"But tell me, Prince, why this request? Have you any evil forebodings as
to yourself?'

"Not in the least; I was thinking of my people. They have no idea where
I am,' answered Prince Roman. 'I'll engage to do as much for you, if you
like. It's certain that half of us at least shall be killed before the
end, so there's an even chance of one of us surviving the other.'

"My grandfather told him where, as he supposed, his wife and children
were then. From that moment till the end of the siege the two were much
together. On the day of the great assault my grandfather received a
severe wound. The town was taken. Next day the citadel itself, its
hospital full of dead and dying, its magazines empty, its defenders
having burnt their last cartridge, opened its gates.

"During all the campaign the Prince, exposing his person conscientiously
on every occasion, had not received a scratch. No one had recognized him
or at any rate had betrayed his identity. Till then, as long as he did
his duty, it had mattered nothing who he was.

"Now, however, the position was changed. As ex-guardsman and as late
ordnance officer to the Emperor, this rebel ran a serious risk of being
given special attention in the shape of a firing squad at ten paces. For
more than a month he remained lost in the miserable crowd of prisoners
packed in the casemates of the citadel, with just enough food to
keep body and soul together but otherwise allowed to die from wounds,
privation, and disease at the rate of forty or so a day.

"The position of the fortress being central, new parties, captured in
the open in the course of a thorough pacification, were being sent in