Nathan Burke

Front matter

PRESENTED DY

MACMILLAN’S STANDARD LIBRARY

J:f:

Contents

Contains Some Business and a Good Deal of

Pleasure . . "

In which Mr. Burke casts his First Vote . Contains both Peace and War . . . .

Chapter I

In which Mr. Burke begins the World

A man’s memory, be it ever so exact and vigorous, is, at best, an unstable sort of tool, or, if that figure does not please, let me liken it to an unbiddable servant, forever fetching us the wrong thing, or refusing to fetch at all, or going capering off with a childish futility, on some backward trail, led by a sound, a scent, a passing glance. As I sat here, addressing myself to the more or less serious task of recording Nathan Burke’s career and history, and quite resolute to begin where all biographers should, at the beginning, my servant (to pursue the allegory) went clean distracted at the opening of a window near by, the entering fragrance of lilacs, and the view of a few blossoming fruit trees in a neighboring yard, shaken and dismantled by the sweet fresh gales of spring. These trifles sharply recalled another day, another spring, a yard not unlike this of my neighbor’s, with just such a handsome sober house set in the middle of it; and looking out in the direction of the woodshed whence proceeded a lusty sound of whistling, I beheld, upon my soul, the living counterpart and image of Mr. Burke as he was upwards of forty years ago, in the person of the hired man jauntily swinging an axe upon a pile of stove wood! Burke chops a little decorously in his own woodshed nowadays for his health, and his own chore-boy smilingly humors the old gentleman, admires the symmetry of his kindlings, and pointedly expresses grave doubts whether he (the boy) could get through his duties without the general’s stout assistance. He is unconscious that the latter, beneath a surface pleasantry, conceals reserves of gall; some day

Mr. Burke means to be revenged on this patronizing menial. Some day he will burst out and say: ‘‘Young man, when I was your age — which I take to be seventeen or so, by the exceedingly wide register of your rather unmanageable voice, and the vernal display of small blooms upon your countenance — yes, when I was two years younger, I was twice the chore-boy you are, for all your airs ! I could milk a cow, or harness a horse, or fell a tree with any man in the county. To be sure I was only getting twelve dollars a month and my keep for all these accomplishments, whereas you get (you do not by any means earn) twenty-five or more — but times are changed. Flaccid product of civilization that you are — ” the chore-boy will estimate this as some fearfully and wonderfully recondite “cuss-word’^ — “ what are your recollections and experiences at seventeen compared to mine at the same age ? An ignoble record of hooky-playing, orchard-robbing, surreptitious gambling and tobacco-smoking constitutes all your romance. Did you ever shoot deer with an old ‘Tower' musket that was carried in the War of 1812 ? Did you ever go fishing and trapping with Jake Darnell — Jake Darnell who knew Mad Anthony Wayne, and had scouted with Daniel Boone ? Go to! I’ll lay a double eagle to a shin-plaster, sir, that you never even heard of the Alamo — I, I who speak to you, can remember when it didn’t surrender!” The chore-boy will listen respectfully, and will afterwards be overheard remarking to the boy next door that he wouldn’t wonder if th’ old gin’ral was breakin’ up fast. Hank. He don’t ack nachul. You’d oughta heard him th’ other day blowin’ around ’bout what he used to could do when he was my size. ’Tain’t like him, not a bit!

No, it would not be much like him, even in his present state of senile decrepitude, at the age of sixty odd; those words will never be spoken, as much for Burke’s own sake as for yours, oh, pimpled, crowing, squeaking, awkward, kind-hearted chore-boy ! Surely it is no longer ago than last month, last week, yesterday, that Nat Burke, pimpled, crowing, squeaking, awkward, and I hope kind-hearted even as you, was set down out of the farm wagon at Mr. William Ducey’s gate on a spring morning, bright and windy even as this, to enter upon his first job. The doleful truth is that it was in the year of Grace 183- ; though, as Nat kept no journal of his daily doings at that time, his utmost accomplishment in the clerkly way being his own name — in print letters — the actual date of his arrival must remain unknown. He had got up at dawn, the cool, blowing, pinkskied dawn of an April day ; from the tiny window in the peak of the cabin-loft that was NaUs bedchamber, and from the bench beside the back door, where with a bucket of icy well water he performed his toilet, the boy could see a bit of black bottom-land where wheat his own hand had sown last autumn was beginning to show tenderly ; beyond were the flat shining links of the river and the woody slopes of its farther bank. The trees were still leafless ; they lay like a wreath of smoke about the landscape, pricked out with purple here and there where the red buds were coming into bloom. The service-bush had sprung to life, miraculously, over night, and now timidly shook out a handful of its frail green-white blossoms on the edge of the deadening.

