I soon tired of freehold and copyhold tenure, of manorial rights and customs, and the hundred and one legal fictions connected with actions at law and bills in chancery that constitute the routine of an attorney’s profession.  I yearned to breathe an ampler air; and when one day I saw Dick Cludde, returned home on leave, strutting past with Mytton and other boon companions, in all the bravery of cocked hat, laced coat and buckled shoes, I flung down my pen and donned my cap, and set off, with bitter rage and envy in my heart, to pour out my soul to my constant friend, Captain Galsworthy.

“Halt!” cried the captain, when I was in the midst of a tirade.  “We’ll have a bout.”

And forthwith we donned the gloves, and for a full quarter of an hour we sparred, he with the cool mastery that never deserted him, I with a blind rage and fury which had its natural end.  In the third round I aimed a blow at my adversary’s neck with my right hand, but failing in my reach, he returned it full swing with his left, and dealt me such a staggerer on my cheekbone that down I went like a ninepin and measured my length on the floor.

“Capital!” says the captain, sitting down (the old fellow was puffing not a little).  “Capital!  That was a settler, eh, my boy?  Now you can get up and talk sense.”

I got up, rubbing my cheek, and grinning a rueful smile, as the captain told me.  We remained long in talk; never had my old friend been wiser or more kindly.  He listened to me with patience as I told him—­quietly, for he had fairly knocked my rage out of me—­how desperately sick I was of my occupation, and how I longed to stretch my limbs and do something.

“I knew it, my boy,” he said.  “I had seen it coming.  I understand it.  Haven’t I been through it myself?  I was bred for commerce:  you might as well have harnessed a pig.  One day—­I was younger than you-I took French leave and a crown piece and trudged to London.  I enlisted in old Noll’s army, shipped to Flanders and served under Lockhart—­he was a man, sir!—­at the siege of Cambrai, deserted when the campaign was at an end, and roamed over half Europe; took service with the Emperor; fought with the Swedes against the Poles, and the Poles against the Swedes; fell in with Patrick Gordon, and was beguiled by him to Muscovy; and should have been with the Czar Peter at this day if he hadn’t called me a fool when he was sober; we paid no heed to what he called us when he was drunk.

“Ah!  I see your eyes glistening, you young dog.  You were never born to be tied up with red tape.”

This brief account of his life, and he never told me more, had indeed set my heart leaping.  What would I not give, I thought, to see what he had seen, and do what he had done!

“But now to be practical,” said the captain.  “You want to go:  very well, go.  But you won’t sneak off like Cyrus Vetch; you can’t go with a commission like young Cludde.  How much money have you got?”