n the lock.

For an hour of utter misery, chilled in body and soul, I sat upon a pile
of fagots, my face sunk upon my hands and my mind full of the saddest
thoughts. It was cold enough within those four walls, but I thought of
the sufferings of my poor troopers outside, and I sorrowed with their
sorrow. Then. I paced up and down, and I clapped my hands together and
kicked my feet against the walls to keep them from being frozen. The
lamp gave out some warmth, but still it was bitterly cold, and I had had
no food since morning. It seemed to me that everyone had forgotten me,
but at last I heard the key turn in the lock, and who should enter but
my prisoner of the morning, Captain Alexis Barakoff. A bottle of wine
projected from under his arm, and he carried a great plate of hot stew
in front of him.

"Hush!" said he; "not a word! Keep up your heart! I cannot stop to
explain, for Sergine is still with us. Keep awake and ready!" With these
hurried words he laid down the welcome food and ran out of the room.

"Keep awake and ready!" The words rang in my ears. I ate my food and
I drank my wine, but it was neither food nor wine which had warmed the
heart within me. What could those words of Barakoff mean?

Why was I to remain awake? For what was I to be ready? Was it possible
that there was a chance yet of escape? I have never respected the man
who neglects his prayers at all other times and yet prays when he is in
peril. It is like a bad soldier who pays no respect to the colonel save
when he would demand a favour of him. And yet when I thought of the
salt-mines of Siberia on the one side and of my mother in France upon
the other, I could not help a prayer rising, not from my lips, but from
my heart, that the words of Barakoff might mean all that I hoped. But
hour after hour struck upon the village clock, and still I heard nothing
save the call of the Russian sentries in the street outside.

Then at last my heart leaped within me, for I heard a light step in the
passage. An instant later the key turned, the door opened, and Sophie
was in the room.

"Monsieur--" she cried.

"Etienne," said I.

"Nothing will change you," said she. "But is it possible that you do not
hate me? Have you forgiven me the trick which I played you?"

"What trick?" I asked.

"Good heavens! Is it possible that even now you have not understood it?
You have asked me to translate the despatch. I have told you that it
meant, 'If the French come