is purse than was good for him, the
less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
less to my score than others had to theirs.

It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.

As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
the _jeunesse doree_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--and
purpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.

Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.

As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in this
affair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in
Carolina,--news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,--I
should there and then have called the slayer to his account.

How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had always
been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "Regulators,"
as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him he
figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of
the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But
this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern
and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale
of oppression. And if what men say of the