This pleased me extremely, and encouraged me, and I was mightily taken with the life of a soldier; but when my captain came and told me the news, that we were to march for England, and to be shipped off for Flanders at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was surprised very much, and new thoughts began to come in my mind; as, first, my captain’s condition was particular, for he durst not appear publicly at Newcastle, as he must have done if he had marched with the battalion (for they were a body of above four hundred, and therefore called themselves a battalion, though we were but recruits, and belonged to several companies abroad)—I say, he must have marched with them, and been publicly seen, in which case he would have been apprehended and delivered up. In the next place I remembered that I had almost £100 in money in London, and if it should have been asked all the soldiers in the regiment which of them would go to Flanders a private sentinel if they had £100 in their pockets, I believe none of them would answer in the affirmative—£100 being at that time sufficient to buy colours in any new regiment, though not in that regiment, which was on an old establishment. This whetted my ambition, and I dreamt of nothing but being a gentleman officer, as well as a gentleman soldier. These two circumstances concurring, I began to be very uneasy, and very unwilling in my thoughts to go over a poor musqueteer into Flanders, to be knocked on the head at the tune of 3s. 6d. a week. While I was daily musing on the circumstances of being sent away, as above, and considering what to do, my captain comes to me one evening: “Hark ye, Jacque,” says he, “I must speak with you; let us take a walk in the fields a little out from the houses.” We were quartered at a place called Park End, near the town of Dunbar, about twenty miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed, and about sixteen miles from the river Tweed, the nearest way. We walked together here, and talked seriously upon the matter. The captain told me how his case stood, and that he durst not march with the battalion into Newcastle; that if he did he should be taken out of the ranks and tried for his life, and that I knew as well as he. “I could go privately to Newcastle,” says he, “and go through the town well enough, but to go publicly is to run into the jaws of destruction.” “Well,” says I, “that is very true; but what will you do?” “Do!” says he. “Do you think I am so bound by honour, as a gentleman soldier, that I will be hanged for them? No, no,” says he; “I am resolved to be gone, and I would have you go with us.” Said I, “What do you mean by us?” “Why, here is another honest fellow, an Englishman also,” says he, “that is resolved to desert too, and he has been a long while in their service, and says he knows how we shall be used abroad, and he will not go to Flanders, says he, not he.”