ks--which will account for their present dishevelment--Saint
Cecilia! but that moon-faced Moor who commands the guard merely laughed
at me when I did request a comb;--think you, I say, I have been through
all this without calculating chances for escape? But, _pardieu_! what
use? A man of sense will not dream such fool dreams. This I know,
there are three sentries yonder in the passageway, a good dozen more
under arms in the guard-room beyond, with still others vigilantly
pacing the deck above. What use, I say, for did not poor Villere try
it, and, before he had covered twenty feet, had three bullets in his
brain? Nay, Master Benteen, to endeavor running such a gantlet would
only give me my fill of Spanish lead before the hour set, which, they
tell me, comes with the sunrise."

He arose languidly to his feet, paused a moment in front of the cracked
mirror to recurl his long moustaches, and then, turning about, extended
a white hand toward me, smiling pleasantly as he did so.

"Faith, I fear I shall not look my best when it is all over, but if so
it will be the fault of the Dons--they seem most careless as to
requirements of the toilet. Yet I would not have you deem me
ungrateful, and I thank you heartily, Monsieur. But if it be my turn
to die, and I doubt it not,--for who ever heard of mercy in the black
heart of a Spaniard?--then it is best I front it as becomes a gentleman
of France, not with a bullet in my back, as though I fled from fate
with the faint heart of a coward. Nay, good friend, if death is to be
my portion, I prefer meeting it with a smile, and thus prove, at the
ending, worthy of my race."

There was a certain dignified manliness in his speech and manner which
for the moment caused me to doubt my earlier reading of his character.
There might be steel beneath the velvet glove of this fair courtier.

"Do you mean you deliberately choose to remain here, rather than accept
the chance I offer you?"

"Sacre! I have as yet heard of no chance," he replied easily, sinking
indolently back into his old seat against the wall. "I shall be fairly
comfortable here for the while, though I must say I have used a better
grade of tobacco than this furnished me."

For the moment I was in despair as to the outcome of my mission, nor
did I accept the proffered hand of the prisoner. Here was a totally
different order of man from what had ever come my way before, nor did I
know how best to meet him. How much of