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Thereupon, perhaps, drawing forth the gleaming token of his prowess the gold snuffbox from his breeches-pocket, and holding it tight in his brown and hairy fist, he would first offer his interlocutor a pinch of rappee, and would then call upon him to read the inscription engraved upon the lid of the case, demanding to know whether it mattered a fig if a man did drink a drop too much now and then, provided he collected every farthing of the royal revenues, and had been the means of saving the son of the Earl of Clandennie.
Thomas Monkhouse Dunburne, Viscount of Dunburne and Earl of Clandennie. August 17, 1752." Having thus satisfied the immediate demands of his gratitude, it is very possible that the Earl of Clandennie did not choose to assume so great a responsibility as the future of his son's preserver entailed.
For this fortunate act of rescue the Earl of Clandennie presented to his son's preserver a gold snuffbox filled with guineas, and inscribed with the following legend: "To Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse, who, under the Ruling of Beneficent Providence, was the Happy Preserver of a Beautiful and Precious Life of Virtuous Precocity, this Box is presented by the Father of Him whom He saved as a grateful acknowledgment of His Services.
This gentleman was an illegitimate son of the Earl of Clandennie by the daughter of a surgeon of the Sixty-seventh Regiment of Scots, and he had inherited a very considerable fortune upon the death of his father, from which he now enjoyed a comfortable competency. Our Colonel made no little virtue of the circumstances of his exalted birth.
For his post of Collectorship of the Royal Customs, Lieutenant Goodhouse was especially indebted to the patronage of Colonel Belford. The worthy Collector had, some years before, come to that gentleman with a written recommendation from the Earl of Clandennie of a very unusual sort.
He was wont to address his father's memory with a sobriety that lent to the fact of his illegitimacy a portentous air of seriousness, and he made no secret of the fact that he was the friend and the confidential correspondent of the present Earl of Clandennie.
The news that the Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl of Clandennie, was to marry Miss Belinda Belford, the daughter and only child of Colonel William Belford, of New Hope, was of a sort to arouse the keenest and most lively interest in all those parts of the Northern Colonies of America.
The other looked distrustfully at him for a time, and then, as though suddenly fetching up resolution, he cried out: "Well, what then? What of it? Why should I be afraid? I'll tell you. Your name shall be Frederick Dunburne, and you shall be the second son of the Earl of Clandennie."
The Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl of Clandennie, having won some six hundred pounds at écarté at a single sitting at Pintzennelli's, embarked with his two friends, Captain Blessington and Lord George Fitzhope, to conclude the night with a round of final dissipation in the more remote parts of London.
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