he was a robber where all around were robbers, but he became the avenger of God—­God’s scourge on unjust kings, on the cruel Bajazet, who had plucked out his own brothers’ eyes; he became to a certain extent the purifier of the East, its regenerator; his equal never was before, nor has it since been seen.  Here the wild heart was profitably employed, the wild strength, the teeming brain.  Onward, Lame one!  Onward, Tamur—­lank!  Haggart . . . .

But peace to thee, poor David! why should a mortal worm be sitting in judgment over thee?  The Mighty and Just One has already judged thee, and perhaps above thou hast received pardon for thy crimes, which could not be pardoned here below; and now that thy feverish existence has closed, and thy once active form become inanimate dust, thy very memory all but forgotten, I will say a few words about thee, a few words soon also to be forgotten.  Thou wast the most extraordinary robber that ever lived within the belt of Britain; Scotland rang with thy exploits, and England, too, north of the Humber; strange deeds also didst thou achieve when, fleeing from justice, thou didst find thyself in the Sister Isle; busy wast thou there in town and on curragh, at fair and race-course, and also in the solitary place.  Ireland thought thee her child, for who spoke her brogue better than thyself?—­she felt proud of thee, and said, ’Sure, O’Hanlon is come again.’  What might not have been thy fate in the far west in America, whither thou hadst turned thine eye, saying, ’I will go there, and become an honest man!’ But thou wast not to go there, David—­the blood which thou hadst shed in Scotland was to be required of thee; the avenger was at hand, the avenger of blood.  Seized, manacled, brought back to thy native land, condemned to die, thou wast left in thy narrow cell, and told to make the most of thy time, for it was short:  and there, in thy narrow cell, and thy time so short, thou didst put the crowning stone to thy strange deeds, by that strange history of thyself, penned by thy own hand in the robber tongue.  Thou mightest have been better employed, David!—­but the ruling passion was strong with thee, even in the jaws of death.  Thou mightest have been better employed!—­but peace be with thee, I repeat, and the Almighty’s grace and pardon.

CHAPTER IX

Napoleon—­The storm—­The cove—­Up the country—­The trembling hand—­Irish—­Tough battle—­Tipperary hills—­Elegant lodgings—­A speech—­Fair specimen—­Orangemen.

Onward, onward! and after we had sojourned in Scotland nearly two years, the long continental war had been brought to an end, Napoleon was humbled for a time, and the Bourbons restored to a land which could well have dispensed with them; we returned to England, where the corps was disbanded, and my parents with their family retired to private life.  I shall pass over in silence the events of a year, which offer