to pick up Swedish.  Then some people told me that Russia was a place where a doctor might get on, for that they had got no doctors for their army who knew anything of surgery, and the czar was always ready to take on foreigners who could teach them anything.  I had got my diploma with me, and some of my friends came forward and subscribed enough to rig me out in clothes and pay my passage.  What was better, one of them happened to have made the acquaintance of Le Ford, who was, as you may have heard, the czar’s most intimate friend.

“I wished myself back a hundred times before I reached Moscow, but when I did, everything was easy for me.  Le Ford introduced me to the czar, and I was appointed surgeon of a newly-raised regiment, of which Le Ford was colonel.  That was eight years ago, and I am now a sort of surgeon general of a division, and am at the head of the hospitals about here.  Till the war began I had not, for five years, done any military work, but had been at the head of a college the czar has established for training surgeons for the army.  I was only sent down here after that business at Narva.

“So, you see, I have fallen on my feet.  The czar’s is a good service, and we employ a score or two of Scotchmen, most of them in good posts.  He took to them because a Scotchman, General Gordon, and other foreign officers, rescued him from his sister Sophia, who intended to assassinate him, and established him firmly on the throne of his father.

“It is a pity you are not on this side.  Perhaps it isn’t too late to change, eh?”

Charlie laughed.

“My father is in Sweden, and my company is commanded by a man who is as good as a father to me, and his son is like my brother.  If there were no other reason, I could not change.  Why, it was only yesterday I was sitting round a bivouac fire with King Charles, and nothing would induce me to fight against him.”

“I am not going to try to persuade you.  The czar has treated me well, and I love him.  By the way, I have not given you my name after all.  It’s Terence Kelly.”

“Is not the czar very fierce and cruel?”

“Bedad, I would be much more cruel and fierce if I were in his place.  Just think of one man, with all Russia on his shoulders.  There is he trying to improve the country, working like a horse himself, knowing that, like every other Russian, he is as ignorant as a pig, and setting to improve himself—­working in the dockyards of Holland and England, attending lectures, and all kinds of subjects.  Why, man, he learnt anatomy, and can take off a leg as quickly as I can.  He is building a fleet and getting together an army.  It is not much good yet, you will say, but it will be some day.  You can turn a peasant into a soldier in six months, but it takes a long time to turn out generals and officers who are fit for their work.

“Then, while he is trying everywhere to improve his country, every man jack of them objects to being improved, and wants to go along in his old ways.  Didn’t they get up an insurrection, only because he wanted them to cut off their beards?  Any other man would have lost heart, and given it up years ago.  It looks as hopeless a task as for a mouse to drag a mountain, but he is doing it.