A few weeks after I regained possession of my little property Sir Richard Cludde died--of gout and other diseases, said Mr. Pinhorn; Mistress Vetch said of rage. His estate had been much impoverished, and his widow was now left almost penniless. She was my father's sister, and, my own lot being happy, I could not endure to think of her in penury and distress. So I made her a small allowance through Mr. Vetch (and I can vouch for it this was a secret his wife never knew)--sufficient to keep her from want. She never saw me, made me no acknowledgment, and to the day of her death maintained, in the little house she took next St. Michael's Church, the haughty bearing which had always won her such dislike. Lucy and I were married on St. Valentine's day in the year 1703. Less than three months afterwards I was appointed to command the Pegasus, a third-rate of forty-eight guns, and ordered to the Mediterranean with Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovel. From that time until I retired in the year 1713 I was almost continuously on service, having but brief intervals to spend with my wife. I was at the taking of Gibraltar by Sir George Rooke (which we have yet in possession, and may we ever keep it), and in the famous sea fight off Velez Malaga in 1704; next year I entered Barcelona with Sir Stafford Fairborn; in brief, I had a share (though humble) in many of our notable transactions at sea during those memorable years when we fought King Lewis. But when peace was concluded in the year 1713, both Mr. and Mrs. Allardyce being then dead, I thought it was high time I settled down at home, especially as there were two sturdy boys growing up to plague their mother. Accordingly I retired with the rank of captain and a considerable fortune. We purchased the estate of Cludde Court and made great additions to it, and our boys every day rode into Shrewsbury to school, and did it more credit than their father. Captain Galsworthy was a frequent visitor, and though he was past eighty, insisted on giving our boys their first lessons with the singlestick. He died in the year '15, leaving fragrant memories to us who loved him. Joe Punchard is with me still. He regarded Lucy's injunctions as binding on him for life, and clave to me all through my naval career, though he lost a leg at the taking of Port Mahon in 1708. He retired when I did, and came to Cludde Court as our lodge keeper, where he would entrance my boys with sea songs and his tales of p what he had gone through on sea and land with me and with Admiral Benbow, whom he ever cherished as a matchless captain. His own naval career, he says, began with a wooden barrel and ended with a wooden leg, and sometimes, over his pipe, he shakes his head and declares that I had all the chances, he all the mischances. But he is gone seventy years of age, and is apt to be a little forgetful.