and yet had that touch of
patronage which a man uses when he smiles to his dog. "I am myself
again now, thanks to my excellent supper and good night's rest. Ah! it
is hunger that takes the courage from a man. That most, and cold next."

"Aye, that's right," said my father; "I've been out on the moors in a
snow-drift for six-and-thirty hours, and ken what it's like."

"I once saw three thousand men starve to death," remarked de Lapp,
putting out his hands to the fire. "Day by day they got thinner and
more like apes, and they did come down to the edge of the pontoons where
we did keep them, and they howled with rage and pain. The first few
days their howls went over the whole city, but after a week our sentries
on the bank could not hear them, so weak they had fallen."

"And they died!" I exclaimed.

"They held out a very long time. Austrian Grenadiers they were, of the
corps of Starowitz, fine stout men as big as your friend of yesterday;
but when the town fell there were but four hundred alive, and a man
could lift them three at a time as if they were little monkeys. It was
a pity. Ah! my friend, you will do me the honours with madame and with
mademoiselle."

It was my mother and Edie who had come into the kitchen. He had not
seen them the night before, but now it was all I could do to keep my
face as I watched him; for instead of our homely Scottish nod, he bent
up his back like a louping trout, and slid his foot, and clapped his
hand over his heart in the queerest way. My mother stared, for she
thought he was making fun of her; but Cousin Edie fell into it in an
instant, as though it had been a game, and away she went in a great
curtsy until I thought she would have had to give it up, and sit down
right there in the middle of the kitchen floor. But no, she up again as
light as a piece of fluff, and we all drew up our stools and started on
the scones and milk and porridge.

He had a wonderful way with women, that man. Now if I were to do it,
or Jim Horscroft, it would look as if we were playing the fool, and the
girls would have laughed at us; but with him it seemed to go with his
style of face and fashion of speech, so that one came at last to look
for it: for when he spoke to my mother or Cousin Edie--and he was never
backward in speaking--it would always be with a bow and a look as if it
would hardly be worth their while to listen to what he had to say, and
when they answered he would put on a