These words were uttered in a raised voice, and I took the hint.  While Darby was scuffling with the soldiers, I slipped away.

For miles I pressed forward without turning, and in the evening I found myself in Dublin.  The union with England was being debated in the Parliament House; huge and angry crowds raged without.  Remembering the tactics De Meudon had taught me, I sought to organize the crowd in a kind of military formation against the troops; but a knock on the head with a musket-butt ended my labours, and I knew nothing more until I came to myself in the quarters of an old chance acquaintance—­Captain Bubbleton.

Here, in the house of this officer—­an eccentric and impecunious man, but a most loyal friend—­I was discovered by Major Barton and dragged to prison.  I was released by the intervention of my father’s lawyer, who claimed me as his apprentice.

For weeks I lived with Captain Bubbleton and his brother officers, and nothing could be more cordial than their treatment of me.  “Tom Burke of ‘Ours,’” the captain used proudly to call me.  Only one officer held aloof from me, and from all Irishmen—­Montague Crofts—­through whom it came about that I left Ireland.

One day an uncouth and ragged woman entered the barracks, and addressed me.  It was Darby M’Keown, and he brought me nothing less precious than De Meudon’s pocket-book, which had been taken from me, and had been picked up by him on the road.  A few minutes later Bubbleton lost a sum at cards to Crofts; knowing he could not pay, I passed a note quietly to him.  When Bubbleton had gone, Crofts held up the note before me.  It was a French note of De Meudon’s!  I demanded my property back.  He refused, and threatened to inform against me.  On my seeking to prevent him from leaving the room, he drew his sword, and wounded me; but in the nick of time a blow from a strong arm laid him senseless—­dead, perhaps—­on the floor.

“We must be far from this by daybreak,” whispered Darby.

I walked out of the barracks as steadily as I could.  For all I knew, I was implicated in murder—­and Ireland was no place for me.  In a few days I stood on the shores of France.

II.—­A Blow for the Emperor

By means of a letter of introduction to the head of the Polytechnique, which De Meudon had placed for me in his pocket-book, I was able to enter that military college, and, after a spell of earnest study, I was appointed to a commission in the Eighth Hussars.  Proud as I was to become a soldier of France, yet I could not but feel that I was a foreigner, and almost friendless—­unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the few friends I possessed.  Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais, concerning whom I soon made two discoveries—­that he was in the thick of an intrigue against the republic I served, and its First Consul, and that he was in love with Marie de Meudon, my dead friend’s sister.