CHAPTER XXII.
THE ROAD.
Power was detained in town by some orders from the adjutant-general, so that I started for Cork the next morning with no other companion than my servant Mike.

For the first few stages upon the road, my own thoughts sufficiently occupied me to render me insensible or indifferent to all else.

My opening career, the prospects my new life as a soldier held out, my hopes of distinction, my love of Lucy with all its train of doubts and fears, passed in review before me, and I took no note of time till far past noon.

I now looked to the back part of the coach, where Mike's voice had been, as usual, in the ascendant for some time, and perceived that he was surrounded by an eager auditory of four raw recruits, who, under the care of a sergeant, were proceeding to Cork to be enrolled in their regiment.
The sergeant, whose minutes of wakefulness were only those when the coach stopped to change horses, and when he got down to mix a "summat hot," paid little attention to his followers, leaving them perfectly free in all their movements, to listen to Mike's eloquence and profit by his suggestions, should they deem fit.

Master Michael's services to his new acquaintances, I began to perceive, were not exactly of the same nature as Dibdin is reported to have rendered to our navy in the late war.