may be wondered at that he could sleep under such exciting circumstances, and still in a perilous situation; but when we remember all the fatigues he had gone through the preceding day, it does not seem extraordinary that sleep should have favoured one like Rory, who was always full of hope, and did not know what fear meant.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN WHICH IT APPEARS THAT ONE MAN'S SIN MAY PROVE ANOTHER MAN'S SALVATION.

In the morning he was awoke by a prodigious drumming; and various other drummings, and fifings, and trumpetings, &c., went forward, with paradings and such military formula: these being finished, Rory and Darby were conducted from the guard-house, and led into the presence of the colonel, whom Rory recognised for his coal-hole acquaintance of the preceding night.

Rory, on being questioned as to what brought him into the streets at such an hour, said that he was a stranger in the town; that it being market-day, he went with some 'boys' to have some drink, and that he became drowsy and fell asleep in a public-' house that subsequently he was awoke, and that he then saw other people in the room; that a quarrel arose; that they did not