'I neither admit anything nor deny anything,' I returned.  'But if
this form of words will suffice you, here is what I say:  I give
you my parole, as a gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing
taken place amongst us prisoners that was not honourable as the
day.'

'All right,' says he.  'That was all I wanted.  You can go now,
Champdivers.'

And as I was going out he added, with a laugh:  'By the bye, I
ought to apologise:  I had no idea I was applying the torture!'

The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece
of paper in his hand.  He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly
no mind to be polite.

'Here!' he cried.  'Which of you fellows knows any English?  Oh!'--
spying me--'there you are, what's your name!  YOU'LL do.  Tell
these fellows that the other fellow's dying.  He's booked; no use
talking; I expect he'll go by evening.  And tell them I don't envy
the feelings of the fellow who spiked him.  Tell them that first.'

I did so.

'Then you can tell 'em,' he resumed, 'that the fellow, Goggle--
what's his name?--wants to see some of them before he gets his
marching orders.  If I got it right, he wants to kiss or embrace
you, or some sickening stuff.  Got that?  Then here's a list he's
had written, and you'd better read it out to them--I can't make
head or tail of your beastly names--and they can answer PRESENT,
and fall in against that wall.'

It was with a singular movement of incongruous feelings that I read
the first name on the list.  I had no wish to look again on my own
handiwork; my flesh recoiled from the idea; and how could I be sure
what reception he designed to give me?  The cure was in my own
hand; I could pass that first name over--the doctor would not know-
-and I might stay away.  But to the subsequent great gladness of my
heart, I did not dwell for an instant on the thought, walked over
to the designated wall, faced about, read out the name
'Champdivers,' and answered myself with the word 'Present.'

There were some half dozen on the list, all told; and as soon as we
were mustered, the doctor led the way to the hospital, and we
followed after, like a fatigue party, in single file.  At the door
he paused, told us 'the fellow' would see each of us alone, and, as
soon as I had explained that, sent me by myself into the ward.  It
was a small room, whitewashed; a south window stood open on a vast
depth of air and a spacious and distant prospect; and from deep
below, in the Grassmarket the voices of hawkers came up clear and
far away.  Hard by, on a little bed, lay Goguelat.  The sunburn had
not yet faded from his face, and the stamp of death was already
there.  There was something wild and unmannish in his smile, that
took me by the throat; only death and love know or have ever seen
it.  And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk.

He held out his arms as if to embrace me.  I drew near with
incredible shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with
overwhelming disgust.  But he only drew my ear down to his lips.

'Trust me,' he whispered.  'Je suis bon bougre, moi.  I'll take it
to hell with me, and tell the devil.'

Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities?
All that he thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could
not clothe it otherwise than in the language of a brutal farce.
Presently he bade me call the doctor; and when that officer had
come in, raised a little up in his bed, pointed first to himself
and then to me, who stood weeping by his side, and several times
repeated the expression, 'Frinds--frinds--dam frinds.'

To my great surprise, the doctor appeared very much affected.  He
nodded his little bob-wigged head at us, and said repeatedly, 'All
right, Johnny--me comprong.'

Then Goguelat shook hands with me, embraced me again, and I went
out of the room sobbing like an infant.

How often have I not seen it, that the most unpardonable fellows
make the happiest exits!  It is a fate we may well envy them.
Goguelat was detested in life; in the last three days, by his
admirable staunchness and consideration, he won every heart; and
when word went about the prison the same evening that he was no
more, the voice of conversation became hushed as in a house of
mourning.

For myself I was like a man distracted; I cannot think what ailed
me:  when I awoke the following day, nothing remained of it; but
that night I was filled with a gloomy fury of the nerves.  I had
killed him; he had done his utmost to protect me; I had seen him
with that awful smile.  And so illogical and useless is this
sentiment of remorse, that I was ready, at a word or a look, to
quarrel with somebody else.  I presume the disposition of my mind
was imprinted on my face; and when, a little after, I overtook,
saluted and addressed the doctor, he looked on me with
commiseration and surprise.

I had asked him if it was true.

'Yes,' he said, 'the fellow's gone.'

'Did he suffer much?' I asked.

'Devil a bit; passed away like a lamb,' said he.  He looked on me a
little, and I saw his hand go to his fob.  'Here, take that! no
sense in fretting,' he said, and, putting a silver two-penny-bit in
my hand, he left me.

I should have had that twopenny framed to hang upon the wall, for
it was the man's one act of charity in all my knowledge of him.
Instead of that, I stood looking at it in my hand and laughed out
bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then went to the ramparts, and
flung it far into the air like blood money.  The night was falling;
through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the
lamplighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and
looked on moodily.  As I was so standing a hand was laid upon my
shoulder, and I turned about.  It was Major Chevenix, dressed for
the evening, and his neckcloth really admirably folded.  I never
denied the man could dress.

'Ah!' said he, 'I thought it was you, Champdivers.  So he's gone?'

