Many a better scholar nor you, and better-looking man too, has
been anged afore now, for all his schoolin'.'
"Says he, 'I'll soon set you up, Tom. Let me see if I can find
anything here that will do for a turn-and-quit.'
"Close to where I lay there, was a furrin officer who had his head
nearly amputated with a sabre cut. Well, he took a beautiful gold
repeater out of his fob, and a great roll of dubloons out of one
pocket, and a little case of diamond rings out of the other.
"'The thieving Italian rascal?' said he, 'he has robbed a jeweller's
shop before he left the town,' and he gave the body a kick and passed
on. Well, close to him was an English officer.
"'Ah,' said he, 'here is something useful,' and he undid his sash, and
then feeling in his breast pocket, he hauled out a tin tobacco-case,
and opening of it, says he:
"'Tom, here's a real god-send for you. This and the sash I will give
you as a keepsake. They are mine by the fortune of war, but I will
bestow them on you.'"
"Oigh! oigh!" said Peter, "she was no shentleman."
"He warn't then, Sir," said Tom, not understanding him, "for he was
only a sargeant like me at that time, but he is now, for he is an
officer."
"No, no," said Peter, "the king can make an offisher, but she can't
make a shentleman. She took the oyster hern ainsel, and gave you the
shell."
"Well," continued Jackson, "he took the sash, and tied it round my
leg, and then took a bayonet off a corpse, and with that twisted it
round and round so tight it urt more nor the wound, and then he
secured the bayonet so that it wouldn't slip.
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