He smiled sadly at her fancy, but did as she entreated. He laid a hand that was all covered with jewelled rings, and that shook almost as much as my Grandmother's, on my locks, and prattled out to me something about being a good boy and not playing cards. He, too, was almost gone. He had a mighty wig, and velvet clothes all covered with gold-lace, a diamond star, and broad blue ribbon; but his poor swollen legs were swathed in flannel, and he was so feeble that he had to be helped down-stairs by two lacqueys. I too ran down-stairs unchecked, and saw him helped, tottering, into his chair, a company of the Foot-guards surrounding it; for he was much misliked by the mobile at that time, and few cried, God bless him! Indeed, as the company moved away, I heard a ragged fellow (who should have been laid by the heels for it) cry, "There goes Starvation Jack, that fed his soldiers on boiled bricks and baked mortar." "He is a Whig now," said my Grandmother to me, when I rejoined her; "but he was of the bravest among men, and in the old days loved the true King dearly." When this man was young and poor, the mobile used to call him "Handsome Jack." When he was rich and old and famous, he was "Starvation Jack" to them. And of such are the caprices of a vain, precipitate age. But I am glad I saw him, Whig and pinchpenny as he was. I am proud of having seen this Great Captain and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The King of Prussia, the Duke of Cumberland, my Lord George Sackville, Marshal Biron, Duke Richelieu, and many of the chiefest among the Turkish bashaws, have I known and conversed with; but I still feel that Man's trembling hand on my head; my blood is still fired, as at the sound of a trumpet, by the remembrance of his voice; I still rejoice at my fortune in having set eyes, if only for a moment, on John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. It was on the Twenty-ninth of January (o.s.) that our servants, who had declared to having heard the death-watch ticking for days, asserted that those ominous sounds grew faster and faster, resolving themselves at length into those five distinct taps, with a break between, which are foolishly held by the vulgar to spell out the word DEATH. And although the noise came probably from some harmless insect, or from a rat nibbling at the wainscot, that sound never meets my ear--and I have heard it on board ship many a time, and in gaol, and in my tent in the desert--without a lump of ice sliding down my back. As for Ghosts, John Dangerous has seen too many of them to be frightened.[G]