ttenham Fancy.
Champion of the light-weights years back, sir."

"Oh! What have you been getting into trouble about?"

"Beg your pardon, sir. Mustn't talk about that, sir. Discipline, sir.
Can see as you're an officer. That ought to be enough, sir."

"Quite enough. Drink my health, _if_ there's anything fit to drink it
in. You don't object, Breschia?"

"Not at all," the lieutenant answered. "You have done with him? Very
good. Go. And let me hear of you no more, or I shall report you. To your
general. Do you hear?"

The man saluted and went out.

"He is so good, and so stupid--that individual there," said Breschia,
gladly plunging back into a more familiar language than English, though
I could see he was proud of having acquitted himself so well in that
tongue. "He is so stupid and so good, but I do nothing but laugh at him.
But Rodetzsky is a martinet, and if he were here just now the man would
be in trouble."

"What has he been doing?" I asked.

"He has been smuggling tobacco to the prisoners," Breschia answered,
and all of a sudden I found my heart beating like a hammer. Was this
the man, I wondered, who had shown compassion to Miss Ros-sano's hapless
father? And was he therefore the man of all others whom I needed to lay
hands on? If that were so it seemed nothing less than a providence that
the man should be English, for my ignorance of all the patois dialects
of the country, and even of its main language, made the speech of the
Austrian soldiers a sealed book to me.

Did it ever happen to you that you have met a person whom you have
never heard of and never thought of before--a person who was destined
to affect your fate in some way--and that from the first moment of
your encounter you seemed fated to renew acquaintance with him? It has
happened more than once to me, and it happened so in this case. That
very afternoon, when I returned from a lonely tramp upon the hills,
I found the man Hinge in the kitchen of the inn. He bore a note from
Breschia to Brunow, and was awaiting the return of that gentleman, who
was once again away in pursuit of the _soi-disant_ baroness, but had
promised to be back in time for dinner. When I entered the kitchen to
demand a draught of milk, the man rose up and saluted me, and explained
his errand. In the course of my ramble I had had hardly anything but
this man in mind, and I had been planning to make use of him. When I met
him all my plans seemed to go to pieces. I shall ha