passion at the failure of my reconnaissance, I burst out with some insolent allusion to the harlequin assembly which had drawn the French fire upon us. Monsoon saluted me respectfully and retired without a word; but I had scarcely reached my quarters when a ‘friend’ of his waited upon me with a message,--a categorical message it was, too: ‘It must be a meeting or an ample apology.’ I made the apology--a most full one--for the ‘Major’ was right and I had not a fraction of reason to sustain me. We have been the best of friends ever since.” I had heard the story before this from Monsoon, but I did not then accord it all the faith that was its due; and I admit that the accidental corroboration of this one event very often served to puzzle me afterwards, when I listened to tales in which the Major seemed to be a second Munchausen. It might be that he was amongst the truest and most matter-of-fact of historians. May the reader be not less embarrassed than myself! is my sincere, if not very courteous, prayer. I have no doubt that often in recounting some strange incident--a personal experience it always was--he was himself carried away by the credulity of his hearers and the amount of interest he could excite in them, rather than by the story. He possessed the true narrative style, and there was a marvellous instinct in the way in which he would vary a tale to suit the tastes of an audience, while his moralisings were almost certain to take the tone of a humouristic quiz of the company. Though fully aware that I was availing myself of the contract that delivered him into my hands, and though he dined with me two or three times a-week, he never lapsed into any allusion to his appearance in print, and ‘O’Malley’had been published some weeks when he asked me to lend him “that last thing”--he forgot the name of it--I was writing.* * He refers here to his last visit in 1871.--E. D.