Captain Anerley. Half a crown for you, if you catch the rogue, half
a crown each, and promotion of twopence. Attention, eyes right, make
yourselves scarce! Well, now the rogues are gone, let us make ourselves
at home. Anerley, your question is a dry one. A dry one; but this is
uncommonly fine stuff! How the devil has it slipped through our fingers?
Never mind that, inter amicos--Sir, I was at school at Shrewsbury--but
as to the war, Sir, the service is going to the devil, for the want of
pure principle."

The farmer nodded; and his looks declared that to some extent he felt
it. He had got the worst side of some bargains that week; but his wife
had another way of thinking.

"Why, Captain Carroway, whatever could be purer? When you were at sea,
had you ever a man of the downright principles of Nelson?"

"Nelson has done very well in his way; but he is a man who has risen too
fast, as other men rise too slowly. Nothing in him; no substance,
madam; I knew him as a youngster, and I could have tossed him on a
marling-spike. And instead of feeding well, Sir, he quite wore himself
away. To my firm knowledge, he would scarcely turn the scale upon a good
Frenchman of half of the peas. Every man should work his own way up,
unless his father did it for him. In my time we had fifty men as good,
and made no fuss about them."

"And you not the last of them, captain, I dare say. Though I do love to
hear of the Lord's Lord Nelson, as the people call him. If ever a man
fought his own way up--"

"Madam, I know him, and respect him well. He would walk up to the devil,