example of his riot more dangerous.

Mr. Brock's commander was a slim young gentleman of twenty-six,
about whom there was likewise a history, if one would take the
trouble to inquire. He was a Bavarian by birth (his mother being an
English lady), and enjoyed along with a dozen other brothers the
title of count: eleven of these, of course, were penniless; one or
two were priests, one a monk, six or seven in various military
services, and the elder at home at Schloss Galgenstein breeding
horses, hunting wild boars, swindling tenants, living in a great
house with small means; obliged to be sordid at home all the year,
to be splendid for a month at the capital, as is the way with many
other noblemen. Our young count, Count Gustavus Adolphus Maximilian
von Galgenstein, had been in the service of the French as page to a
nobleman; then of His Majesty's gardes du corps; then a lieutenant
and captain in the Bavarian service; and when, after the battle of
Blenheim, two regiments of Germans came over to the winning side,
Gustavus Adolphus Maximilian found himself among them; and at the
epoch when this story commences, had enjoyed English pay for a year
or more. It is unnecessary to say how he exchanged into his present
regiment; how it appeared that, before her marriage, handsome John
Churchill had known the young gentleman's mother, when they were
both penniless hangers-on at Charles the Second's court;--it is, we
say, quite useless to repeat all the scandal of which we are
perfectly masters, and to trace step by step the events of his
history. Here, however, was Gustavus Adolphus, in a small inn, in a
small village of Warwickshire, on an autumn evening in the year
1705; and at the very moment when this history begins, he and Mr.
Brock, his corporal and friend, were seated at a round table before
the kitchen-fire while a small groom of the establishment was