to catch one Camillo Zamboni, who with a
long gun was waiting behind a rock for
Pietro Pallavecco, him to kill and slay ; and
capturing soon afterwards the veritable
Pietro, who with a long knife was lying in a
ditch waiting for the long-gunned Camillo,
and actuated by similarly murderous intentions
towards him— he, the astute Skanderbeggle,
after reading the first passage in the
articles of war that turned up, did then
and there hang both Pietro and Camillo
on the next tree, to the complete extinction
of the feud, and the satisfaction of all parties.
There was rather a hiatus valdè deflendus in
the captain's narrative after this ; and he
never satisfactorily accounted for the tenure
of his brevet-majority in the service of Murat,
king of Naples, seeing that the brother-in-law
of Napoleon was necessarily at war with
us until 1814.  How, too, could he have been
at the battle of the Moskova as a captain of
Polish Lancers ; and how from thence did he
subside into the Royal Waggon Train, attached
to which he went through the campaign
of Waterloo, and to his services in which
he owed his modest pension ?  Stay : were
there not evil-minded people who said that he
had been broken as an officer in the English
service, and that his pension accrued from certain
delicate services he had been able, from
his acquaintance with the Italian language,
to render the English government at Milan,
about the time of Queen Caroline's trial ?
He went over to South America after that,
and had a brush in the War of Independence
— on the Royalist Spanish side.  They paid, he
said, with a wink.  In India, afterwards, the
Nabob of Futtyghur was very much attached
to him, and would have made him commandant
of his artillery, had not the services
of Skanderbeggle been essential for the
organisation of the Rajah of Chillumghee's
irregular cavalry.  At last he grew old, and
broke, and came to tell his battles o'er again
and slay the slain thrice over at Kilburn.
His sword was turned into a bamboo cane,
and Gustavus Adolphus (represented by an
old blind pony he used to drive in a gig) was
put out to grass.

I am afraid Captain Skanderbeggle was
a very good man, and I don't believe
now half the stories he used to tell me of
his exploits ; but in my childhood I used
to think him a very Paladin of valour.
It struck me, even then, that he used to
swear and drink brandy enough.  I used to
try (with that glorious privilege of childhood
for the personification of shadows) to fancy
him my uncle Toby.  There was a stout landlady
at the Black Lion opposite who would
have made an admirable Widow Wadman,
and our housemaid was as like Bridget as
two peas; but the blustering old captain had
nothing in common with the modest large-hearted
Captain Shandy.  Had poor Lieutenant
Lefevre come that way, he might have
stopped at the inn, or marched, or gone hang,
for ever Captain Skanderbeggle would have
sent Corporal Trim to inquire how he did;
indeed, he had no Trim, only a dusty old
charwoman to wait upon him, at whom he
swore oaths enough to tire out the accusing
angel's wings as he flew to Heaven's chancery
to give them in, and blush— not for shame at
a good man's weakness, but for indignation
at an old sinner's profanity.  He never made
any model of the fortifications of Dendemond
in the garden ;— the only point in which he
resembled the captains that fought in the
Low Countries was in his swearing so
terribly ; but he used to hoist a flag on the
anniversary of the capture of some stronghold
in the East Indies (where he never was,
I suspect), and smoke Trinchinopoly cheroots
which he said the Rajah of Chillumghee had
given him, and hallo out fiercely to the little
vagrant boys, and behave altogether like a
terrible old Turk.  I am sure he was no
great scholar ;  but if he had never read
Suwarrow's Soldier's Catechism, he had
at least heard, and to the full appreciated,
the sapient maxim, that " Booty is a holy
thing," for his house was a museum of
trophies he had picked up in his wanderings —
war-clubs, tomahawks, saddles, bridles, old
coats, helmets, sabres, horse-cloths, and
shakos.  None of these were valuable— he
was more a military marine store-keeper than
a virtuoso ; but he loved to accumulate things,
and my friendship with him was brought to
a close by a misunderstanding between him
and my family, arising from the impossibility
of persuading him to return a mallet
and handsaw he had borrowed.  He insulted
us over the palings after this, and
fired off two-pounders during the time of
Divine Service on Sundays.  Peace be with
him !

There are not many readers of the rising
generation who will recognise this offshoot
from the Dalgetty tree.  The death of George
the Fourth saw the last of this captain ;
yet they abounded at the period to
which I have alluded.  If you consider the
European nature of the last war, the many
different powers with whom we were allied,
the widely-various fields of our military
operations, the Dalgetty of that day can be
understood.

But there is, or rather was, a captain whom
we all recollect.  The captain in the Legion.
He had big black whiskers (moustachios
were not fashionable then, even among military
men, save cavalry officers) ; his name
was Captain de Montmorency Ravelin.  He
had shed his blood for the Queen Isabella
Segunda and her exemplary mamma, Marie
Christina, on the arid plains of Catalonia ;
and the ungrateful Isabella had neglected to
imburse him his large arrears of pay-pension
and allowances ; which constrained him to
get little bills done ; to hold levees of Jews
in his bed-chamber of a morning ; to run up
terrific scores at hotels ; to occupy whole