in those days. One blessed Monday I went to wait on Mr. Secretary,
and he squeezed my hand and whispered to me that I was to be Major
of a regiment in Virginia--the very thing: for you see, my dear, I
didn't care about joining my Lord Duke in Flanders; being pretty
well known to the army there. The Secretary squeezed my hand (it
had a fifty-pound bill in it) and wished me joy, and called me
Major, and bowed me out of his closet into the ante-room; and, as
gay as may be, I went off to the 'Tilt-yard Coffee-house' in
Whitehall, which is much frequented by gentlemen of our profession,
where I bragged not a little of my good luck.

"Amongst the company were several of my acquaintance, and amongst
them a gentleman I did not much care to see, look you! I saw a
uniform that I knew--red and yellow facings--Cutts's, my dear; and
the wearer of this was no other than his Excellency Gustavus
Adolphus Maximilian, whom we all know of!

"He stared me full in the face, right into my eye (t'other one was
patched, you know), and after standing stock-still with his mouth
open, gave a step back, and then a step forward, and then screeched
out, 'It's Brock!'

"'I beg your pardon, sir,' says I; 'did you speak to me?'

"'I'll SWEAR it's Brock,' cries Gal, as soon as he hears my voice,
and laid hold of my cuff (a pretty bit of Mechlin as ever you saw,
by the way).

"'Sirrah!' says I, drawing it back, and giving my Lord a little
touch of the fist (just at the last button of the waistcoat, my