obliged to consent. The game had lasted about twelve years, and was still going on, when our story commenced, for Foggerty (as he preferred to be called) had not yet done watching the movements of the sham Duke, who was now dealing with Northumberland House as if it really belonged to him. These are Freddy Foggerty's antecedents, which we have set out at some length because it is essential to a proper appreciation of his astonishing adventures that these details should be clearly understood.
Freddy Foggerty was seated on his counter in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. A sergeant of Highlanders had that morning entered his shop to purchase some acidulated drops. On seeing Mr. Foggerty it was observed that the sergeant stared at him in a very remarkable manner–so much so that Mr. Foggerty had said to him, “It's lucky for you, sergeant, that it's me, and not my wife, you are staring at so rudely, for she is strong and stands no nonsense.” Upon which the sergeant remarked that it was a fine day (which it was not, for it was snowing heavily), and went out of the shop, leaving the acidulated drops behind him in his nervous agitation. This little incident served to set Freddy in a roar, until he suddenly recollected that this very sergeant was very like the very sergeant who had enlisted him some thirteen years before, and it was this sudden recollection that caused him to use the exclamation with which this story opens–“Oh, dash it all, he knows me, and I shall be tried for desertion!”
He was terribly agitated, for he was really prosperous as a confectioner; moreover, he was extremely fond of
