glory hastened to decay, after our great master had been shot with three
bullets on the field of Lutzen; wherefore, finding that Fortune had
changed sides, that the borrowings and lendings went on as before out of
our pay, while the caduacs and casualties were all cut off, I e'en gave
up my commission, and took service with Wallenstein, in Walter Butler's
Irish regiment."

"And may I beg to know of you," said Lord Menteith, apparently
interested in the adventures of this soldier of fortune, "how you liked
this change of masters?"

"Indifferent well," said the Captain--"very indifferent well. I cannot
say that the Emperor paid much better than the great Gustavus. For
hard knocks, we had plenty of them. I was often obliged to run my head
against my old acquaintances, the Swedish feathers, whilk your honour
must conceive to be double-pointed stakes, shod with iron at each
end, and planted before the squad of pikes to prevent an onfall of the
cavalry. The whilk Swedish feathers, although they look gay to the eye,
resembling the shrubs or lesser trees of ane forest, as the puissant
pikes, arranged in battalia behind them, correspond to the tall pines
thereof, yet, nevertheless, are not altogether so soft to encounter as
the plumage of a goose. Howbeit, in despite of heavy blows and light
pay, a cavalier of fortune may thrive indifferently well in the Imperial
service, in respect his private casualties are nothing so closely looked
to as by the Swede; and so that an officer did his duty on the field,
neither Wallenstein nor Pappenheim, nor old Tilly before them, would
likely listen to the objurgations of boors or burghers against any
commander or soldado, by whom they chanced to be somewhat closely shorn.
So that an experienced cavalier, knowing how to lay, as our Scottish
phrase runs, 'the head of the sow to the tail of the grice,' might get