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“Halt!” he shouted; and Captain Pond shouted “Halt!” too, adding, “There’ll be heaps of time to run when we find out what’s the matter.”

The Die-hards hung, still wavering, upon the edge of the platform.

“For my part,” the Doctor declared, “I don’t believe there’s anybody inside.”

“But there is, Doctor! for I saw him myself just as Uncle Issy called out,” said the second lieutenant.

“Was it only one man that you saw?” demanded Captain Pond.

“That’s all. You see, it was this way: Uncle Issy stepped fore, with me a couple of paces behind him thinking of nothing so little as bloodshed and danger. If you’ll believe me, these things was the very last in my thoughts. Uncle Issy rolls aside the powder-cask, and what do I behold but a man ducking down behind it! ‘He’s firing the powder,’ thinks I, ‘and here endeth William George Clogg!’ So I shut my eyes, not willing to see my gay life whisked away in little portions; though I feared it must come. And then I felt Uncle Issy flee past me like the wind. But I kept my eyes tight till I heard the Doctor here saying there wasn’t anybody inside. If you ask me what I think about the whole matter, I say, putting one thing with another, that ’tis most likely some poor chap taking shelter from the rain.”

Captain Pond unsheathed his sword and advanced to the door of the hut. “Whoever you be,” he called aloud and firmly, “you’ve got no business there; so come out of it, in the name of King George!”

At once there appeared in the doorway a little round-headed man in tattered and mud-soiled garments of blue cloth. His hair and beard were alike short, black, and stubbly; his eyes large and feverish, his features smeared with powder and a trifle pinched and pale. In his left hand he carried a small bundle, wrapped in a knotted blue kerchief: his right he waved submissively towards Captain Pond.

“See now,” he began, “I give up. I am taken. Look you.”

“I think you must be a Frenchman,” said Captain Pond.

“Right. It is war: you have taken a Frenchman. Yes?”

“A spy?” the Captain demanded more severely.

“An escaped prisoner, more like,” suggested the Doctor; “broken out of Dartmoor, and hiding there for a chance to slip across.”

“Monsieur le Lieutenant has guessed,” the little man answered, turning affably to the Doctor. “A spy? No. It is not on purpose that I find me near your fortifications–oh, not a bit! A prisoner more like, as Monsieur says. It is three days that I was a prisoner, and now look here, a prisoner again. Alas! will Monsieur le Capitaine do me the honour to confide the name of his corps so gallant?”

“The Two Looes.”

“La Toulouse! But it is singular that we also have a Toulouse–“

“Hey?” broke in Second Lieutenant Clogg.

“I assure Monsieur that I say the truth.”

“Well, go on; only it don’t sound natural.”

“Not that I have seen it”–(“Ha!” commented Mr. Clogg)–“for it lies in the south, and I am from the north: Jean Alphonse Marie Trinquier, instructor of music, Rue de la Madeleine quatr ‘-vingt-neuf, Dieppe.”

“Instructor of music?” echoed Captain Pond and the Doctor quickly and simultaneously, and their eyes met.

“And Directeur des Fetes Periodiques to the Municipality of Dieppe. All the Sundays, you comprehend, upon the sands–poum poum! while the citizens se promenent sur la plage. But all is not gay in this world. Last winter a terrible misfortune befell me. I lost my wife–my adored Philomene. I was desolated, inconsolable. For two months I could not take up my cornet-a-piston. Always when I blew–pouf!–the tears came also. Ah, what memories! Hippolyte, my– what you call it–my beau-frere, came to me and said, ‘Jean Alphonse, you must forget.’ I say, ‘Hippolyte, you ask that which is impossible.’ ‘I will teach you,’ says Hippolyte: ‘To-morrow night I sail for Jersey, and from Jersey I cross to Dartmouth, in England, and you shall come with me.’ Hippolyte made his living by what you call the Free Trade. This was far down the coast for him, but he said the business with Rye and Deal was too dangerous for a time. Next night we sailed. It was his last voyage. With the morning the wind changed, and we drove into a fog. When we could see again, peste!–there was an English frigate. She sent down her cutter and took the rest of us; but not Hippolyte–poor Hippolyte was shot in the spine of his back. Him they cast into the sea, but the rest of us they take to Plymouth, and then the War Prison on the moor. This was in May, and there I rest until three days ago. Then I break out–je me sauve. How? It is my affair: for I foresee, Messieurs, I shall now have to do it over again. I am sot. I gain the coast here at night. I am weary, je n’en puis plus. I find this cassine here: the door is open: I enter pour faire un petit somme. Before day I will creep down to the shore. A comrade in the prison said to me, ‘Go to Looe. I know a good Cornishman there–‘”