I nodded.

'Come, come,' said he, 'you must cheer up.  Of course it's very
distressing, very painful and all that.  But do you know, it ain't
such a bad thing either for you or me?  What with his death and
your visit to him I am entirely reassured.'

So I was to owe my life to Goguelat at every point.

'I had rather not discuss it,' said I.

'Well,' said he, 'one word more, and I'll agree to bury the
subject.  What did you fight about?'

'Oh, what do men ever fight about?' I cried.

'A lady?' said he.

I shrugged my shoulders.

'Deuce you did!' said he.  'I should scarce have thought it of
him.'

And at this my ill-humour broke fairly out in words.  'He!' I
cried.  'He never dared to address her--only to look at her and
vomit his vile insults!  She may have given him sixpence:  if she
did, it may take him to heaven yet!'

At this I became aware of his eyes set upon me with a considering
look, and brought up sharply.

'Well, well,' said he.  'Good night to you, Champdivers.  Come to
me at breakfast-time to-morrow, and we'll talk of other subjects.'

I fully admit the man's conduct was not bad:  in writing it down so
long after the events I can even see that it was good.



CHAPTER IV--ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK NOTES



I was surprised one morning, shortly after, to find myself the
object of marked consideration by a civilian and a stranger.  This
was a man of the middle age; he had a face of a mulberry colour,
round black eyes, comical tufted eyebrows, and a protuberant
forehead; and was dressed in clothes of a Quakerish cut.  In spite
of his plainness, he had that inscrutable air of a man well-to-do
in his affairs.  I conceived he had been some while observing me
from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on
the breech of a piece of cannon.  So soon as our eyes met, he drew
near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a
good fluency but an abominable accent.

'I have the pleasure of addressing Monsieur le Vicomte Anne de
Keroual de Saint-Yves?' said he.

'Well,' said I, 'I do not call myself all that; but I have a right
to, if I chose.  In the meanwhile I call myself plain Champdivers,
at your disposal.  It was my mother's name, and good to go
soldiering with.'

'I think not quite,' said he; 'for if I remember rightly, your
mother also had the particle.  Her name was Florimonde de
Champdivers.'

'Right again!' said I, 'and I am extremely pleased to meet a
gentleman so well informed in my quarterings.  Is monsieur Born
himself?'  This I said with a great air of assumption, partly to
conceal the degree of curiosity with which my visitor had inspired
me, and in part because it struck me as highly incongruous and
comical in my prison garb and on the lips of a private soldier.

He seemed to think so too, for he laughed.

'No, sir,' he returned, speaking this time in English; 'I am not
"BORN," as you call it, and must content myself with DYING, of
which I am equally susceptible with the best of you.  My name is
Mr. Romaine--Daniel Romaine--a solicitor of London City, at your
service; and, what will perhaps interest you more, I am here at the
request of your great-uncle, the Count.'

'What!' I cried, 'does M. de Keroual de St.-Yves remember the
existence of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count
kinship with a soldier of Napoleon?'

'You speak English well,' observed my visitor.

'It has been a second language to me from a child,' said I.  'I had
an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was
finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr.
Vicary.'

A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer's face.

'What!' he cried, 'you knew poor Vicary?'

'For more than a year,' said I; 'and shared his hiding-place for
many months.'

'And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business,' said he.
'Excellent man!  It was on the affairs of M. de Keroual that he
went to that accursed country, from which he was never destined to
return.  Do you chance to know his end, sir?'

'I am sorry,' said I, 'I do.  He perished miserably at the hands of
a gang of banditti, such as we call chauffeurs.  In a word, he was
tortured, and died of it.  See,' I added, kicking off one shoe, for
I had no stockings; 'I was no more than a child, and see how they
had begun to treat myself.'

He looked at the mark of my old burn with a certain shrinking.
'Beastly people!' I heard him mutter to himself.

'The English may say so with a good grace,' I observed politely.

Such speeches were the coin in which I paid my way among this
credulous race.  Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have
accepted the remark as natural in itself and creditable to my
powers of judgment, but it appeared my lawyer was more acute.

'You are not entirely a fool, I perceive,' said he.

'No,' said I; 'not wholly.'

'And yet it is well to beware of the ironical mood,' he continued.
'It is a dangerous instrument.  Your great-uncle has, I believe,
practised it very much, until it is now become a problem what he
means.'

'And that brings me back to what you will admit is a most natural
inquiry,' said I.  'To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?
how did you recognise me? and how did you know I was here?'

Carefull separating his coat skirts, the lawyer took a seat beside
me on the edge of the flags.

'It is rather an odd story,' says he, 'and, with your leave, I'll
answer the second question first.  It was from a certain
resemblance you bear to your cousin, M. le Vicomte.'

'I trust, sir, that I resemble him advantageously?' said I.

