o my hat like a Military Officer,--and felt
myself as grand as you please. I never dared speak to him until he spoke
to me; but used to sit quietly enough sharpening bolts or twisting
bowstrings, or cleaning his Pistols, or furbishing up his Hanger and
Belt, or suchlike boyish pastime-labour. He was careful to burn every
paper that he Discarded after taking it from the Valise; but once, and
once only, a scrap remained unconsumed on the hearth, the which, with my
ape-like curiosity of half-a-score summers, I must needs spell over,
although I got small good therefrom. 'Twas but the top of a letter, and
all the writing I could make out ran,

"St. Germains, August the twelfth.

"MY DEAR" ...

and here it broke off, and baffled me.

Whenever Captain Night went a hunting, I attended upon him; but when he
was away, I was confided to the care of Jowler, who, albeit much given
to babble in his liquor, was about the most discreet (the Chaplain
always excepted) among the Gang. In the dead season, when Venison was
not to be had, or was nothing worth for the Market if it had been
killed, we lived mostly on dried meats and cured salmon; the first
prepared by Mother Drum and her maid, the last furnished us by our good
friends and Chapmen the Fishmongers about Lincoln's Inn. And during this
same Dead Season, I am glad to say that my Master did not suffer me to
remain idle; but, besides taking some pains in tutoring me himself,
moved our Chaplain, all of whose humane letters had not been washed out
by burnt Brandy or fumed out by Tobacco (to the use of which he was
immoderately given), to put me through a course of daily instruction. I
had had some Latin beaten into me by Gnawbit, when he had nothing of
more moment to bestir himself about, and had attained a decent
proficiency in reading and writing. Under the Chaplain of the Blacks,
who swore at me grievously, but never, under the direst forbidding, laid
finger on me, I became a current scholar enough of my own tongue, with
just such a little smattering of the Latin as helped me at a pinch in
some of the Secret Dealings of my later career. But Salt Water has done
its work upon my Lily's Grammar; and although I yield to no man in the
Faculty of saying what I mean, ay, and of writing it down in good plain
English ('tis true that of your nominatives and genitives and stuff, I
know nothing), I question if I could tell you the Latin for a pair of
rid