His abundant and rich brown hair he wears in long curls falling over his shoulders, as did the cavaliers, and he is dressed with great care in the height of military fashion, evidently a gallant and debonair gentleman. He has just ceased from badinage with Rooke, in which that honest soldier's somewhat homely army jokes have been worsted by the graceful play of Graham's wit, who was ever gay, but never coarse, who was no ascetic, and was ever willing to drink the king's health, but, as his worst enemies used grudgingly to admit, cared neither for wine nor women. Silence falls for a little on the company. Claverhouse looking into the fire and seeing things of long ago and far away, hums a Royalist ballad to the honor of King Charles, and the confounding of crop-eared Puritans. Among the company was that honest gentleman, Captain George Carlton, who was afterwards to tell many entertaining anecdotes of the War in Spain under that brilliant commander Lord Peterborough. And as Carlton, who was ever in thirst for adventures, had been serving with the fleet, and had only left it because he thought there might be more doing now in other quarters, Venner demanded whether he had seen anything whose telling would make the time pass more gayly by the fire, for as that liberated Puritan said: "My good comrade on the right is engaged at his devotions, and I also would be reading a Bible if I had one, but my worthy father studied the Good Book so much that men judged it had driven him crazy, and I having few wits to lose have been afraid to open it ever since. As for Mr. Graham, if I catch the air he is singing, it is a song of the malignants against which as a Psalm-singing Puritan I lift my testimony. So a toothsome story of the sea, if it please you, Mr. Carlton."
"Apart from the fighting, gentlemen," began Carlton, who was a man of careful speech and stiff mind, "for I judge you do not hanker after battle-tales, seeing we shall have our stomach full ere many days be past, if the Prince can entice Conde into the open, there were not many things worth telling. But this was a remarkable occurrence, the like of which I will dare say none of you have seen, though I know there are men here who have been in battle once and again. Upon the 'Catherine' there was a gentleman volunteer, a man of family and fine estate, by the name of Hodge Vaughan. Early in the fight, when the Earl of Sandwich was our admiral and Van Ghent commanded the Dutch, Vaughan received a considerable wound, and was carried down into the hold. Well, it happened that they had some hogs aboard and, the worse for poor Hodge Vaughan, the sailor who had charge of them, like any other proper Englishman, was fonder of fighting than of feeding pigs, and so left them to forage for themselves. As they could get nothing else, and liked a change in their victuals when it came within their reach, they made their meal off Vaughan, and when the fight was over there was nothing left of that poor gentleman except his skull, which was monstrous thick and bade defiance to the hogs. This is not a common happening," continued Carlton with much composure, "and I thank my Maker I was not carried into that hold to be a hog's dinner. Yet I give you my word of honor that the tale is true."
"Lord! it was a cruel ending for a gallant gentleman," said Collier, "and it makes gruesome telling. Have you anything else sweeter for the mouth, for there be enough of hogs on the land as well as on sea, and some of them go round the field, where men are lying helpless, on two legs and not on four, from whom heaven defend us."
"Since you ask for more," replied Carlton, "a thing took place about which there was much talk, and on it I should like to have your judgment. Upon the same ship with myself, there was a gentleman volunteer, and he came with the name of a skilful swordsman. He had been in many duels and thought no more of standing face to face with another man, and he cared not who he was, than taking his breakfast. You would have said that he of all men would have