Captain Wood,' says my Lord, taking my hand; 'and
no doubt you know me: for many more know Tom Fool, than Tom Fool knows.'
And with this, at which all of us laughed, my Lord called for a bottle,
and he and I sat down and drank it together.

"Well, he was in disgrace, as you know, but he grew mighty fond of me,
and--would you believe it?--nothing would satisfy him but presenting me
at Court! Yes, to Her Sacred Majesty the Queen, and my Lady Marlborough,
who was in high feather. Ay, truly, the sentinels on duty used to
salute me as if I were Corporal John himself! I was on the high road to
fortune. Charley Mordaunt used to call me Jack, and drink canary at my
chambers; I used to make one at my Lord Treasurer's levee; I had
even got Mr. Army-Secretary Walpole to take a hundred guineas as a
compliment: and he had promised me a majority: when bad luck turned, and
all my fine hopes were overthrown in a twinkling.

"You see, my dear, that after we had left that gaby, Galgenstein,--ha,
ha--with a gag in his mouth, and twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, the
honest Count was in the sorriest plight in the world; owing money here
and there to tradesmen, a cool thousand to the Warwickshire Squire: and
all this on eighty pounds a year! Well, for a little time the tradesmen
held their hands; while the jolly Count moved heaven and earth to
catch hold of his dear Corporal and his dear money-bags over again, and
placarded every town from London to Liverpool with descriptions of my
pretty person. The bird was flown, however,--the money clean gone,--and
when there was no hope of regaining it, what did the creditors do but
clap my gay gentleman into Shrewsbury gaol: where I wish he had rotted,
for my part.

"But no such luck for honest Peter Brock, or Captain Wood, as he was in
those days. One blessed Monday I went to wait on Mr. Secretary, and
he squeezed my hand and whispered to me that I was to be Major of a
regiment in Virginia--the very thing: for you see, my dear, I didn't
care about joining my Lord Duke in Flanders; being pretty well known
to the army there. The Secretary squeezed my hand (it had a fifty-pound
bill in it) and wished me joy, and called me Major, and bowed me out of
his closet into the ante-room; and, as gay as may be, I went off to
the 'Tilt-yard Coffee-house' in Whitehall, which is much frequented by
gentlemen of our profession, where I bragged not a little of my good
luck.

"Amongst the company were several of m