A thousand odors, growth and decay commingled, starting grass and rotting leaves, were in the air ; a kind of newness in the feel of the stable-mire under foot as Nathan went squelching through it. Moisture that was not frost, but real dew, like the dew of summer, glistened on the fence rails, on the shingles of the cabin and its environing sheds and lean-tos. They were not rich in architectural detail, and Nathan knew them as he knew the lines of his palm ; since he was born he had opened and closed his eyes morning and evening upon a scene that varied only with the seasons. To-day he was conscious of no more acute vision than at other times ; knowingly, at least, he made no effort to impress the kind and homely picture on his memory. Yet to the end of his life he will remember it as he saw it then: the logs of the cabin chinked with clay, the smoke from its chimney, the squirrel that chittered on the fence, the tapped sugarmaple hard by, with a little wooden gutter to lead the sap into the broken crock between its roots, the bird that sent a ringing call from its topmost branches, the very look and motion of the old mare by the straw-rick, still shaggy with her winter coat, raising her wise head to watch him, her foal staring not at all wisely for a moment, then flinging up its knock-kneed legs in an inane caracole and circling around in a fit of coltish good spirits. Is it because on this morning Nathan began the world ? He put the event to himself in no such high, resounding terms ; he would have told you concisely — for he was not then and never became a particularly free talker — that he had got a job by the month, choring for Mr. William Ducey. And as to entering upon his career, Nat would scarcely have supposed that splitting kindlings, washing carriages, making gardens, and cutting grass merited so fine a name; for all that, the day and scene abide monumentally among his recollections, and have outlasted a score of others better worth remembering.

It was some fifteen miles to town, which Nathan proposed to trudge between sunrise and eight o’clock. At this sea-son the back-country road would be none of the best, as he knew; in places along the river-bottoms it would be almost knee-deep in mud. But to cross over to the east and take the State Road would mean an extra five miles, and he would not gain enough either in time or ease of walking to make it worth his while. Without doubt he liked the river road, stones and mud, hill and hollow, a deal better. It had been a trail in Indian days, and they were not so distant, nor the frontier itself so remote in the thirties but that some hint of the pioneer’s wild and bloody romance might yet hang about his ancient path to attract the feet of a boy. Indeed, Nathan loved his river with the shy and speechless sentiment of his fifteen years; he had been born and brought up on its banks, had fished and hunted along its every turn, gone swimming in its every basin; even its pretty and flowing Indian name obscurely charmed him. To this day he calls it to mind with a sort of pleasant pang; he has seen the Niagara and the Mississippi, and the streams of many great lands — but are not the Scioto and the Olentanjy, rivers of Ohio, better than all alien waters ?

So Nat, the route decided upon, set about his preparations cheerily; they were not very elaborate, for they consisted mainly in the handy looping together on a leather thong of his one pair of cowhide boots, so that they might hang around his neck, and not impede his walking by being on his feet. It was quite warm enough, in Nat’s opinion, to go without boots, and when he got near town, where it behooved him to make a dressy appearance, he would put them on.

The rest of his wardrobe — a clean calico shirt and a pair of knit yarn socks — he carried in a bundle. He had hesitated a little about taking his gun, that same famous old musket that had belonged to his father, and had smote Britishers, hip and thigh, and redskins likewise in Tecumseh’s battles, not to mention all its other heroic and notable deeds, before Nathan was born; it seemed as if there would be no especial point in lugging this formidable piece of artillery about amongst the supine population of the city. What possible use could Mr. Ducey’s hired man have for a gun ? Yet he was loath to leave it; he had for it the unreasoning fondness that every one must feel for a faithful tool. And while he was turning the question in his mind, Mrs. Williams settled it for him once for all, by taking the weapon down from where it hung on the cabin wall out of reach of the children, and handing it to him half an hour later, beautifully swabbed and polished, the lock oiled, the barrel rubbed until the delicate arabesque traceries upon the steel quivered with reflections in the sun like a riffle in the Scioto. “Better not load it, Nathan,’’ was all she said. “S’long as you’re goin’ where there’s folks.”

