cried Susanah, "the child's as black as my shoe."--"Trismegistus," said
my father: "but stay; thou art a leaky vessel, Susanah; canst thou carry
Trismegistus in thy head the length of the gallery without
scattering?"--"Can I," cried Susanah, shutting the door in a huff.--"If
she can, I'll be shot," said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark
and groping for his breeches.

Susanah ran with all speed along the gallery.

My father made all possible speed to find his breeches. Susanah got the
start and kept it. "'Tis Tris something," cried Susanah.--"There is no
Christian name in the world," said the curate, "beginning with Tris, but
Tristram."--"Then 'tis Tristram-gistus," quoth Susanah.

"There is no gistus to it, noodle; 'tis my own name," replied the
curate, dipping his hand as he spoke into the basin. "Tristram," said
he, etc., etc. So Tristram was I called, and Tristram shall I be to the
day of my death.


_VII.--The Story of Le Fevre_


It was some time in the summer of that year in which Dendermond was
taken by the Allies, which was about seven years after the time that my
Uncle Toby and Trim had privately decamped from my father's house in
town, in order to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest
cities in Europe, when my Uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper,
with Trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard, when the landlord of
a little inn in the village came into the parlour with an empty phial in