he good-will in the world, and could he
have jumped up again twenty times, like Jack-in-the-Box, I would have
shot him every time. The dirty scoundrel! but there's an end of him.
Nobody pitied him, for every one hated him; and the admiral only
looked grave, and then was very much obliged to me for giving him a
vacancy for his nephew. By-the-bye, from some unknown hand, but I
presume from the officers of his ship, I received a packet of
correspondence between him and your worthy uncle, which is about as
elegant a piece of rascality as ever was carried on between two
scoundrels; but that's not all, Peter. I've got a young woman for you
who will make your heart glad--not Mademoiselle Celeste, for I don't
know where she is--but the wet-nurse who went out to India. Her
husband was sent home as an invalid, and she was allowed her passage
home with him in my frigate. Finding that he belonged to the regiment,
I talked to him about one O'Sullivan, who married in Ireland, and
mentioned the girl's name, and when he discovered that he was a
countryman of mine he told me that his real name was O'Sullivan, sure
enough, but that he had always served as O'Connell, and that his wife
on board was the young woman in question. Upon which I sent to speak
to her, and telling her that I knew all about it, and mentioning the
names of Ella Flanagan and her mother, who had given me the
information, she was quite astonished; and when I asked her what had
become of the child which she took in place of her own, she told me
that it had been drowned at Plymouth, and that her husband was saved
at the same time by a young officer, 'whose name I have here,' says
she; and then she pulled out of her neck your card, with Peter Simple
on it. 'Now,' says I, 'do you know, good woman, that in helping on the
rascally exchange of children, you ruin that very young man who saved
your husband, for you deprive him of his title and property?" She
stared like a stuck pig, when I said so, and then cursed and blamed
herself, and declared she'd right you as soon as we came home; and
most anxious she is still to do so, for she loves the very name of
you; so you see, Peter, a good action has its reward sometimes in this
world, and a bad action also, seeing as how I've shot that confounded
villain who dared to ill-use you. I have plenty more to say to you,
Peter; but I don't like writing what, perhaps, may