“I wasn’t goin’ to take it — I thought mebbe they’d be skeered of me,” said Nathan, thanking her awkwardly.

“I guess not — anybody that had any sense’d know th’ kind of boy you are,” said Mrs. Williams, briefly. “It was yer pa’s gun, an’ you’d oughter have it — you ain’t got much. An’ ther’s no use leavin’ it here to git knocked ’round, cuz you won’t ever come back.”

“ Why, yes, I will so. I’m goin’ to come back some day — some day soon” declared the boy, surprised. She gave a kind of negative twitch with her head and shoulders, and turned back to the skillet of pork frying over the coals. The wide glare from the hearth beat upon her gaunt, big-boned frame, the lank folds of her faded print dress, the gnarled hand she put up to shade her eyes as she stooped over her task. She was not yet thirty, as Nathan knew, but she had hardly a tooth left and looked as old as Methuselah, as old as her own mother, old woman Darce, sitting yonder in the chimney-corner mumbling the stem of her pipe. It was difficult to believe that either one of them could ever have been a girl like Jake Darnell’s Nance, for instance — she was almost the only girl whom Nathan knew, and he pondered over the comparison, eying Mrs. Williams gravely. For the first time in his life it occurred to him to wonder that all women should be either pretty young girls or weather-beaten and broken old hags; in his experience of the sex there were only the two varieties. Thirty seemed to him then a prodigious antiquity; he was vaguely sorry for Mrs. Williams. Perhaps some conception of the sad ugliness of her existence entered the boy’s mind; she would have been the last person in the world to pity herself, but suddenly Nathan perceived a painful unfairness in the fact that here he was going away to the city with all its wonders — for, after all, the city is the city, and even for a hired man, even for a sober-thinking lad like Nat Burke, replete with diversions and novelties — and poor Mrs. Williams must stay on changelessly, doing the same work, seeing the same things, day after day, year in and year out. In later times Burke recalled with some amusement the brilliant perspective this fifteen-mile journey opened for him; but fifteen miles in those days was to the backwoods as a hundred now; and for that matter it still seems to me that in every journey, even in the last great journey of all, he that travels has the best of it, and the heartache is to those that are left behind.

Nat went out and conscientiously fed and watered the stock on this last morning, brought in a pail of milk, and drew one of water for Mrs. Williams, according to his wont. ’Liph Williams, observing this, commented jocosely upon it as they sat down to breakfast. '‘Thought ye was Ducey’s hired man now, Nat,” he said. “Changed yer mind, hey? I can’t give ye no twelve dollars a month, y’know. Yer keep’s all ye’ve been wuth to me so far. So ye’d better think twicet, and not carry no more water, ner milk no more cows than ye hev’ to.”

“’Tain’t nothin’ but what I’d orter do, ’long as I ain’t goin’ to be here after this,” said Nathan, somewhat abashed. “ I done it fer — fer good-by. That old well’s pretty hard to git water up from — fer womenfolks, I mean.”

Williams laughed. “Ye wanter look out, Nathan; ye’re th’ kind that gits put upon.”

“Th’ well’s all right, Nathan. ’Tain’t no trouble fer we,” said Mrs. Williams, harshly. She got up hastily from the table and began to clatter among her pots and pans, turning her back on the company. Nat was so far from suspecting that anybody could possibly miss him, or feel a regret at his going, that, noticing her flushed face and puffy eyelids a little while after when he took his leave, he set them down to the heat of the fire over which she had been bending. It was not a tragic farewell; the struggle — itself stern and serious enough — for a mere living among backwoods folk almost exhausted their capacity for emotion; they had little leisure for the expression of either joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure. The great and moving events of life came to them like the seasons of the year; and their hard philosophy recognized that these things, like the seasons, whether good or bad, were ineluctable yet sure to change. Whatever tenderness Mrs. Williams felt for Nathan, whatever rough friendship had grown up between the boy and ’Liph during the years of their life together, not one of them would have been able to give it voice; the purple patch would have disconcerted them all. “Wish ye luck, Nat,'’ the farmer said shortly, yet with a real kindness, and went off to his plough. So fine a morning could not be wasted in useless ceremonies; almost before Nathan had reached the road he could hear 'Liph shouting lustily behind his horses in the corn-field back of the cabin. Mrs. Williams, however, came to the door, and watched him as he strode confidently away. “He won’t ever come back, ’cep’n mebbe to see us oncet,” she said aloud. “Well — ” she went resolutely into the house. Nat himself, to be truthful, departed without much of a pang. He had some trouble in ordering back the dog, who came bouncing after him under the mistaken impression that a gun and a bundle meant, as usual, all day in the woods, and perhaps wild turkey or quail. He lacked the discernment to distinguish one game-season from another, or a musket from a shot-gun, and was confounded at the roughness of his welcome. Nathan had to stamp, to bawl furiously, finally to make the motion of stooping for a stone and throwing it (he had not the heart to perform that unkind and unjust action in reality) before the creature could understand him. It stopped still with its head on one side, eying him, tentatively wagging, grinning doggishly, and wrinkling its brows in interrogation; then retreated slowly, drooping and reproachful.

