say, almost as
laughable and halting as mine sounded to him. "I mak yeeoo velkom at my
place."

At this I asked him if the place were private and I an intruder, but
this little bit of English, took him altogether out of his depth.

"I speak English abominably," he said in fluent and accurate French;
"properly speaking, I do not know it at all. May I ask if you speak
French?"

French and Spanish are the only two foreign languages of which I know
anything, but I speak them both with ease, though I dare say with
little elegance. I repeated my question, and he, with great good-humor,
responded that he had no claim upon the place, and was delighted to find
a companion of similar tastes; I went on undressing without more ado,
and in a minute more was ploughing about in the water, the first nip of
which had an icy and almost maddening delight in it. I found out later
on that the stream came almost straight from the mountain-tops of ice
and snow.

"You would not have bathed here five or six hours ago," said my
companion, as he swam beside me. "The storm lasted but two hours, yet
the river was raging here until long after midnight. It falls, however,
as soon as it rises, and now, except for the wet banks, you would hardly
guess that it had been in flood."

I had reason to remember what he said not very much later on, at a
moment perhaps as anxious as any I have ever had to face in my life. But
that will come in its place, and I only notice it here because it
was one of those odd things in life that we all notice at one time or
another, that at our first accidental meeting the man whose business it
was to guard the prisoner I had come to rescue should give me a bit of
comforting knowledge in this way. For my companion turned out to be none
other than that Lieutenant Breschia of whom Brunow had spoken. When
my swim was finished he gathered up his clothes in a neat bundle, and
holding them in the air in one hand, paddled himself easily across with
the other, and dressed beside me.

"It is ambition of mine," he said, in a laughing, boyish way, which made
his manner very charming and natural, "to learn your English tongue.
But I am stupid with it, and whenever I meet an Englishman I waste my
chances and converse with him in one of the tongues I know already. You
are great masters of language, you Englishmen."

I told him that we bore a very indifferent reputation in that respect,
and that next to the French, who in that one