this lady might have had something to do with the ravishment of the
letter. Great laughter surrounded him, and he looked from man to man.
Allowance is naturally made for the irascibility of a brother officer
coming tattered out of the hands of enemies, or Lieutenant Jenna would
have construed his eye's challenge on the spot. As it was, he cried out,
'The letter! the letter! Charge, for the honour of the army, and rescue
the letter!' Others echoed him: 'The letter! the letter! the English
letter!' A foreigner in an army can have as much provocation as he
pleases; if he is anything of a favourite with his superiors, his
fellows will task his forbearance. Wilfrid Pierson glanced at the blade
of his sword, and slowly sheathed it. 'Lieutenant Jenna is a good actor
before a mob,' he said. 'Gentlemen, I rely upon you to make no noise
about that letter; it is a private matter. In an hour or so, if any
officer shall choose to question me concerning it, I will answer him.'

The last remnants of the mob had withdrawn. The officer in command at
the gates threw a cloak over Wilfrid's shoulders; and taking the arm of
a friend Wilfrid hurried to barracks, and was quickly in a position to
report himself to his General, whose first remark, 'Has the dead horse
been removed?' robbed him of his usual readiness to equivocate. 'When
you are the bearer of a verbal despatch, come straight to quarters,
if you have to come like a fig-tree on the north side of the wall in
Winter,' said General Schoneck, who was joined presently by General
Pierson.

'What 's this I hear of some letter you have been barking about all
over the city?' the latter asked, after returning his nephew's on-duty
salute.

Wilfrid replied that it was a letter of his sister's treating of family
matters.

The two Generals, who were close friends, discussed the attack to which
he had been subjected. Wilfrid had to recount it with circumstance: how,
as he was nearing General Schoneck's quarters at a military trot, six
men headed by a leader had dashed out on him from a narrow side-street,
unhorsed him after a struggle, rifled the saddlebags, and torn the coat
from his back, and had taken the mark of his sword, while a gathering
crowd looked on, hooting. His horse had fled, and he confessed that he
had followed his horse. General Schoneck spoke the name of Countess Lena
suggestively. 'Not a bit,' returned General Pierson; 'the fellow courts
her too hotly. The scoundrels here w