ess turned to her daughters.

"The commandant has quartered two prisoners, English officers, upon
us," she said. "Of course he has done it to annoy us. I suppose these
are they." And she rose and approached the lads, who were standing by
the door. "Why, they are boys," she said in surprise, "and will do for
playfellows for you, Olga. Poor little fellows, how cruel to send such
boys to fight!"

Then she came up to the boys and bade them welcome with an air of
kindness which they both felt.

"Katinka," she said, turning to her eldest daughter, "you speak
French, and perhaps they do also. Assure them that we will do our best
to make them comfortable. Come here, my dears."

Then she formally, pointing to each of them, uttered their names,--

"Katinka, Paulina, Olga."

Dick, in reply, pointed to his companion,--

"Jack Archer,"--and to himself--"Dick Hawtry."

The girls smiled, and held out their hands.

"Mamma says," the eldest said in French, "that she is glad to see you,
and will do all in her power to make you comfortable."

"You're very good," Dick said. "I can speak very little French, and
cannot understand it at all unless you speak quite slow. I wish now I
hadn't been so lazy at school. But we both speak a few words of
Russian, and I hope that we shall soon be able to talk to you in your
own language."

Bad as Dick's French was, the girls understood it, and an animated
conversation in a mixed jargon of French and Russian began. The girls
inquired how they had come there, and how they had been taken, and
upon hearing they had been in Sebastopol, inquired more anxiously as
to the real state of things there, for the official bulletins were
always announcing victories, and they could not understand how it was
that the allies, although always beaten, were still in front of
Sebastopol, when such huge numbers of troops had gone south to carry
out the Czar's orders, to drive them into the sea.

The lads' combined knowledge of French and Russian proved quite
insufficient to satisfy their curiosity, but there was so much
laughing over their wonderful blunders and difficulty in finding words
to explain themselves, that at the end of half an hour the boys were
perfectly at home with their hostesses.

"You will like to see your rooms," the countess said; and touching a
hand-bell, she gave some orders to a servant who, bowing, led the way
along a corridor and showed the boys two handsomely-furnished rooms
opening