I was much too simple a fellow to disguise any sentiment I chanced to feel in those days; and not one of the eight Castle Brady girls but was soon aware of my passion, and joked and complimented Nora about her bachelor.

The torments of jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure were horrible.  Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a man.  She would always leave me if ever there came a stranger to the house.

‘For after all, Redmond,’ she would say, ’you are but fifteen, and you haven’t a guinea in the world.’  At which I would swear that I would become the greatest hero ever known out of Ireland, and vow that before I was twenty I would have money enough to purchase an estate six times as big as Castle Brady.  All which vain promises, of course, I did not keep; but I make no doubt they influenced me in my very early life, and caused me to do those great actions for which I have been celebrated, and which shall be narrated presently in order.

I must tell one of them, just that my dear young lady readers may know what sort of a fellow Redmond Barry was, and what a courage and undaunted passion he had.  I question whether any of the jenny-jessamines of the present day would do half as much in the face of danger.

About this time, it must be premised, the United Kingdom was in a state of great excitement from the threat generally credited of a French invasion.  The Pretender was said to be in high favour at Versailles, a descent upon Ireland was especially looked to, and the noblemen and people of condition in that and all other parts of the kingdom showed their loyalty by raising regiments of horse and foot to resist the invaders.  Brady’s Town sent a company to join the Kilwangan regiment, of which Master Mick was the captain; and we had a letter from Master Ulick at Trinity College, stating that the University had also formed a regiment, in which he had the honour to be a corporal.  How I envied them both! especially that odious Mick as I saw him in his laced scarlet coat, with a ribbon in his hat, march off at the head of his men.  He, the poor spiritless creature, was a captain, and I nothing,—­I who felt I had as much courage as the Duke of Cumberland himself, and felt, too, that a red jacket would mightily become me!  My mother said I was too young to join the new regiment; but the fact was, that it was she herself who was too poor, for the cost of a new uniform would have swallowed up half her year’s income, and she would only have her boy appear in a way suitable to his birth, riding the finest of racers, dressed in the best of clothes, and keeping the genteelest of company.

Well, then, the whole country was alive with war’s alarums, the three kingdoms ringing with military music, and every man of merit paying his devoirs at the court of Bellona, whilst poor I was obliged to stay at home in my fustian jacket and sigh for fame in secret.  Mr. Mick came to and fro from the regiment, and brought numerous of his comrades with him.  Their costume and swaggering airs filled me with grief, and Miss Nora’s unvarying attentions to them served to make me half wild.  No one, however, thought of attributing this sadness to the young lady’s score, but rather to my disappointment at not being allowed to join the military profession.