'I hasten to reassure you,' was the reply:  'you do.  To my eyes,
M. Alain de St.-Yves has scarce a pleasing exterior.  And yet, when
I knew you were here, and was actually looking for you--why, the
likeness helped.  As for how I came to know your whereabouts, by an
odd enough chance, it is again M. Alain we have to thank.  I should
tell you, he has for some time made it his business to keep M. de
Keroual informed of your career; with what purpose I leave you to
judge.  When he first brought the news of your--that you were
serving Buonaparte, it seemed it might be the death of the old
gentleman, so hot was his resentment.  But from one thing to
another, matters have a little changed.  Or I should rather say,
not a little.  We learned you were under orders for the Peninsula,
to fight the English; then that you had been commissioned for a
piece of bravery, and were again reduced to the ranks.  And from
one thing to another (as I say), M. de Keroual became used to the
idea that you were his kinsman and yet served with Buonaparte, and
filled instead with wonder that he should have another kinsman who
was so remarkably well informed of events in France.  And it now
became a very disagreeable question, whether the young gentleman
was not a spy?  In short, sir, in seeking to disserve you, he had
accumulated against himself a load of suspicions.'

My visitor now paused, took snuff, and looked at me with an air of
benevolence.

'Good God, sir!' says I, 'this is a curious story.'

'You will say so before I have done,' said he.  'For there have two
events followed.  The first of these was an encounter of M. de
Keroual and M. de Mauseant.'

'I know the man to my cost,' said I:  'it was through him I lost my
commission.'

'Do you tell me so?' he cried.  'Why, here is news!'

'Oh, I cannot complain!' said I.  'I was in the wrong.  I did it
with my eyes open.  If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him
go, the least he can expect is to be degraded.'

'You will be paid for it,' said he.  'You did well for yourself and
better for your king.'

'If I had thought I was injuring my emperor,' said I, 'I would have
let M. de Mauseant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure
of that!  I saw in him only a private person in a difficulty:  I
let him go in private charity; not even to profit myself will I
suffer it to be misunderstood.'

'Well, well,' said the lawyer, 'no matter now.  This is a foolish
warmth--a very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me!  The point of the
story is that M. de Mauseant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew
your character in such a manner as greatly to affect your uncle's
views.  Hard upon the back of which, in came your humble servant,
and laid before him the direct proof of what we had been so long
suspecting.  There was no dubiety permitted.  M. Alain's expensive
way of life, his clothes and mistresses, his dicing and racehorses,
were all explained:  he was in the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy,
and a man that held the strings of what I can only call a
convolution of extremely fishy enterprises.  To do M. de Keroual
justice, he took it in the best way imaginable, destroyed the
evidences of the one great-nephew's disgrace--and transferred his
interest wholly to the other.'

'What am I to understand by that?' said I.

'I will tell you,' says he.  'There is a remarkable inconsistency
in human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of
occasion to observe.  Selfish persons can live without chick or
child, they can live without all mankind except perhaps the barber
and the apothecary; but when it comes to dying, they seem
physically unable to die without an heir.  You can apply this
principle for yourself.  Viscount Alain, though he scarce guesses
it, is no longer in the field.  Remains, Viscount Anne.'

'I see,' said I, 'you give a very unfavourable impression of my
uncle, the Count.'

'I had not meant it,' said he.  'He has led a loose life--sadly
loose--but he is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire;
his courtesy is exquisite.'

'And so you think there is actually a chance for me?' I asked.

'Understand,' said he:  'in saying as much as I have done, I travel
quite beyond my brief.  I have been clothed with no capacity to
talk of wills, or heritages, or your cousin.  I was sent here to
make but the one communication:  that M. de Keroual desires to meet
his great-nephew.'

'Well,' said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat
surrounded, 'this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to
the mountain.'

'Pardon me,' said Mr. Romaine; 'you know already your uncle is an
aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up,
and his death shortly looked for.  No, no, there is no doubt about
it--it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet.'

'From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,' said I;
'but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men's secrets,
and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a
truculent patriotism, to say the least.'

'I am first of all the lawyer of your family!' says he.

'That being so,' said I, 'I can perhaps stretch a point myself.
This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a
devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I
have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the
bottom.  Once at the bottom I am helpless.'

'And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,' returned the
lawyer.  'Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess,
and on which I offer no opinion--'

But here I interrupted him.  'One word ere you go further.  I am
under no parole,' said I.

'I understood so much,' he replied, 'although some of you French
gentry find their word sit lightly on them.'

'Sir, I am not one of those,' said I.

'To do you plain justice, I do not think you one,' said he.
'Suppose yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock,'
he continued, 'although I may not be able to do much, I believe I
can do something to help you on your road.  In the first place I
would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or my shoe.'  And he
passed me a bundle of bank notes.

'No harm in that,' said I, at once concealing them.

