tive design the remainder
of the bottle ebbed away. He called my attention repeatedly to the
circumstance; helped me pointedly to the dregs, threw the bottle in the
air and played tricks with it; and at last, having exhausted his
ingenuity, and seeing me remain quite blind to every hint, he ordered
and paid for another himself.

As for the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke
occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be
doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind
courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. "Champdivers, my
lad, your health!" he would say. "The Major and I had a very arduous
march last night, and I positively thought I should have eaten nothing,
but your fortunate idea of the brandy has made quite a new man of
me--quite a new man." And he would fall to with a great air of
heartiness, cut himself a mouthful, and, before he had swallowed it,
would have forgotten his dinner, his company, the place where he then
was, and the escape he was engaged on, and become absorbed in the vision
of a sick-room and a dying girl in France. The pathos of this continual
pre-occupation, in a man so old, sick, and over-weary, and whom I looked
upon as a mere bundle of dying bones and death-pains, put me wholly
from my victuals: it seemed there was an element of sin, a kind of rude
bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food at the same table with
this tragic father; and though I was well enough used to the coarse,
plain diet of the English, I ate scarce more than himself. Dinner was
hardly over before he succumbed to a lethargic sleep; lying on one of
the mattresses with his limbs relaxed, and his breath seemingly
suspended--the very image of dissolution.

This left the Major and myself alone at the table. You must not suppose
our _tete-a-tete_ was long, but it was a lively period while it lasted.
He drank like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat the table, roared
out songs, quarrelled, made it up again, and at last tried to throw the
dinner-plates through the window, a feat of which he was at that time
quite incapable. For a party of fugitives, condemned to the most
rigorous discretion, there was never seen so noisy a carnival; and
through it all the Colonel continued to sleep like a child. Seeing the
Major so well advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a
foul one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and soon