will be at hand to interfere!"

"I wonder," cries Will, in a choking voice, "that I don't cut him into
twenty thousand pieces as he stands there before me with his confounded
yellow face. It was my brother Castlewood won his money--no, it was his
brother; d---- you, which are you, the rebel or the other? I hate the
ugly faces of both of you, and, hic!--if you are for the King, show you
are for the King, and drink his health!" and he sank down into his box
with a hiccup and a wild laugh, which he repeated a dozen times, with
a hundred more oaths and vociferous outcries that I should drink the
King's health.

To reason with a creature in this condition, or ask explanations or
apologies from him, was absurd. I left Mr. Will to reel to his lodgings
under the care of his young friends--who were surprised to find an old
toper so suddenly affected and so utterly prostrated by liquor--and
limped home to my wife, whom I found happy in possession of a brief
letter from Hal, which a countryman had brought in; and who said not a
word about the affairs of the Continentals with whom he was engaged,
but wrote a couple of pages of rapturous eulogiums upon his brother's
behaviour in the field, which my dear Hal was pleased to admire, as he
admired everything I said and did.

I rather looked for a messenger from my amiable kinsman in consequence
of the speeches which had passed between us the night before, and did
not know but that I might be called by Will to make my words good; and
when accordingly Mr. Lacy (our companion of the previous evening) made
his appearance at an early hour of the forenoon, I was beckoning my Lady
Warrington to leave us, when, with a laugh and a cry of "Oh dear, no!"
Mr. Lacy begged her ladyship not to disturb herself.

"I have seen," says he, "a gentleman who begs to send you his apologies
if he uttered a word last night which could offend you."

"What apologies? what words?" asks the anxious wife.

I explained that roaring Will Esmond had met me in a coffee-house on the
previous evening, and quarrelled with me, as he had done with hundreds
before. "It appears the fellow is constantly abusive, and invariably
pleads drunkenness, and apologises the next morning, unless he is caned
over-night," remarked Captain Lacy. And my lady, I dare say, makes a
little sermon, and asks why we gentlemen will go to idle coffee-houses
and run the risk of meeting roaring, roystering Will Esmonds?

Our sojourn in New York