If you or I, dressed like a beggar who years ago had stolen regimentals and worn them down to civil garments, had addressed these soldiers with these very same words, the bayonets would have kissed closer, or perhaps the points been turned against our sacred and rusty person:  but there is a freemasonry of the sword.  The light, imperious hand that touched that battered cap, and the quiet clear tone of command told.  The sentinels slowly recovered their pieces, but still looked uneasy and doubtful in their minds.  The battered one saw this, and gave a sort of lofty smile; he turned up his cuffs and showed his wrists, and drew himself still higher.

The sentinels shouldered their pieces sharp, then dropped them simultaneously with a clatter and ring upon the pavement.

“Pass, captain.”

The rusty figure rang the governor’s bell.  A servant came and eyed him with horror and contempt.  He gave his name, and begged to see the governor.  The servant left him in the hall, and went up-stairs to tell his master.  At the name the governor reflected, then frowned, then bade his servant reach him down a certain book.  He inspected it.  “I thought so:  any one with him?”

“No, your excellency.”

“Load my pistols, put them on the table, show him in, and then order a guard to the door.”

The governor was a stern veteran with a powerful brow, a shaggy eyebrow, and a piercing eye.  He never rose, but leaned his chin on his hand, and his elbow on a table that stood between them, and eyed his visitor very fixedly and strangely.  “We did not expect to see you on this side the Pyrenees,” said he gravely.

“Nor I myself, governor.”

“What do you come for?”

“A suit of regimentals, and money to take me to Paris.”

“And suppose, instead of that, I turn out a corporal’s guard, and bid them shoot you in the courtyard?”

“It would be the drollest thing you ever did, all things considered,” said the other coolly, but bitterly.

The governor looked for the book he had lately consulted, found the page, handed it to the rusty officer, and watched him keenly:  the blood rushed all over his face, and his lip trembled; but his eye dwelt stern yet sorrowful on the governor.

“I have read your book, now read mine.”  He drew off his coat and showed his wrists and arms, blue and waled.  “Can you read that, sir?”

“No.”

“All the better for you:  Spanish fetters, general.”  He showed a white scar on his shoulder.  “Can you read that?  This is what I cut out of it,” and he handed the governor a little round stone as big and almost as regular as a musket-ball.

“Humph! that could hardly have been fired from a French musket.”

“Can you read this?” and he showed him a long cicatrix on his other arm.

“Knife I think,” said the governor.

“You are right, sir:  Spanish knife.  Can you read this?” and opening his bosom he showed a raw wound on his breast.