your equipage already?" "I am no more ashamed, sir, of your livery,"
answered he, "than of your service, and nevertheless your servant for
what I have got by it." "Well," says I to him, "but what will you do
now with all your money?" "I wish my poor father had some of it," says
he, "and for the rest I got it for you, sir, and desire you would take
it." He spoke it with so much honesty and freedom that I could not
but take it very kindly; but, however, I told him I would not take a
farthing from him as his master, but I would have him play the good
husband with it, now he had such good fortune to get it. He told me
he would take my directions in everything. "Why, then," said I, "I'll
tell you what I would advise you to do, turn it all into ready money,
and convey it by return home into England, and follow yourself the
first opportunity, and with good management you may put yourself in a
good posture of living with it." The fellow, with a sort of dejection
in his looks, asked me if he had disobliged me in anything? "Why?"
says I. "That I was willing to turn him out of his service." "No,
George" (that was his name), says I, "but you may live on this money
without being a servant." "I'd throw it all into the Elbe," says he,
"over Torgau bridge, rather than leave your service; and besides,"
says he, "can't I save my money without going from you? I got it in
your service, and I'll never spend it out of your service, unless you
put me away. I hope my money won't make me the worse servant; if I
thought it would, I'd soon have little enough." "Nay, George," says
I, "I shall not oblige you to it, for I am not willing to lose you
neither: come, then," says I, "let us put it all together, and see
what it will come to." So he laid it all together on the table, and by
our computation he had gotten as much plunder as was worth about 1400
rix-dollars, besides three horses with their furniture, a tent, a bed,
and some wearing linen. Then he takes the necklace of pearl, a very
good watch, a diamond ring, and 100 pieces of gold, and lays them by