Two or three young Poles were in the shop.  Stanislas asked them for Allan Ramsay, and they replied that he was taking his evening meal upstairs, whereupon Charlie produced the letter from Colonel Jamieson, and Stanislas requested one of them to take it up to the merchant.  Three minutes later the inner door opened, and a tall man with a ruddy face and blue eyes entered, holding the open letter in his hand.  Charlie took a step forward to meet him.

“So you are Sandy Anderson,” he said heartily, with a merry twinkle in his eye, “my connection, it seems, and the friend of my dear classmate Jamieson?  Come upstairs.  Who is this Scotch-looking lad with you?”

“He is my servant and interpreter.  His grandfather was a Swede, and to him he owes his fair hair and complexion.  He is a Lithuanian.  He is to be trusted, I hope, thoroughly.  He was sent with me by—­”

“Never mind names,” the Scotchman said hastily.  “We will talk about him afterwards.  Now come upstairs.  Your letter has thrown me quite into a flutter.

“Never say anything in English before those Poles,” he said, as he left the shop; “the fellows pick up languages as easily as I can drink whisky, when I get the chance.  One of them has been with me two years, and it is quite likely he understands, at any rate, something of what is said.

“Here we are.”

He opened a door, and ushered Charlie into a large room, comfortably furnished.  His wife, a boy eight years of age, and a girl a year older, were seated at the table.

“Janet,” the merchant said, “this is Captain Carstairs, alias Sandy Anderson, a connection of ours, though I cannot say, for certain, of what degree.”

“What are you talking of, Allan?” she asked in surprise; for her husband, after opening and partly reading the letter, had jumped up and run off without saying a word.

“What I say, wife.  This gentleman is, for the present, Sandy Anderson, who has come out to learn the business and language, with the intent of some day entering into partnership with me; also, which is more to the point, he is a friend of my good friend Jock Jamieson, whom you remember well in the old days.”

“I am very glad, indeed, to see any friend of Jock Jamieson,” Janet Ramsay said warmly, holding out her hand to Charlie, “though I do not in the least understand what my husband is talking about, or what your name really is.”

“My name is Carstairs, madam.  I am a captain in the Swedish service, and am here on a mission for King Charles.  Colonel Jamieson, for he is now colonel of the regiment to which I belong—­”

“What!” the merchant exclaimed.  “Do you mean to say that our Jock Jamieson is a colonel?  Well, well, who would have thought he would have climbed the tree so quickly?”

“It is a regiment entirely of Scotch and Englishmen,” Charlie said; “and he was promoted, to take its command, only a short time since.”