Page:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu/17



was born in the Mauritius, on the 7th of December, 1826. His father, an officer in the Royal Engineers, was the representative of the family of Don Vicaro, a Spanish Cavalier who came to England in the suite of Katharine of Arragon, and settled in Ireland early in the sixteenth century, on the marriage of his eldest grandson with the heiress of the Lalor family. The family estate was Levally, in Queen's County.

There was little to distinguish the early days of Hedley Vicars from those of other healthy, high-spirited boys. Active and fearless, he was foremost among his playfellows wherever fun or frolic was to be found. Open-hearted and generous, quick to resent an injury, but ready to forgive, he was a universal favourite with them, whilst his sweetness of temper, and kind, unselfish nature, especially endeared him to his family at home. His faults were those of an energetic and wayward disposition, and those legends which are wont to be preserved in families, record occasional instances of his odd and amusing perversity. When the children were gathered around their mother to repeat texts of Scripture in turn, Hed-