“Captain Nikolitch, from Colonel Petrosch.”
I uttered an involuntary exclamation of delight. My visitor was a man who had been my close and intimate friend in that past time in the Balkans; and coming as he did from Colonel Petrosch, he was just the man of all others able to help me. No one could have been more welcome at such a juncture.
“Show him right here, Buller,” I said, gleefully, standing up to welcome him cordially.
The pendulum had swung right over suddenly and the luck was once again on my side.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ARMY’S PLANS.
Nikolitch was as glad to meet me as I to welcome him, and our mutual greeting was very warm and cordial.
“I could scarcely believe it was really you, Bergwyn,” he said, when we were through with the hand-shaking and had lighted our cigars. “That was why I wrote on my card that I came from Colonel Petrosch. I can scarcely believe it now, I think;” and he smiled. He was a year or so older than I; a fair, handsome, frank-faced fellow with a winning manner and a delightful smile.
“It’s a bit like a fairy tale, perhaps. How did you hear of me?”
“What a question, my dear fellow, when you’re the centre of financial attraction just now in half a dozen circles. And do you mean to tell me you’re a millionaire? Why, in those jolly old days you were as poor as I was and, worse luck, still am.”
“They were jolly old days, weren’t they? I am just delighted to see you again. Yes, I’m a millionaire; and if you’d done as I wanted you to then, gone out with me to the States, you would be one too. I had a toughish time of it for a year or two; and it was all luck at the end. Nothing else. I got hold of a mine which had broken the hearts of the men who had been working it with me. When they gave up in despair I got it for next to nothing and held on; and inside a month came on the gold by pure accident just where we hadn’t looked for it. My perseverance had paid me and I stepped out of the mine that day as rich as a man need wish to be. That’s all.”