“He did not offer to speak to me till I had walked up close to his bedside.  ‘If you are Captain Shandy’s servant,’ said he, ’you must present my thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks along with them, for his courtesy to me, if he was of the Leven’s,’ said the lieutenant.  I told him your honor was.  ‘Then,’ said he, ’I served three campaigns with him in Flanders, and remember him; but ’t is most likely, as I had not the honor of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me.  You will tell him, however, that the person his good nature has laid under obligations to him, is one LeFevre, a lieutenant in Angus’s; but he knows me not,’ said he a second time, musing.  ‘Possibly, he may my story,’ added he; ’pray tell the captain I was the ensign at Breda whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.’  ’I remember the story, an’t please your honor,’ said I, very well.’  ‘Do you so?’ said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief; ‘then well may I.’  In saying this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black ribbon about his neck, and kissed it twice.  ‘Here, Billy,’ said he.  The boy flew across the room to the bedside, and, falling down upon his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it, too; then kissed his father, and sat down upon the bed and wept.”

“I wish,” said my uncle Toby, with a deep sigh, “I wish, Trim, I was asleep.”

“Your honor,” replied the corporal, “is too much concerned.  Shall I pour your honor out a glass of sack to your pipe?” “Do, Trim,” said my uncle Toby.

“I remember,” said my uncle Toby, sighing again, “the story of the ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted; and particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other (I forget what), was universally pitied by the whole regiment; but finish the story thou art upon.”  “Tis finished already,” said the corporal, “for I could stay no longer, so wished his honor good-night.”  Young LeFevre rose from off the bed and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and, as we went down together, told me they had come from Ireland, and were on their route to join their regiment in Flanders.  “But, alas,” said the corporal, “the lieutenant’s last day’s march is over.”  “Then what is to become of his poor boy?” cried my uncle Toby.

It was to my uncle Toby’s eternal honor, though I tell it only for the sake of those who, when cooped in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn themselves, that, notwithstanding my uncle Toby was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of Dendermond, parallel with the allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously that they scarce allowed him to get his dinner, that, nevertheless, he gave up Dendermond, although he had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp, and bent his whole thoughts-toward the private distresses at the inn, and that, except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege of Dendermond into a blockade, he left Dendermond to itself, to be relieved or not by the French king as the French king thought good, and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son.