He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he vanished again--this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and consideration. Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the peasants. One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the prodigal was induced to return to his father's roof. For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his parents; but once more "hope told a flattering tale." For the third time he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life. This time his father's patience was quite exhausted. He refused to trouble any more about his prodigal son, declaring that "he had made his bed and must lie on it." Mr Foster, however, the rescuer from the fish-basket, was of another mind. He went in chase of the fugitive, ran him to earth, and brought him again triumphantly home, submissive but unrepentant. It was quite clear that the boy would never settle down to the humdrum life of home and school, and, with his father's permission, Mr Foster took the restless youth for a long visit to the West Indies, where it seemed that at last he was cured of his passion for straying. A few years later we find him back in England, a model of stability, a student and a scholar, who, in 1747, blossomed into a knight of the shire for the County of Huntingdon. The rolling-stone had come to rest at last, and had actually developed into a pillar of the State! But this eminently respectable chapter in Montagu's chequered life was destined to be a short one. He soon found himself so uncomfortably deep in debt that he vanished again--this time to escape from his creditors. He turned up smiling in Paris, where the sedate legislator blossomed into the gambler and _roué_, dividing his time between the seductive poles of the gaming-table and fair women. His course of dissipation, however, received a sudden and severe check one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1751, when he was rudely disturbed by the entry of a _posse_ of officials into his room, armed with a warrant for his imprisonment.