buy a snug
public house at Dover, and with that and my pension I shall be in clover
for the rest of my life."

It was not until the voyage home that Jack, after obtaining a promise of
secrecy, related to the earl the liberty which had been taken with
his name. It was just a freak after Peterborough's heart, and he was
immensely amused.

"The rascals!" he said, "they deserved hanging, every one of them; but
the story is a capital one, and I should like to have been there myself
to have seen the fright of the prior and his assistants. They richly
deserved what befell them and more for betraying sanctuary. If it had
been a scoundrel who had cut his wife's throat, and stabbed half a dozen
men, they would have refused to give him up to the civil power, and
would have stood on the rights of sanctuary of the Church. I think they
were let off very easily. Let me see, is not that the same fellow that
I exchanged into the grenadiers at Gibraltar at your request, for his
conduct in that business of the mutiny on board your ship?"

"The same man, sir. He has led a queer life. He was a sailor originally,
and was taken by pirates and forced to join them, and had a narrow
escape of being hung when the vessel he sailed in was captured by an
English cruiser; but his life was spared, and he was drafted into the
army, and he is a willing and faithful soldier of the queen, and really
a worthy fellow."

"He is evidently an arrant old scamp, Stilwell. Still, as long as
we recruit our army as we do, we cannot look for morality as well as
bravery, and I dare say your fellow is no worse than the rest. If you
ever run against him in London you must bring him to me, and I will hear
his story from his own lips."

CHAPTER XVII: HOME

Upon the arrival of the Earl of Peterborough at Valencia he was received
with the profoundest sympathy and respect by the people, who were filled
with indignation at the treatment which the man whose daring and genius
had freed Catalonia and Valencia of the French had received at the hands
of their ungrateful monarch. Finding that a portion of the fleet had
been ordered to the West Indies, the earl was obliged to abandon his
project of capturing Minorca and then carrying substantial aid to the
Duke of Savoy. He, however, went to Genoa, and there borrowed a hundred
thousand pounds, which he brought back to Valencia and sent to the king
for the use of the army.

The cause of Charles was already well nigh