The most picturesque figure at these informal assemblies was Brigadier-General McIver. In what service this Caledonian swashbuckler earned his last distinction I forget, but the reader will find the details in an autobiography of the General entitled “Under Fourteen Flags.” From the very title of the book it will be deduced that the General was impartial in his sympathies, and that his good sword was at the disposal of any nationality that was disposed to pay for it. In that autobiographical work the author is somewhat reticent about his life previous to the date at which he received his first command. From personal observation of the gallant officer, I should be inclined to say that he had served in the ranks as a British Tommy, and that, having a real taste for soldiering, and finding the rate of promotion in the ranks vastly too slow for his aspirations, he had left the home forces, and placed his services at the disposal of those struggling nationalities which are so often only too glad to accord high commissions to Englishmen or Scotsmen or Irishmen willing to serve under their flags. His whole bearing, dialect, and appearance, was that of the ranker. His book, which was really written for him by an English officer “down on his luck,” is an amazing record of deeds of derring-do in Servia, in Turkey, in the Far East, and in the republics of South America. It was all one to McIver. A soldier of fortune, it mattered nothing to him whose blood he was called upon to shed, provided he was allowed to shed a great deal of it. Had the deeds which the Brigadier-General has had recorded in his name been performed under the British flag, the intrepid warrior should have earned the Victoria Cross, perhaps a peerage, and certain such a money grant as would have made him quite comfortable for the rest of his natural life. The struggling nationalities, apparently, had all been either ungrateful or impecunious, and McIver was in the habit of drawing on the resources of his generous entertainer from the Cape. That worthy individual was quite ready to meet these recurrent demands, persuaded that in listening to the lurid romances of the General he was receiving rather more than value for his money. The successes of the gallant General in war were only less renowned than his successes in love—that is to say, from the General’s own not very lofty point of view. His intrigues were, indeed, of a somewhat squalid character, occasionally involving the professional disqualification of the “slavey” at his lodgings, and his own temporary disappearance from his Fleet Street haunts.