d found the sentry kneeling at a low
door, endeavouring to break it open. The man had not been idle; from a
piece of rope slung across his back half a dozen clocks were suspended.
They rattled together like the wares of a travelling tinsmith at every
movement of his arms.

"What are you doing there, my friend?" asked Charles.

The man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round, and
shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.

"The cellar," he answered, "always the cellar. It is human nature. We
get it from the animals."

He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been
addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse.
He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his face were
filled with dust. Since quitting the banks of the Vistula no opportunity
for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him. He stood at
attention, his lips working over sunken gums.

"I want you to take this letter," said Charles, "to the officer on
service at head-quarters, and ask him to include it in his courier. It
is, as you see, a private letter--to my wife at Dantzig."

The man looked at it, and grumbled something inaudible. He took it in
his hand and turned it over with the slow manner of the illiterate.

CHAPTER XV. THE GOAL.

God writes straight on crooked lines.

Charles, having given his letter to the sentry with the order to take it
to its immediate destination, turned towards the stairs again. In those
days an order was given in a different tone to that which servitude
demands in later times.

He returned to his room on the first floor without even waiting to make
sure that he would be obeyed. He had scarcely seated himself when, after
a fumbling knock, the sentry opened the door and followed him into the
room, still holding the letter in his hand.

"Mon capitaine," he said with a certain calmness of manner as from
an old soldier to a young one, "a word--that is all. This letter,"
he turned it in his hand as he spoke, and looking at Charles beneath
scowling brows, awaited an explanation. "Did you pick it up?"

"No--I wrote it."

"Good. I..." he paused, and tapped himself on the chest so that there
could be no mistake; there was a rattling sound behind him suggestive of
ironware. Indeed, he was hung about with other things than clocks, and
seemed to be of opinion that if a soldier sets value upon any object he
must attach it to