with me; for he was seated opposite my father at the window-table in the
kitchen, their heads almost touching, and a little roll of gold pieces
between them. As I came in my father looked up at me, and I saw a light
of greed in his eyes such as I had never seen before. He caught up the
money with an eager clutch and swept it into his pocket.

"Very good, mister," said he; "the room's yours, and you pay always on
the third of the month."

"Ah! and here is my first friend," cried de Lapp, holding out his hand
to me with a smile which was kindly enough, and yet had that touch of
patronage which a man uses when he smiles to his dog. "I am myself
again now, thanks to my excellent supper and good night's rest. Ah! it
is hunger that takes the courage from a man. That most, and cold next."

"Aye, that's right," said my father; "I've been out on the moors in a
snow-drift for six-and-thirty hours, and ken what it's like."

"I once saw three thousand men starve to death," remarked de Lapp,
putting out his hands to the fire. "Day by day they got thinner and
more like apes, and they did come down to the edge of the pontoons where
we did keep them, and they howled with rage and pain. The first few
days their howls went over the whole city, but after a week our sentries
on the bank could not hear them, so weak they had fallen."

"And they died!" I exclaimed.

"They held out a very long time. Austrian Grenadiers they were, of the
corps of Starowitz, fine stout men as big as your friend of yesterday;
but when the town fell there were but four hundred alive, and a man