'In the second place,' he resumed, 'it is a great way from here to
where your uncle lives--Amersham Place, not far from Dunstable; you
have a great part of Britain to get through; and for the first
stages, I must leave you to your own luck and ingenuity.  I have no
acquaintance here in Scotland, or at least' (with a grimace) 'no
dishonest ones.  But further to the south, about Wakefield, I am
told there is a gentleman called Burchell Fenn, who is not so
particular as some others, and might be willing to give you a cast
forward.  In fact, sir, I believe it's the man's trade:  a piece of
knowledge that burns my mouth.  But that is what you get by
meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue now extant, M.
de Saint-Yves, is your cousin, M. Alain.'

'If this be a man of my cousin's,' I observed, 'I am perhaps better
to keep clear of him?'

'It was through some paper of your cousin's that we came across his
trail,' replied the lawyer.  'But I am inclined to think, so far as
anything is safe in such a nasty business, you might apply to the
man Fenn.  You might even, I think, use the Viscount's name; and
the little trick of family resemblance might come in.  How, for
instance, if you were to call yourself his brother?'

'It might be done,' said I.  'But look here a moment?  You propose
to me a very difficult game:  I have apparently a devil of an
opponent in my cousin; and, being a prisoner of war, I can scarcely
be said to hold good cards.  For what stakes, then, am I playing?'

'They are very large,' said he.  'Your great-uncle is immensely
rich--immensely rich.  He was wise in time; he smelt the revolution
long before; sold all that he could, and had all that was movable
transported to England through my firm.  There are considerable
estates in England; Amersham Place itself is very fine; and he has
much money, wisely invested.  He lives, indeed, like a prince.  And
of what use is it to him?  He has lost all that was worth living
for--his family, his country; he has seen his king and queen
murdered; he has seen all these miseries and infamies,' pursued the
lawyer, with a rising inflection and a heightening colour; and then
broke suddenly off,--'In short, sir, he has seen all the advantages
of that government for which his nephew carries arms, and he has
the misfortune not to like them.'

'You speak with a bitterness that I suppose I must excuse,' said I;
'yet which of us has the more reason to be bitter?  This man, my
uncle, M. de Keroual, fled.  My parents, who were less wise
perhaps, remained.  In the beginning, they were even republicans;
to the end they could not be persuaded to despair of the people.
It was a glorious folly, for which, as a son, I reverence them.
First one and then the other perished.  If I have any mark of a
gentleman, all who taught me died upon the scaffold, and my last
school of manners was the prison of the Abbaye.  Do you think you
can teach bitterness to a man with a history like mine?'

'I have no wish to try,' said he.  'And yet there is one point I
cannot understand:  I cannot understand that one of your blood and
experience should serve the Corsican.  I cannot understand it:  it
seems as though everything generous in you must rise against that--
domination.'

'And perhaps,' I retorted, 'had your childhood passed among wolves,
you would have been overjoyed yourself to see the Corsican
Shepherd.'

'Well, well,' replied Mr. Romaine, 'it may be.  There are things
that do not bear discussion.'

And with a wave of his hand he disappeared abruptly down a flight
of steps and under the shadow of a ponderous arch.



CHAPTER V--ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE



The lawyer was scarce gone before I remembered many omissions; and
chief among these, that I had neglected to get Mr. Burchell Fenn's
address.  Here was an essential point neglected; and I ran to the
head of the stairs to find myself already too late.  The lawyer was
beyond my view; in the archway that led downward to the castle
gate, only the red coat and the bright arms of a sentry glittered
in the shadow; and I could but return to my place upon the
ramparts.

I am not very sure that I was properly entitled to this corner.
But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private,
in the castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of
moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to
sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested.  The cliff went down
before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing
trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across
the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street
which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of
Edinburgh.  A singularity in a military prison, that it should
command a view on the chief thoroughfare!

It is not necessary that I should trouble you with the train of my
reflections, which turned upon the interview I had just concluded
and the hopes that were now opening before me.  What is more
essential, my eye (even while I thought) kept following the
movement of the passengers on Princes Street, as they passed
briskly to and fro--met, greeted, and bowed to each other--or
entered and left the shops, which are in that quarter, and, for a
town of the Britannic provinces, particularly fine.  My mind being
busy upon other things, the course of my eye was the more random;
and it chanced that I followed, for some time, the advance of a
young gentleman with a red head and a white great-coat, for whom I
cared nothing at the moment, and of whom it is probable I shall be
gathered to my fathers without learning more.  He seemed to have a
large acquaintance:  his hat was for ever in his hand; and I
daresay I had already observed him exchanging compliments with half
a dozen, when he drew up at last before a young man and a young
lady whose tall persons and gallant carriage I thought I
recognised.

