re simple,
common soldier. He was attired in a sort of fatigue costume, and looked
and smelled as if he had just been sent away from stable duty. His
short cropped hair was of a fiery auburn, and his rough features, with a
prodigious mustache and the most ponderous over-beetling eyebrows I had
ever seen, gave him a look rather of ferocity than of good-nature. But
when in answer to the lieutenant's rating he began to excuse himself,
it was evident even to an ear so untrained and ignorant as mine that
he spoke in a language which was not his own. He spoke haltingly and
stammeringly; and at last, despairing of making himself understood, he
made a little motion of his hands without moving them from his sides,
and so stood as if to receive sentence. Again Breschia spoke to him, and
again the man responded. The lieutenant broke into a fit of laughter,
and the man stood there immovable, with his little fingers at the seams
of his canvas trousers, and his rugged visage frowning straight before
him.

"Go!" said the lieutenant, speaking, to my surprise, in his own halting
English. "You are too much a silly fellow. Go; and do it not again....
Eh? Will you?"

"Well, sir," the man answered, speaking, to my astonishment, in good
native-sounding English, "I'm sorry to displease, and I try to do my
duty--"

"Hold your tongue," cried Breschia, and the man obeyed at once. "Behold
a man," cried the lieutenant, turning upon me and speaking in his
customary French, "who has been in the English army, and who is as
incapable of an idea of discipline as if he were a popular prima donna."

"Oh," said I, turning round on the man and addressing him in English,
"you have been in the army at home, I hear?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, saluting me as he had done the lieutenant on
his entrance. "Two-and-twenty years, sir."

"You don't mind my talking to the fellow?" I asked the lieutenant,
reverting to French again.

"Pas du tout," said the lieutenant. "Vous le trouverez bien bete, je
vous promis."

"How long have you been in the Austrian service?"

"Not in the service at all, sir. General's groom, sir."

"You're in fatigue dress?"

"Yes, sir. Old custom, sir. Like the feel of it, sir."

"Been here long?"

"Ten years, sir."

"Why, how's this? You don't look a day over forty."

"Forty-two, sir. Joined the band at home as a boy. Sixteenth Lancers,
sir."

"What's your name?"

"Hinge, sir. Robert Hinge, sir. Son of Bob Hinge, sir. Ta