Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/53

 assumption, partly to conceal the degree of curiosity with which my visitor had inspired me, and in part because it struck me as highly incongruous and comical in my prison garb and on the lips of a private soldier.

He seemed to think so too, for he laughed.

"No, sir," he returned, speaking this time in English; "I am not 'born,' as you call it, and must content myself with dying, of which I am equally susceptible with the best of you. My name is Mr. Romaine—Daniel Romaine—a solicitor of London City, at your service; and, what will perhaps interest you more, I am here at the request of your great-uncle, the Count."

"What!" I cried, "does M. de Kéroual de Saint-Yves remember the existence of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count kinship with a soldier of Napoleon?"

"You speak English well," observed my visitor.

"It has been a second language to me from a child," said I. "I had an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr. Vicary."

A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer's face.

"What!" he cried, "you knew poor Vicary?"

"For more than a year," said I; "and shared his hiding-place for many months."

"And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business," said he. "Excellent man! It was on the affairs of M. de Kéroual that he went to that accursed country, from which he was never destined to return. Do you chance to know his end, sir?"

"I am sorry," said I, "I do. He perished miserably at the hands of a gang of banditti, such as we call chauffeurs. In a word, he was tortured, and died of it. See," I added, kicking off one shoe, for I had no stocking; "I was no