ve to confess before
I have done with it that I am the poorest plotter in the world. Give me
something downright to do, and I will try to do it; but in dodges and
evasions and pretences I have little skill indeed. I took the note from
the man's hand and promised that Brunow should receive it. Then I drank
the milk which the landlady's daughter had already set before me, and
stood there tongue-tied and bewildered, not knowing how to begin. The
man himself relieved me.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, taking his glass in his left hand, and
saluting again with the right. "Your health, sir."

"That's poor tack," I said, nodding towards the glass. He had made a
grimace over the wine.

"Well, so it is, sir," he replied; "but it's better than nothing, and
it's about all we poor folks can afford, sir."

"Did you ever taste Scotch whiskey?" I asked him. He smiled a slow smile
as if he remembered something pleasing.

"Why, yes, sir, I have, sir, and I won't deceive you."

"Come to my room," I said, "and I'll give you as good a glass as you
ever tasted in your life."

He set down his glass of sour wine on the table with an emphatic
quickness, and his soldierly tread sounded behind me in the uncarpeted
passage and up the bare deal steps. When he came to my room I bade him
sit down, but he remained standing, and I had to give the invitation as
an order before he would obey it. Then he sat like a figure carved in
wood, with his shoulders back, his head well up, a hand on either knee,
and a face as expressionless as the back of his head. I got my flask out
of my knapsack, and with it a little collapsible cup of silver, found
the water-bottle, and set everything before him.

"Help yourself!" He took a thimbleful. "Help yourself, man!" He took
another thimbleful. I seized the flask from his hand and poured him
enough for a good tumbler. "Now, there's the water; help yourself to
that."

He obeyed, and tasted the mixture with a solemn satisfaction.

"My friend, Lieutenant Breschia, tells me," I said then, for by
this time I had made up my mind how to begin with him, "that you are
constantly breaking the rules of the fortress. He tells me that you have
been giving the prisoners tobacco."

"That's a fact, sir," he admitted.

"Give them some more," I said, "first chance you get." I laid a gold
coin on the table before him, and sat down in front of him. "I'd give
some of the poor beggars something better than tobacco if I had my way