The bird was flown, however,--the money clean gone,--and when there was no hope of regaining it, what did the creditors do but clap my gay gentleman into Shrewsbury gaol: where I wish he had rotted, for my part.
"But no such luck for honest Peter Brock, or Captain Wood, as he was 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 dear,--a rare place if you wish to prevent a man from speaking too much: it sent him reeling to the other end of the room).

'Ruffian!' says I.'Dog!' says I.'Insolent puppy and coxcomb! what do you mean by laying your hand on me ?' "'Faith, Major, you giv him his BILLYFUL,' roared out a long Irish unattached ensign, that I had treated with many a glass of Nantz at the tavern.

And so, indeed, I had; for the wretch could not speak for some minutes, and all the officers stood laughing at him, as he writhed and wriggled hideously.
"'Gentlemen, this is a monstrous scandal,' says one officer.