It was impossible at such a distance that I could be sure, but the
thought was sufficient, and I craned out of the embrasure to follow
them as long as possible.  To think that such emotions, that such a
concussion of the blood, may have been inspired by a chance
resemblance, and that I may have stood and thrilled there for a
total stranger!  This distant view, at least, whether of Flora or
of some one else, changed in a moment the course of my reflections.
It was all very well, and it was highly needful, I should see my
uncle; but an uncle, a great-uncle at that, and one whom I had
never seen, leaves the imagination cold; and if I were to leave the
castle, I might never again have the opportunity of finding Flora.
The little impression I had made, even supposing I had made any,
how soon it would die out! how soon I should sink to be a phantom
memory, with which (in after days) she might amuse a husband and
children!  No, the impression must be clenched, the wax impressed
with the seal, ere I left Edinburgh.  And at this the two interests
that were now contending in my bosom came together and became one.
I wished to see Flora again; and I wanted some one to further me in
my flight and to get me new clothes.  The conclusion was apparent.
Except for persons in the garrison itself, with whom it was a point
of honour and military duty to retain me captive, I knew, in the
whole country of Scotland, these two alone.  If it were to be done
at all, they must be my helpers.  To tell them of my designed
escape while I was still in bonds, would be to lay before them a
most difficult choice.  What they might do in such a case, I could
not in the least be sure of, for (the same case arising) I was far
from sure what I should do myself.  It was plain I must escape
first.  When the harm was done, when I was no more than a poor
wayside fugitive, I might apply to them with less offence and more
security.  To this end it became necessary that I should find out
where they lived and how to reach it; and feeling a strong
confidence that they would soon return to visit me, I prepared a
series of baits with which to angle for my information.  It will be
seen the first was good enough.

Perhaps two days after, Master Ronald put in an appearance by
himself.  I had no hold upon the boy, and pretermitted my design
till I should have laid court to him and engaged his interest.  He
was prodigiously embarrassed, not having previously addressed me
otherwise than by a bow and blushes; and he advanced to me with an
air of one stubbornly performing a duty, like a raw soldier under
fire.  I laid down my carving; greeted him with a good deal of
formality, such as I thought he would enjoy; and finding him to
remain silent, branched off into narratives of my campaigns such as
Goguelat himself might have scrupled to endorse.  He visibly thawed
and brightened; drew more near to where I sat; forgot his timidity
so far as to put many questions; and at last, with another blush,
informed me he was himself expecting a commission.

'Well,' said I, 'they are fine troops, your British troops in the
Peninsula.  A young gentleman of spirit may well be proud to be
engaged at the head of such soldiers.'

'I know that,' he said; 'I think of nothing else.  I think shame to
be dangling here at home and going through with this foolery of
education, while others, no older than myself, are in the field.'

'I cannot blame you,' said I.  'I have felt the same myself.'

'There are--there are no troops, are there, quite so good as ours?'
he asked.

'Well,' said I, 'there is a point about them:  they have a defect,-
-they are not to be trusted in a retreat.  I have seen them behave
very ill in a retreat.'

'I believe that is our national character,' he said--God forgive
him!--with an air of pride.

'I have seen your national character running away at least, and had
the honour to run after it!' rose to my lips, but I was not so ill
advised as to give it utterance.  Every one should be flattered,
but boys and women without stint; and I put in the rest of the
afternoon narrating to him tales of British heroism, for which I
should not like to engage that they were all true.

'I am quite surprised,' he said at last.  'People tell you the
French are insincere.  Now, I think your sincerity is beautiful.  I
think you have a noble character.  I admire you very much.  I am
very grateful for your kindness to--to one so young,' and he
offered me his hand.

'I shall see you again soon?' said I.

'Oh, now!  Yes, very soon,' said he.  'I--I wish to tell you.  I
would not let Flora--Miss Gilchrist, I mean--come to-day.  I wished
to see more of you myself.  I trust you are not offended:  you
know, one should be careful about strangers.'

I approved his caution, and he took himself away:  leaving me in a
mixture of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one
so gullible, part raging that I should have burned so much incense
before the vanity of England; yet, in the bottom of my soul,
delighted to think I had made a friend--or, at least, begun to make
a friend--of Flora's brother.

As I had half expected, both made their appearance the next day.  I
struck so fine a shade betwixt the pride that is allowed to
soldiers and the sorrowful humility that befits a captive, that I
declare, as I went to meet them, I might have afforded a subject
for a painter.  So much was high comedy, I must confess; but so
soon as my eyes lighted full on her dark face and eloquent eyes,
the blood leaped into my cheeks--and that was nature!  I thanked
them, but not the least with exultation; it was my cue to be
mournful, and to take the pair of them as one.

'I have been thinking,' I said, 'you have been so good to me, both
of you, stranger and prisoner as I am, that I have been thinking
how I could testify to my gratitude.  It may seem a strange subject
for a confidence, but there is actually no one here, even of my
comrades, that knows me by my name and title.  By these I am called
plain Champdivers, a name to which I have a right, but not the name
which I should bear, and which (but a little while ago) I must hide
like a crime.  Miss Flora, suffer me to present to you the Vicomte
Anne de Keroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier.'