Nat went on in a kind of sober lightness of heart; he was a quiet boy, and, even at fifteen, felt no disposition to celebrate his entrance into manhood — for was he not Ducey’s hired man f — by any undue demonstrations. Another boy in his place might have been whistling and shying pebbles at the robins and squirrels; but Nathan was too much of a sportsman for the latter amiable pursuit; if he took the trouble to notice a squirrel or robin at all, it was because he meant to shoot it for supper. And as to whistling, he could not carry a tune to save his life, and his whistle resembled in strength and melody the sound made by an ungreased cart-wheel. Knowing the distance he must go, he settled down into the long, ungraceful lope of the backwoodsman, which gets over the ground with amazing rapidity and the least possible fatigue; and in an hour or so sighted Jake Darnelhs cabin on the bluff above the river. There was smoke coming from the chimney, but no other sign of activity about the raw, littered yard, or the neglected corn-patch by the roadside, although the day was already pretty well advanced according to Nathan^s reckoning. Approaching he caught a gleam of scarlet by the door and saw Nance feeding half a dozen hens from a pan of corn-meal mush. Nathan paused, not at the gate for there was none, but in an angle of the sagging rail fence, and Nance came slowly towards him, shooing the chickens from under her feet.

“Goin’ she queried without other salutation, taking in at a single flashing glance the boots, the gun, the bundle, and the import of all three. She put down the pan on a convenient stump, leaned against it with her arms folded, kicked a chicken out of the way, and surveyed Nathan from top to toe keenly. “When d’ye Jow ye’ll git to Ducey’s, Nat ?”

“’Bout th’ middle of th’ forenoon, I expect. Yer pap wouldn’t be goin’, would he ? He said he might need powder ’n’ shot by this time.”

“Well, he don’t,” said Nance, decisively. She cast a sharp look over her shoulder at the house. “Did ye wanter see him?”

“Not unless he’s handy,” Nathan said. “I — I thought I’d jest like to say thanky to him for gittin’ me th’ place with Duceys. I ain’t had a chance to tell him so. Hadn’t ’a’ been fer him, I don’t guess they’d ever known anything ’bout me.

^^Oh, I reckon pap didn’t strain himself,” said Nance.

Ye’re welcome to whatever he done er said. Ye can’t see him this mornin’, anyhow. He’s plumb full — full’s a tick. Come home last night so’s he couldn’t hardly stand up. I hed to make him a kinder pallet on th’ floor. Ye know he’s been up in Hardin County shootin’, an’ he got a kinder runty little she-deer, wan’t much bigger’n a six-weeks calf — th’ way they git along towards th’ end of th’ winter, y’know — an’ he took and sold it fer three dollars over at th’ cross-roads, an’ come home with most of it inside him, I guess; leastways they wan’t but two bits in his pockets when I went through ’em. I’ve seen him wuss drunk, though; he’ll be out of it by sundown, ’cordin’ to th’ signs. I know him.” She gave these data with a sort of detached almost professional unconcern, and finished with a wide hearty yawn, showing a row of teeth small, even, and white, like grains of Indian corn. “I git sorter tired, times, settin’ up waitin’ fer him,” she explained, with no slightest trace of complaint in her tone, however. ’

Nathan looked at her with a feeling remotely akin to pity. He must have been in something of a melting mood that morning, for he had never before given any consideration to the lot or character of Mrs. Williams, of Nance Darnell, of anybody on earth, even himself. At this distance of time I cannot judge the boy impartially; yet I like to think that some humane and kindly spirit was beginning to stir faintly within him. ‘‘It’s kinder hard on ye, Nance, hevin’ yer pa git drunk so often — ”

“Why ? He never lays a hand on me,” said the girl. The red flushed hotly over her dark, rich-colored face; her big black eyes blazed; she looked at Nathan almost vengefully. “He’s as good as gold, pap is ; whoever says he ain’t, lies! I’d a heap ruther hev’ pap drunk than some other folks’ fathers sober, I tell ye!”

