“Put the question as I direct you,” interrupted the general, abruptly.  “What we want is information; it must be got by any means.”

“Yes, I will go,” the prisoner promised, joining his hands with a gesture as if taking an oath; “and I would return this very night; you shall have the exact numbers; shall know the road they are coming, when to expect them—­all.”

“Let him loose, then,” said the general; “but warn him, if he plays us false, that he had better not fall into our clutches again.”

“You may trust him not to do that, sir,” said McKay, rather discontented at seeing his prisoner so easily set free.

The general ignored the remark, but he was evidently displeased at its tone, for he now turned sharply on McKay, saying—­

“As regards you—­how comes it you speak Russian?”

“I was born in Moscow.”

“Of Russian parents?”

“My father was a Pole by birth, but by extraction a Scotchman.”

“What is your name?”

“McKay—­Stanislas Anastasius Wilders McKay.”

“Ah!  Stanislas; I understand that.  But how is it you were christened Wilders?  And Anastasius, too—­that is a family name, I think.  Are you related to Lord Essendine?—­a Wilders, in fact?”

“Yes, sir, by my mother’s side.”

“And yet you have taken the Queen’s shilling!  Strange!  But it is no business of mine.  Young scapegrace, I suppose—­”

“My character is as good as—­” “yours,” McKay would have said, but his reverence for the general’s rank restrained him.  “I enlisted because I could not enter the British army and be a soldier in any other way.”

“With your friends’—­your relatives’—­approval?”

“With my mother’s, certainly; and of those nearest me.”

“Do you know General Wilders—­here in the Crimea, I mean?”

“My regiment is in his brigade.”

“Yes, yes!  I am aware of that.  But have you made yourself known to him, I mean?”

The young sergeant-major knew that his gallantry at the Alma had won him his general’s approval, but he was too modest to refer to that episode.

“I have never claimed the relationship, sir,” he answered, simply, but with proud reticence; “it would not have beseemed my position.”

“Your sentiments do you credit, young man.  That will do; you can continue your march.  Good-day!”

They parted; McKay and his men went on to Balaclava, the general towards the Second Division camp.

“Curious meeting, that, Shadwell,” said Sir Colin.  “If I come across Wilders I shall tell him the story.  He might like to do his young relative—­a smart soldier evidently, or he would not be a sergeant-major so early—­a good turn.”

CHAPTER XIII.

“NOT WAR!”