'I knew it!' cried the boy; 'I knew he was a noble!'

And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more
persuasively.  All through this interview she kept them on the
ground, or only gave them to me for a moment at a time, and with a
serious sweetness.

'You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful
confession,' I continued.  'To stand here before you, vanquished, a
prisoner in a fortress, and take my own name upon my lips, is
painful to the proud.  And yet I wished that you should know me.
Long after this, we may yet hear of one another--perhaps Mr.
Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps--and it
would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise.'

They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of
service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and
the like.  This would have been all mighty welcome, before the
tunnel was ready.  Now it signified no more to me than to offer the
transition I required.

'My dear friends,' I said--'for you must allow me to call you that,
who have no others within so many hundred leagues--perhaps you will
think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but
there is one service that I would beg of you before all others.
You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst of your
city.  Even with what liberty I have, I have the opportunity to see
a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and land.
All this hostile!  Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever
I see the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one
sits before the chimney and reads with joy of our reverses.  Pardon
me, dear friends, I know that you must do the same, and I do not
grudge at it!  With you, it is all different.  Show me your house
then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be not visible, the
quarter of the town in which it lies!  So, when I look all about
me, I shall be able to say:  "THERE IS ONE HOUSE IN WHICH I AM NOT
QUITE UNKINDLY THOUGHT OF."'

Flora stood a moment.

'It is a pretty thought,' said she, 'and, as far as regards Ronald
and myself, a true one.  Come, I believe I can show you the very
smoke out of our chimney.'

So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the
opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion
almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight.
Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and
beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the
Pentland Hills.  The face of one of these summits (say two leagues
from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars.
And to this she directed my attention.

'You see these marks?' she said.  'We call them the Seven Sisters.
Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the
hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst
of them.  That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are
living with my aunt.  If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am
glad.  We, too, can see the castle from a corner in the garden, and
we go there in the morning often--do we not, Ronald?--and we think
of you, M. de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not altogether
make us glad.'

'Mademoiselle!' said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under
command, 'if you knew how your generous words--how even the sight
of you--relieved the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I
know, you would be glad.  I will come here daily and look at that
dear chimney and these green hills, and bless you from the heart,
and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner.  Ah!  I do not
say they can avail!'

'Who can say that, M. de Saint-Yves?' she said softly.  'But I
think it is time we should be going.'

'High time,' said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little
forgotten.

On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground
with the youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my
last and somewhat too fervent speech, who should come past us but
the major?  I had to stand aside and salute as he went by, but his
eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora.

'Who is that man?' she asked.

'He is a friend of mine,' said I.  'I give him lessons in French,
and he has been very kind to me.'

'He stared,' she said,--'I do not say, rudely; but why should he
stare?'

'If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to
recommend a veil,' said I.

She looked at me with what seemed anger.  'I tell you the man
stared,' she said.

And Ronald added.  'Oh, I don't think he meant any harm.  I suppose
he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr--with M.
Saint-Yves.'

But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix's rooms, and after I
had dutifully corrected his exercise--'I compliment you on your
taste,' said he to me.

'I beg your pardon?' said I.

'Oh no, I beg yours,' said he.  'You understand me perfectly, just
as I do you.'

I murmured something about enigmas.

'Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?' said he, leaning
back.  'That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you
avenged.  I do not blame you.  She is a heavenly creature.'

'With all my heart, to the last of it!' said I.  'And to the first
also, if it amuses you!  You are become so very acute of late that
I suppose you must have your own way.'

'What is her name?' he asked.

'Now, really!' said I.  'Do you think it likely she has told me?'

'I think it certain,' said he.

I could not restrain my laughter.  'Well, then, do you think it
likely I would tell you?' I cried.

'Not a bit.' said he.  'But come, to our lesson!'



CHAPTER VI--THE ESCAPE



The time for our escape drew near, and the nearer it came the less
we seemed to enjoy the prospect.  There is but one side on which
this castle can be left either with dignity or safety; but as there
is the main gate and guard, and the chief street of the upper city,
it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners.  In all other
directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of
which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty.  By our
concurrent labours in many a dark night, working with the most
anxious precautions against noise, we had made out to pierce below
the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the
Devil's Elbow.  I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest
of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the
least desire of his acquaintance.  From the heel of the masonry,
the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste
lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building.
I had never the heart to look for any length of time--the thought
that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me
of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack,
the mere sight of the Devil's Elbow wrought like an emetic.

I don't know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared.  It
was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it,
it would serve our turn.  Its length, indeed, we made a shift to
fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with
the way we had to go?  Day after day, there would be always some of
us stolen out to the Devil's Elbow and making estimates of the
descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones.  A
private of pioneers remembered the formula for that--or else
remembered part of it and obligingly invented the remainder.  I had
never any real confidence in that formula; and even had we got it
from a book, there were difficulties in the way of the application
that might have daunted Archimedes.  We durst not drop any
considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that
we dropped we could not hear ourselves.  We had never a watch--or
none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess
a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently.  In
short, if any two set forth upon this enterprise, they invariably
returned with two opinions, and often with a black eye in the
bargain.  I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without
laughter, yet with impatience and disgust.  I am one that cannot
bear to see things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the
thought that some poor devil was to hazard his bones upon such
premises, revolted me.  Had I guessed the name of that unhappy
first adventurer, my sentiments might have been livelier still.

