“What of that? Besides, you may win back another castle.”
“And you may find another dog.”
The old man shook his head.
“I may find another dog, but I shall never find my poor Drake.”
He paused; great tears gathered in his eyes and rolled one by one down
his hard, stern face.
“He was all I ever had to love,” he added; “I never knew my parents. God
grant them peace, and my poor Drake too! Lieutenant Randmer, he saved my
life in the Pomeranian war. I called him Drake in honor of the famous
admiral. My good dog! He never changed, as did my fortunes. After the
battle of Oholfen, the great General Schack patted him, and said:
‘You’ve a fine dog there, Sergeant Lory!’--for I was only a sergeant
then.”
“Ah!” interrupted the young baron, slashing his switch, “how queer it
must seem to be a sergeant.”
The old soldier of fortune did not hear him; he appeared to be talking
to himself, and Randmer could only catch a word here and there.
“Poor Drake! After surviving so many breaches and trenches, to be
drowned like a blind kitten in that confounded Throndhjem fjord! My poor
dog! my trusty friend! You deserved to die on the field of battle, as I
hope to do.”
“Come, come, Captain!” cried the lieutenant, “how can you be so
despondent? We may get a chance to fight to-morrow.”
“Yes,” contemptuously answered the old captain, “with a pretty enemy!”
“What! do you despise those rascally miners, those devilish
mountaineers?”
“Stone-cutters, highwaymen, fellows who don’t know the first rudiments
of warfare! A fine set of blackguards to face a man like me, who has
served in all the wars in Pomerania and Holstein, in the campaigns of
Scania and Dalecarlia; who fought under the glorious General Schack and
the brave Count Guldenlew!”
“But don’t you know,” interrupted Randmer, “that these fellows are led
by a formidable chief,--a giant as big and as brutal as Goliath, a
rascal who drinks nothing but human blood, a very Satan incarnate?”
“And who may he be?” asked the captain.
“Why, the famous Hans of Iceland!”
“Pooh! I’ll wager that this great general does not know how to shoulder
a musket or handle a carbine properly.”
Randmer laughed.
“Yes, you may laugh,” continued the captain. “It will be very funny, no
doubt, to cross swords with scurvy pickaxes, and pikes with pitchforks!
Here are worthy foes indeed! My brave Drake would have scorned to snap
at their heels!”
The captain was still giving free vent to his indignation, when he was
interrupted by the arrival of an officer, who ran up to them all out of
breath,--
“Captain Lory! my dear Randmer!”
“Well?” asked both at once.
“My friends, I am faint with horror! D’Ahlefeld, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld,
the lord chancellor’s son! You know, my dear Randmer, that
Frederic--such a dandy! such a fop!”
“Yes,” replied the young baron, “a great dandy! Still, at the last ball
at Charlottenburg my costume was in much better taste than his. But what
has happened to him?”
“I know whom you mean,” said Lory; “you mean Frederic d’Ahlefeld,
lieutenant of Company Three. The men wear blue facings. He neglects his
duty sadly.”
“You will not have to complain of him again, Captain Lory.”
“Why not?” said Randmer.
“He is garrisoned at Wahlstrom,” coldly added the old officer.
“Exactly,” said the new-comer; “the colonel has just received a message.
Poor Frederic!”
“But what has happened? Captain Bollar, you alarm me.”
Old Lory added: “Nonsense! The popinjay was absent from roll-call, I
suppose, and the captain has sent the lord chancellor’s son to prison:
that is the misfortune which distresses you so sadly; I am sure it is.”
Bollar clapped him on the shoulder.
“Captain Lory, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld has been devoured alive.”
The two captains looked each other in the face; and Randmer, startled
for an instant, suddenly burst out laughing.
“Oh, Captain Bollar, I see you are as fond of a joke as ever! But you
can’t fool me in that way, I warn you.”
