he placed the English prisoner in charge of a veteran corporal,
with orders to take him to the lock-up in the barracks, and there await
further instructions. And then the commandant, in the hurry of his
duties, forgot all about him.

Captain Scuddy now found himself in quarters and under treatment very
trying to his philosophy. Not that the men who had him in charge were
purposely unkind to him, only they were careless about his comfort, and
having more important work to see to, fed him at their leisure, which
did not always coincide with his appetite. Much of his food was watery
and dirty, and seemed to be growing its own vegetables, and sometimes
to have overripened them. Therefore he began to lose substance, and his
cheeks became strangers to the buxom gloss which had been the delight of
Madame Fropot. But although they did not feed him well, they took good
care of him in other ways, affording no chance of exit.

But sour fruit often contains good pips. Scudamore's food was not worth
saying grace for, and yet a true blessing attended it: forasmuch as the
Frenchmen diminished the width of their prisoner, but not of the window.
Falling away very rapidly, for his mind was faring as badly as his body
(having nothing but regrets to feed upon, which are no better diet than
daisy soup), the gentle Scuddy, who must have become a good wrangler if
he had stopped at Cambridge, began to frame a table of cubic measure,
and consider the ratio of his body to that window, or rather the
aperture thereof. One night, when his supper had been quite forgotten
by everybody except himself, he lay awake thinking for hours and hours
about his fair Dolly and the wicked Carne, and all the lies he must have
told about her--for not a single syllable would Scudamore believe--and
the next day he found himself become so soft and limp, as well as
reduced to his lowest dimension, that he knew, by that just measure
which a man takes of himself when he has but a shred of it left, that
now he was small enough to go between the bars. And now it was high time
to feel that assurance, for the morning brought news that the order for
his removal to a great prison far inland was come, and would be carried
out the next day. "Now or never" was the only chance before him.

Having made up his mind, he felt refreshed, and took his food with
gratitude. Then, as soon as the night was dark and quiet, and the
mighty host for leagues and leagues launched into the real