The designation of this personage was indeed all that remained for
us to do; and even in that we had advanced so far that the lot had
fallen on Shed B.  It had been determined to mingle the bitter and
the sweet; and whoever went down first, the whole of his shed-mates
were to follow next in order.  This caused a good deal of joy in
Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not still remained to
choose our pioneer.  In view of the ambiguity in which we lay as to
the length of the rope and the height of the precipice--and that
this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a
pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an
infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was
perhaps excusable.  But it was, in our case, more than a little.
The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a height; and I
have myself been put, more than once, hors de combat by a less
affair than the rock of Edinburgh Castle.

We discussed it in the dark and between the passage of the rounds;
and it was impossible for any body of men to show a less
adventurous spirit.  I am sure some of us, and myself first among
the number, regretted Goguelat.  Some were persuaded it was safe,
and could prove the same by argument; but if they had good reasons
why some one else should make the trial, they had better still why
it should not be themselves.  Others, again, condemned the whole
idea as insane; among these, as ill-luck would have it, a seaman of
the fleet; who was the most dispiriting of all.  The height, he
reminded us, was greater than the tallest ship's mast, the rope
entirely free; and he as good as defied the boldest and strongest
to succeed.  We were relieved from this dead-lock by our sergeant-
major of dragoons.

'Comrades,' said he, 'I believe I rank you all; and for that
reason, if you really wish it, I will be the first myself.  At the
same time, you are to consider what the chances are that I may
prove to be the last, as well.  I am no longer young--I was sixty
near a month ago.  Since I have been a prisoner, I have made for
myself a little bedaine.  My arms are all gone to fat.  And you
must promise not to blame me, if I fall and play the devil with the
whole thing.'

'We cannot hear of such a thing!' said I.  'M. Laclas is the oldest
man here; and, as such, he should be the very last to offer.  It is
plain, we must draw lots.'

'No,' said M. Laclas; 'you put something else in my head!  There is
one here who owes a pretty candle to the others, for they have kept
his secret.  Besides, the rest of us are only rabble; and he is
another affair altogether.  Let Champdivers--let the noble go the
first.'

I confess there was a notable pause before the noble in question
got his voice.  But there was no room for choice.  I had been so
ill-advised, when I first joined the regiment, as to take ground on
my nobility.  I had been often rallied on the matter in the ranks,
and had passed under the by-names of Monseigneur and the Marquis.
It was now needful I should justify myself and take a fair revenge.

Any little hesitation I may have felt passed entirely unnoticed,
from the lucky incident of a round happening at that moment to go
by.  And during the interval of silence there occurred something
that sent my blood to the boil.  There was a private in our shed
called Clausel, a man of a very ugly disposition.  He had made one
of the followers of Goguelat; but, whereas Goguelat had always a
kind of monstrous gaiety about him, Clausel was no less morose than
he was evil-minded.  He was sometimes called the General, and
sometimes by a name too ill-mannered for repetition.  As we all sat
listening, this man's hand was laid on my shoulder, and his voice
whispered in my ear:  'If you don't go, I'll have you hanged,
Marquis!'

As soon as the round was past--'Certainly, gentlemen!' said I.  'I
will give you a lead, with all the pleasure in the world.  But,
first of all, there is a hound here to be punished.  M. Clausel has
just insulted me, and dishonoured the French army; and I demand
that he run the gauntlet of this shed.'

There was but one voice asking what he had done, and, as soon as I
had told them, but one voice agreeing to the punishment.  The
General was, in consequence, extremely roughly handled, and the
next day was congratulated by all who saw him on his NEW
DECORATIONS.  It was lucky for us that he was one of the prime
movers and believers in our project of escape, or he had certainly
revenged himself by a denunciation.  As for his feelings towards
myself, they appeared, by his looks, to surpass humanity; and I
made up my mind to give him a wide berth in the future.

Had I been to go down that instant, I believe I could have carried
it well.  But it was already too late--the day was at hand.  The
rest had still to be summoned.  Nor was this the extent of my
misfortune; for the next night, and the night after, were adorned
with a perfect galaxy of stars, and showed every cat that stirred
in a quarter of a mile.  During this interval, I have to direct
your sympathies on the Vicomte de Saint-Yves!  All addressed me
softly, like folk round a sickbed.  Our Italian corporal, who had
got a dozen of oysters from a fishwife, laid them at my feet, as
though I were a Pagan idol; and I have never since been wholly at
my ease in the society of shellfish.  He who was the best of our
carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and
which, while it was yet in hand, he had often declared he would not
part with under fifteen dollars.  I believe the piece was worth the
money too!  And yet the voice stuck in my throat with which I must
thank him.  I found myself, in a word, to be fed up like a prisoner
in a camp of anthropophagi, and honoured like the sacrificial bull.
And what with these annoyances, and the risky venture immediately
ahead, I found my part a trying one to play.