“I didn’t mean that way,” said Nathan, clumsily, a little cloudy in his own mind as to what he did mean. “I wasn’t sayin’ anything agin yer father — he’s too good a friend to me fer that. Only seems as if you’d be better off if he didn’t take too much, times.”

“Well, it’s nat’ral to a man to drink, I guess,” said Nance, tolerantly. “Don’ know how you’re goin’ to stop ’em. Pap ainT like some, swillin^ jest fer th’ taste. He don’t keer nothin’ ’bout th’ taste — he jest does it to feel good. Pap ain’t no hog.”

There appeared to Nathan also a species of distorted virtue in this trait of Jake Darnell’s. He was nowise amused or taken aback by Nance’s fierce loyalty, although there were other times when he could not comprehend the girl. The very next moment she surprised him by bursting out with: “Oh, Nathan, ain’t th’ day jest — jest — !” In default of vocabulary she made a sweeping gesture with her lithe strong arms, and drew in a long breath. “Seems like I could jest holler, ’cause I’m alive! Look at th’ sarvis-bush over there. Say, do you know what it puts me in mind of ? It puts me in mind of a little Injun girl hidin’ an’ peekin’ an’ kinder ’fraid to come out.”

“You always hev’ such fancy notions, Nance,” said the boy, wonderingly.

“I dunno what makes me hev’ ’em — mebbe everybody does, only they don’t come out an’ say ’em like I do,” she said and laughed, giving him a quick conscious glance. In fact, Nance with her odd violent changes of mood, her spurts of temper, her open display of feeling, was an exotic figure amongst her surroundings; and Nathan, as narrow as was his experience, was already dimly aware of it. Mrs. Williams, he thought, might indeed have been a girl once, but could she ever have been a girl like Nance Darnell ?

“Mis’ Williams is real sorry ye’re goin’, Nat,” she said, hitting neatly upon the subject of his thoughts by one of those uncanny chances with which we are all familiar. “ She was cryin’ th’ other day when we was talkin’ ’bout it. She ’lowed she set as much store by you, ’s ’f you was her own son.”

Nathan crimsoned and stuttered, incoherent with surprise. He felt the shock of pleasure succeeded by a potent anxiety with which we make the discovery that somebody is fond of us; it is a responsibility to have somebody fond of you.

“I’m goin’ to come back an’ see you all every time I git a chance,” he said. “I told her so.”

“S’posin’ ye don’t git th’ place after all, Nat? S’posin’ Ducey’s hired somebody else ? ”

“Oh, I don’t reckon he’d do that,” said Nathan, confidently. '‘He told yer pap he was set on gittin^ a regular country-boy thaUd know all ’bout country-^/imgrs, so’s he wouldn’t hev’ to teach him nothin’. I guess that’s me. I don’t know nothin’ else,” he added humorously. “When yer pap’s in town, he’ll come ’round an’ see me, won’t he ?”

“If he don’t git nothin’ to drink first,” said Nance. “Next time he goes I’m goin’ with him. I kin keep him straight. ’Cause, ye know, he always gives me th’ money right off that he gits fer th’ quail, er rabbit, er th’ varmints’ pelts he’s got to sell, an’ then I spend it fer what we need. That’s th’ only way to do with pap — jest spend his money before he gits holt of a whiskey-jug, er they won’t be any to spend. I found out that quick’s I commenced goin’ to town with him. That was last year some time, y’know. I been three-four times here lately.”

Nathan was interested; he had been only once himself^ “Did ye ever see Mr. Ducey, Nance ?”

