d into active service,
where, in my first engagement, it was my lot to be made a prisoner, and
sent here; and since then I have heard nothing of my daughter--my one, dear
child--the image of her mother; and nothing of him--the villain who seduced
her from me."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed I, "do not call him a villain, for if it be he that I
hope it was, who escaped through the intrumentality of your daughter, and
took her with him, he has not a drop of villain's blood in his whole body.
Sir! sir! I have a son--a Lieutenant Goldie; and he has (as I hope) been a
French prisoner from the time ye speak of. Therefore, tell me, I implore
ye, what was he like. Was he six inches taller than his father, with light
complexion, yellowish hair, an aqualine nose; full blue eyes, a mole upon
his right cheek, and, at the time ye saw him, apparently, perhaps, from
two-and-twenty to three-and-twenty years of age? Oh, sir--Count, or
whatever they call ye--if it be my son that your daughter has liberated and
gone away with, she has fallen upon her feet; she has married a good, a
kind, and a brave lad; and, though I should be the last to say it, the son
of an honest man, who will leave him from five to six thousand pounds,
beside his commission."

By the description which he gave me, I had no doubt but that my poor Robie,
and the laddie who had run away with his daughter, (or, I might say, the
laddie with whom his daughter had run away,) were one and the same person.

I ran into the next room, crying, "Agnes! Agnes! hear, woman! I have got
news of Robie!"

"News o' my bairn!" she cried, before she saw me. "Speak, Roger! speak!"

I could hardly tell her all that the French Count had told me, and I could
hardly get her to believe what she heard. But I took her into the room to
him, and he told her everything over again. A hundred questions were asked
backward and forward upon both sides, and there was not the smallest doubt,
on either of our parts, but that it was my Robie that his daughter had
liberated from the prison, and run off with.

"But oh, sir," said Agnes, "where are they now--baith o my bairns--as you
say I have twa? Where shall I find them?"

He said that he had but little doubt that they were safe, for his daughter
had powerful friends in France, and that as soon as a peace took place,
(which he hoped would not be long,) we should all see them again.

Well, the long-wished-for peace came at last--and in both countries the
capt