It was a good deal of a relief when the third evening closed about
the castle with volumes of sea-fog.  The lights of Princes Street
sometimes disappeared, sometimes blinked across at us no brighter
than the eyes of cats; and five steps from one of the lanterns on
the ramparts it was already groping dark.  We made haste to lie
down.  Had our jailers been upon the watch, they must have observed
our conversation to die out unusually soon.  Yet I doubt if any of
us slept.  Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of
liberty and the fear of a hateful death.  The guard call sounded;
the hum of the town declined by little and little.  On all sides of
us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchman cry the
hours along the street.  Often enough, during my stay in England,
have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or perhaps gone to
my window when I lay sleepless, and watched the old gentleman
hobble by upon the causeway with his cape and his cap, his hanger
and his rattle.  It was ever a thought with me how differently that
cry would re-echo in the chamber of lovers, beside the bed of
death, or in the condemned cell.  I might be said to hear it that
night myself in the condemned cell!  At length a fellow with a
voice like a bull's began to roar out in the opposite thoroughfare:

'Past yin o'cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin'.'

At which we were all silently afoot.

As I stole about the battlements towards the--gallows, I was about
to write--the sergeant-major, perhaps doubtful of my resolution,
kept close by me, and occasionally proffered the most indigestible
reassurances in my ear.  At last I could bear them no longer.

'Be so obliging as to let me be!' said I.  'I am neither a coward
nor a fool.  What do YOU know of whether the rope be long enough?
But I shall know it in ten minutes!'

The good old fellow laughed in his moustache, and patted me.

It was all very well to show the disposition of my temper before a
friend alone; before my assembled comrades the thing had to go
handsomely.  It was then my time to come on the stage; and I hope I
took it handsomely.

'Now, gentlemen,' said I, 'if the rope is ready, here is the
criminal!'

The tunnel was cleared, the stake driven, the rope extended.  As I
moved forward to the place, many of my comrades caught me by the
hand and wrung it, an attention I could well have done without.

'Keep an eye on Clausel!' I whispered to Laclas; and with that, got
down on my elbows and knees took the rope in both hands, and worked
myself, feet foremost, through the tunnel.  When the earth failed
under my feet, I thought my heart would have stopped; and a moment
after I was demeaning myself in mid-air like a drunken jumping-
jack.  I have never been a model of piety, but at this juncture
prayers and a cold sweat burst from me simultaneously.

The line was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the
inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to
descend.  The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared
to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity
against myself.  It turned to the one side, paused for a moment,
and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an
eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most
outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the
face of the rock.  I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there
was anything to see but darkness.  I must occasionally have caught
a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious.  And the whole
forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it
again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or
coming down.

Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost
bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed
to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the
precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me
almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my
feet was safely planted on a ledge.  I drew one of the sweetest
breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and
closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief.  It occurred to me
next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point
on which I had not a shadow of a guess.  I looked up:  there was
nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog.  I
craned timidly forward and looked down.  There, upon a floor of
darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them
aligned as in thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary
houses; and before I could well realise it, or had in the least
estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and vertigo warned me to
lie back and close my eyes.  In this situation I had really but the
one wish, and that was:  something else to think of!  Strange to
say, I got it:  a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool
I was--what fools we had all been--and that I had no business to be
thus dangling between earth and heaven by my arms.  The only thing
to have done was to have attached me to a rope and lowered me, and
I had never the wit to see it till that moment!

I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more
launched myself on the descent.  As it chanced, the worst of the
danger was at an end, and I was so fortunate as to be never again
exposed to any violent concussion.  Soon after I must have passed
within a little distance of a bush of wallflower, for the scent of
it came over me with that impression of reality which characterises
scents in darkness.  This made me a second landmark, the ledge
being my first.  I began accordingly to compute intervals of time:
so much to the ledge, so much again to the wallflower, so much more
below.  If I were not at the bottom of the rock, I calculated I
must be near indeed to the end of the rope, and there was no doubt
that I was not far from the end of my own resources.  I began to be
light-headed and to be tempted to let go,--now arguing that I was
certainly arrived within a few feet of the level and could safely
risk a fall, anon persuaded I was still close at the top and it was
idle to continue longer on the rock.  In the midst of which I came
to a bearing on plain ground, and had nearly wept aloud.  My hands
were as good as flayed, my courage entirely exhausted, and, what
with the long strain and the sudden relief, my limbs shook under me
with more than the violence of ague, and I was glad to cling to the
rope.