246 A JACOBITE EXILE

“T do not know, count, whether my avowal will affect
you unfavourably, but I know that it will make no difference
in your conduct towards me. Iam, as my servant told you,
an Englishman by birth; but I and my father were obliged,
in consequence of political opinions, to leave the country,
and I am now a captain in the service of Charles of
Sweden.” Exclamations of surprise broke from his hearers.

“Well, sir,” the count said smiling, ‘as his majesty King
Charles, although not yet one-and-twenty, is one of the
greatest generals in Europe, I cannot consider it strange
that you, who appear to me to be no older, should be a
captain in his service. But I own that I pictured to myself
that the officers of these wonderful soldiers were fierce-
looking men, regular iron veterans.”

“Tam but eighteen,” Charlie said, “and I myself feel it
absurd that I should bea captain. It is but two years since
I was appointed an ensign, and the king happening to be
with my company when we had a sharp fight with the Rus-
sians, he rewarded us by having us made into a regiment;
so each of us got promotion. I was appointed captain last
May, as a reward for a suggestion that turned out useful.”

“May I ask what it was, Captain Carstairs, for it seems
to me that you are full of happy ideas?”

“King Charles, as you may have heard, speaks freely to
officers and soldiers as he moves about the camp. I was
standing on the edge of the river, looking across at the
Saxons, on the day before we made the passage, when the
king came up and spoke to me. He said there was no
hope of our passage being covered, —as our advance against
the Russians at Narva had been,—by a snowstorm; and I
said that as the wind was at our backs, if we were to set fire
to the great straw-stacks the smoke would hide our move-
ments from the Saxons. The idea was a very simple one,
and would no doubt have occurred to the king himself;
however, he put it into execution with success, and was