uilding with green
shutters, and overhanging the water as though to topple into the tide.
Here at any time of the day betwixt the hours of ten in the morning and
of five in the afternoon the Collector was to be found at his desk
smoking his pipe of tobacco, the while a thin, phthisical clerk bent
with unrelaxing assiduity over a multitude of account-books and papers
accumulated before him.

For his post of Collectorship of the Royal Customs, Lieutenant
Goodhouse was especially indebted to the patronage of Colonel Belford.
The worthy Collector had, some years before, come to that gentleman
with a written recommendation from the Earl of Clandennie of a very
unusual sort. It was the Lieutenant's good-fortune to save the life of
the Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl--a wild,
rakish, undisciplined youth, much given to such mischievous enterprises
as the twisting off of door-knockers, the beating of the watch, and the
carrying away of tavern signs.

Having been a very famous swimmer at Eton, the Honorable Frederick
undertook while at the Cowes to swim a certain considerable distance
for a wager. In the midst of this enterprise he was suddenly seized
with a cramp, and would inevitably have drowned had not the Lieutenant,
who happened in a boat close at hand, leaped overboard and rescued the
young gentleman from the watery grave in which he was about to be
engulfed, thus restoring him once more to the arms of his grateful
family.

For this fortunate act of rescue the Earl of Clandennie presented to
his son's preserver a gold snuffbox filled with guineas, and inscribed
with the following legend:

"To Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse,
who, under the Ruling of Beneficent Providence,
was the Happy Preserver of a Beautiful and
Precious Life of Virtuous Precocity,
this Box is presented by the Father of Him whom He
saved as a grateful acknowledgment of His
Services.

Thomas Monkhouse Dunburne, Viscount of
Dunburne and Earl of Clandennie.

_August 17, 1752._"

Having thus satisfied the immediate demands of his gratitude, it is
very possible that the Earl of Clandennie did not choose to assume so
great a responsibility as the future of his son's preserver entailed.
Nevertheless, feeling that something should be done for him, he
obtained for Lieutenant Goodhouse a passage to the Americas, and wrote
him a strong letter of recommendation to Colonel Belford. That
gentleman, desiring to please the legitimate head o