or his lawyer.

"But, Colonel, you are dreadfully uncomfortable here!"

The speech was wrung from Derville by the distrust natural to lawyers,
and the deplorable experience which they derive early in life from the
appalling and obscure tragedies at which they look on.

"Here," said he to himself, "is a man who has of course spent my money
in satisfying a trooper's three theological virtues--play, wine, and
women!"

"To be sure, monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury here. It is
a camp lodging, tempered by friendship, but----" And the soldier shot a
deep glance at the man of law--"I have done no one wrong, I have never
turned my back on anybody, and I sleep in peace."

Derville reflected that there would be some want of delicacy in asking
his client to account for the sums of money he had advanced, so he
merely said:

"But why would you not come to Paris, where you might have lived as
cheaply as you do here, but where you would have been better lodged?"

"Why," replied the Colonel, "the good folks with whom I am living had
taken me in and fed me _gratis_ for a year. How could I leave them just
when I had a little money? Besides, the father of those three pickles is
an old _Egyptian_--"

"An Egyptian!"

"We give that name to the troopers who came back from the expedition
into Egypt, of which I was one. Not merely are all who get back
brothers; Vergniaud was in my regiment. We have shared a draught of
water in the desert; and besides, I have not yet finished teaching his
brats to read."

"He might have lodged you better for your money," said Derville.

"Bah!" said the Colonel, "his children sleep on the straw as I do. He
and his wife have no better bed; they are very poor you see. They
have taken a bigger business than they can manage. But if I recover my
fortune... However, it does very well."

"Colonel, to-morrow or the next day, I shall receive your papers from
Heilsberg. The woman who dug you out is still alive!"

"Curse the money! To think I haven't got any!" he cried, flinging his
pipe on the ground.

Now, a well-colored pipe is to a smoker a precious possession; but the
impulse was so natural, the emotion so generous, that every smoker, and
the excise office itself, would have pardoned this crime of treason to
tobacco. Perhaps the angels may have picked up the pieces.

"Colonel, it is an exceedingly complicated business," said Derville as
they left the room to walk up and down in the sunshi