She nodded. “Lord, yes! Pap goes to th’ store every time he’s got anything to sell, you k^now. ’Tain’t Ducey’s store, it’s Mr. Marsh’s, too; leastways th’ old man is gin’rally ’round somewheres. I guess he does most of the tradin’. I’ve seen Mis’ Ducey, too, Nathan.” Her face lit up with the recollection. It was another of those outbreaks of enthusiasm that so transfigured Nance; her eyes glowed; there was something at once brilliant and tender in her expression. “Oh, Nathan, you’d oughter see her! Never mind — you’re goin’ to. My, I wisht it was me! She’s jest — ” again the lack of words defeated her. “She’s got blue eyes, an’ th’ least little teenty hands — like a coon’s paws, only they’re white ’stid of black — white like snow — but kinder cunnin’ that same way coons’ paws is, I mean. An’ her hair jest as yaller, an’ fine like corn-silk!” She paused in a strange ecstacy of admiration. Nathan was too accustomed to her to be greatly impressed by this flight; he had seen her crazed in the same fashion over a nest of birds’ eggs, a pet calf, a wild rose in bloom — any one of a dozen headlong fancies. The phrase is misleading; for, as Nathan came to recognize in later years, not the least curious thing about Nance was that she was steadfast in her wild devotion and clung heroically to her idols.

“Well, if I’m ever to see Mis’ Ducey, I’d better be gittin’

along, I think, he said, and fell back a step or two into the road. ^‘Good-by, Nance. Tell yer pap I stopped in to tell him thanky, will you

“Pap didn’t do nothin’,” repeated the girl, “’cep’n jest say he knowed a good stiddy boy that could shoot er ketch fish ekal to himself, and — ”

“ No ! Did he say that ? ” said Nathan, pleased. Then he grinned. “I dunno as that’s jest what Ducey wants,” he remarked ; “but Jake done what he could fer me, anyhow.”

He swung into the road; and Nance returned to her chicken-feeding, and the other housewifely duties that somehow suited her so ill, although she performed them briskly and capably enough. Where his path crossed the next bit of rising ground, Nathan looked back and caught the flicker of her red calico gown glancing like a flame about the dark interior of the cabin.

Chapter II

In which Mr. Burke^s Pedigree comes under Discussion

When the city of Monterey fell to the American arms in September of 1846, and General Ampudia marched out, there was found among the sick and disabled left behind (according to the Mexican habit) an Irish officer of Torrejon's staff, who had been wounded by a musket-ball in the thigh while assisting — with the most signal courage and resolution — in the defence of the redoubt they called Rincon del Diablo, on the second day of the fighting. That he was of an alien race need surprise nobody, for his country has sent just such soldiers of fortune, brave, able, shiftless, and light-hearted, to every army on the face of the globe. This gentleman’s name was Bourke, and he happened to be taken up and cared for by an officer of one of the United States volunteer regiments for whom he subsequently professed — and without doubt sincerely felt at the time — the warmest gratitude and affection. “We arre — we must be — related, an’ the ties of blood arre sthrong, me bye,” he would say touchingly — - indeed with tears in his eyes — after the third or fourth tumbler of that raw brandy of the country which the sutlers somehow found means, against the severest penalties, to smuggle into camp; “ye were dthrawn to me at wance, an’ me to you. To be sure, I’d as soon have expicted to meet an Irishman named Abednego as wan named Nathan, but ye were doubtless christened from the other side of the house.” And on the strength of this kinship, he borrowed Captain Burke’s money, wore his clothes, rode his horse, and made himself free of his quarters in a style which the captain would scarcely have looked for from an own brother. If this authority was to be believed, the Bourke or Burke family made their appearance on this planet some time prior to Adam and Eve, Nathan’s immediate ancestors came to America with Christopher Columbus — ^^and bedad, Nat, your forefathers were kings in Connaught whin Prisident Polkas were swingin’ be their tails!” To which Captain Burke replied rather dryly that as between swinging by the tail and swinging by the neck, he was quite certain which he should choose; but that the Burkes of antiquity might have swung by both ends for aught he knew, being ignorant even of their names. Of recent years, Nathan, recalling the conversation, has wondered once or twice where this exile of Erin got his Darwinian figure of speech, as the theory was not generally familiar in that day; but it is too late to ask him now. After the exchange of prisoners he disappeared from Burke’s horizon, and when last heard of, had taken service with the Khedive; he may be a dey, a bey, a pasha of ever so many tails by this time.