‘Well, I’ll tell you the real naked truth, as far as I know it when I see it,’ said the Captain, cutting off a solid piece of negrohead tobacco and putting it into his mouth. ’I have had an immense quantity of what the world calls advantages, there’s no denying, and yet they would have been all well exchanged for one simple bit of luck, which I did _not_ happen to possess—that of being born honest! That, I distinctly state and affirm, I was not. Whatever the reason is, I was always an infernal rogue from the time I could write myself man, and long before. Whether the faculty of passionate and sensuous enjoyment was intensified in my idiosyncracy, while at the same time my reasoning powers were feeble and my conscientiousness absolutely nil—I can’t say. The fact, _unde derivata_, remained (and a _fait générateur_, as the French say, it was), when I wanted anything it always occurred to me with restless force, that the shortest, most natural, and obvious way to possession was to steal, take, and unlawfully carry away the same. I should have made a famous king; in him annexation is a virtue of the highest order. As a general, could I have overleaped the earlier grades, I should have gone amid shouting thousands to an honoured grave, for I am cool and cheerful in danger, and a demon when my slow blood is fairly up. But as the son of an eminent clergyman, as a mere unit in refined society, my sphere was wretchedly circumscribed. Society became my foe, my fatal foe. Young man, if you hurl yourself upon society, she laughs at the superincumbent hostile weight. If she merely reclines upon you, moral asphyxia results. I have, mind, cast away home, friends, love, honour, position. If I hadn’t such an infernally good constitution, death would have long ago squared the account. I am sorry when I think of it. But present troubles once over—“_Libem, libem!_”’ Here he broke forth into the great drinking song, which he trolled out until the massive timbers of the building echoed. ‘And your intention, as far as I was concerned?’ asked Ernest, unable to refrain a certain toleration for the ‘larcenous epicurean.’ ‘Well, I couldn’t resist trying to appropriate your hundred pounds. You threw it at a fellow’s head, as it were. It was partly your own fault.’ ‘My own fault,’ echoed Ernest, in astonishment, ‘and why, may I ask?’ ‘When people are very _very_ imprudent, they, as the Methodists phrase it, “put temptation in the way” of other folks, not afflicted, let us say, with severe morals. Now why don’t you ride a decent horse when you’re travelling, like a gentleman?’ ‘But surely a man may walk in a new country, if he likes?’ pleaded Ernest, half amused at his arguing the question so seriously with a swindler and convicted felon.