And the lieutenant, folding his arms, gave way to mirth, swearing that
what amused him the most was to see how readily Lory swallowed all
Bollar’s ridiculous stories. As for the story, he said it was a capital
one; and it was a most clever idea to pretend that Frederic, who took
such dainty, such absurd care of his complexion, had been swallowed raw.
“Randmer,” said Bollar, seriously, “you act like a fool. I tell you
d’Ahlefeld is dead; I have it from the colonel,--dead!”
“Oh, how well you play your part!” rejoined the baron, still laughing;
“what a funny fellow you are!”
Bollar shrugged his shoulders, and turned to old Lory, who quietly asked
the particulars.
“Oh, yes, my dear Captain Bollar,” added the irrepressible mocker; “tell
us who ate the poor devil. Did he serve as breakfast for a wolf, or
supper for a bear?”
“The colonel,” said Bollar, “received a despatch just now, informing
him, in the first place, that the Wahlstrom garrison is retreating
toward us, driven back by a large party of rebels.”
Old Lory frowned.
“In the second place,” resumed Bollar, “that Lieutenant Frederic
d’Ahlefeld, having gone into the mountains three days since to hunt, was
captured near Arbar ruins by a monster, who carried him to his lair and
there devoured him.”
At this, Lieutenant Randmer’s merriment increased.
“Oh, how our good Lory swallows your stories! That’s right; keep up a
sober face, Bollar. You are wonderfully amusing; but you don’t tell us
what this monster, this ogre, this vampire was, that carried off and ate
up the lieutenant like a week-old kid!”
“I will not tell you,” impatiently answered Bollar; “but I will tell
Lory, who is not such an incredulous fool. Lory, my dear fellow, the
monster who drank Frederic’s blood was Hans of Iceland.”
“The leader of the rebels!” exclaimed the old officer.
“Well, Lory,” rejoined the scoffer, “do you think a man who handles his
jaw so ably needs to know how to shoulder a musket?”
“Baron Randmer,” said Bollar, “you are very like d’Ahlefeld in
character; beware lest you meet with the same fate.”
“I declare,” cried Randmer, “that Captain Bollar’s immovable gravity
amuses me beyond expression.”
“And Lieutenant Randmer’s inexhaustible laughter alarms me more than I
can say.”
At this moment a group of officers, engaged in eager conversation,
approached our three speakers.
“Zounds!” cried Randmer, “I must amuse them with Bollar’s story.”
“Comrades,” he added, advancing to meet them; “have you heard the news?
Poor Frederic d’Ahlefeld has been eaten alive by the barbarous Hans of
Iceland.”
As he said these words, he could not repress a burst of laughter, which,
to his great surprise, was received by the new-comers almost with shouts
of indignation.
“What! can you laugh? I did not think, Randmer, that you would repeat
such a dreadful piece of news so lightly. How can you laugh at such a
misfortune?”
“What!” said Randmer, much confused, “is it really true?”
“Why, you just told us of it yourself!” was the general cry. “Don’t you
believe your own words?”
“But I thought it was one of Bollar’s jokes.”
An old officer interposed.
“Such a joke would be in very bad taste; but unfortunately it is no
joke. Baron Vœthaün, our colonel, has just received the sad news.”
“A fearful affair! It is really awful!” repeated a dozen voices.
“So we are to fight wolves and bears with human faces,” said one.
“We are to be shot down,” said another, “without knowing whence the
bullet comes; we are to be picked off one by one, like birds in a cage.”
“D’Ahlefeld’s death,” said Bollar, in a solemn tone, “makes me shudder.
Our regiment is unlucky. Dispolsen’s murder, that of those poor soldiers
found dead at Cascadthymore, d’Ahlefeld’s awful fate,--here are three
tragic events in a very short space of time.”
Young Baron Randmer, who had been silent, looked up.
“It is incredible,” said he; “Frederic, who danced so well!”
And after this weighty remark he relapsed into silence, while Captain
Lory declared that he was greatly distressed at the young lieutenant’s
death, and drew the attention of private Toric-Belfast to the fact that
the brass clasp of his shoulder-belt was not so bright as usual.