At this my heart smote me.

‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ’think no more of what I have said!  A parole? what is a parole against life and death and love?  I ask your pardon; this gentleman’s also.  As long as I shall be with you, you shall not have cause to complain of me again.  I pray God you will find your daughter alive and restored.’

‘That is past praying for,’ said the Colonel; and immediately the brief fire died out of him, and, returning to the hearth, he relapsed into his former abstraction.

But I was not so easy to compose.  The knowledge of the poor gentleman’s trouble, and the sight of his face, had filled me with the bitterness of remorse; and I insisted upon shaking hands with the Major (which he did with a very ill grace), and abounded in palinodes and apologies.

‘After all,’ said I, ’who am I to talk?  I am in the luck to be a private soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am over the rampart, I am as free as air.  I beg you to believe that I regret from my soul the use of these ungenerous expressions.  Allow me . . .  Is there no way in this damned house to attract attention?  Where is this fellow, Fenn?’

I ran to one of the windows and threw it open.  Fenn, who was at the moment passing below in the court, cast up his arms like one in despair, called to me to keep back, plunged into the house, and appeared next moment in the doorway of the chamber.

‘Oh, sir!’ says he, ’keep away from those there windows.  A body might see you from the back lane.’

‘It is registered,’ said I.  ’Henceforward I will be a mouse for precaution and a ghost for invisibility.  But in the meantime, for God’s sake, fetch us a bottle of brandy!  Your room is as damp as the bottom of a well, and these gentlemen are perishing of cold.’

So soon as I had paid him (for everything, I found, must be paid in advance), I turned my attention to the fire, and whether because I threw greater energy into the business, or because the coals were now warmed and the time ripe, I soon started a blaze that made the chimney roar again.  The shine of it, in that dark, rainy day, seemed to reanimate the Colonel like a blink of sun.  With the outburst of the flames, besides, a draught was established, which immediately delivered us from the plague of smoke; and by the time Fenn returned, carrying a bottle under his arm and a single tumbler in his hand, there was already an air of gaiety in the room that did the heart good.

I poured out some of the brandy.

‘Colonel,’ said I, ’I am a young man and a private soldier.  I have not been long in this room, and already I have shown the petulance that belongs to the one character and the ill manners that you may look for in the other.  Have the humanity to pass these slips over, and honour me so far as to accept this glass.’

‘My lad,’ says he, waking up and blinking at me with an air of suspicion, ‘are you sure you can afford it?’