r
attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his nondescript
clothing. He still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over one eye. It
served to release him from duty in the trenches or work on the frozen
fortifications. By this simple device, coupled with half a dozen
bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-bite or a wound
gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five thousand sick and
wounded who encumbered Dantzig at this time, and were already dying at
the rate of fifty a day.

"A letter..." he said, still searching with his maimed hand. "You
mentioned the name of the Colonel de Casimir. It was that which recalled
to my mind..." He paused, and produced a letter carefully sealed. He
turned it over, glancing at the seals with a reproving jerk of the head,
which conveyed as clearly as words a shameless confession that he had
been frustrated by them... "this letter. I was told to give it you,
without fail, at the right moment."

It could hardly be the case that he honestly thought this moment might
be so described. But he gave the letter to Mathilde with a gesture of
grim triumph. Perhaps he was thinking of the cellar in the Palace on the
Petrovka at Moscow, and the treasure which he had found there.

"It is from the Colonel de Casimir," he said, "a clever man," he added,
turning confidentially to Sebastian, and holding his attention by an
upraised hand. "Oh!... a clever man."

Mathilde, her face all flushed, tore open the envelope, while Barlasch,
breathing on his fingers, watched with twinkling eye and busy lips.

The letter was a long one. Colonel de Casimir was an adept at
explanation. There was, no doubt, much to explain. Mathilde read the
letter carefully. It was the first she had ever had--a love-letter in
its guise--with explanations in it. Love and explanation in the same
breath. Assuredly De Casimir was a daring lover.

"He says that Dantzig will be taken by storm," she said at length, "and
that the Cossacks will spare no one."

"Does it signify," inquired Sebastian in his smoothest voice, "what
Colonel de Casimir may say?"

His grand manner had come back to him. He made a gesture with his hand
almost suggestive of a ruffle at the wrist, and clearly insulting to
Colonel de Casimir.

"He urges us to quit the city before it is too late," continued
Mathilde, in her measured voice, and awaited her father's reply. He took
snuff with a cold smile.

"You will not do so?" she ask