“Well, so it is, sir,” he replied; “but it's better than nothing, and it's about all we poor folks can afford, sir.”
“Did you ever taste Scotch whiskey?” I asked him. He smiled a slow smile as if he remembered something pleasing.
“Why, yes, sir, I have, sir, and I won't deceive you.”
“Come to my room,” I said, “and I'll give you as good a glass as you ever tasted in your life.”
He set down his glass of sour wine on the table with an emphatic quickness, and his soldierly tread sounded behind me in the uncarpeted passage and up the bare deal steps. When he came to my room I bade him sit down, but he remained standing, and I had to give the invitation as an order before he would obey it. Then he sat like a figure carved in wood, with his shoulders back, his head well up, a hand on either knee, and a face as expressionless as the back of his head. I got my flask out of my knapsack, and with it a little collapsible cup of silver, found the water-bottle, and set everything before him.
“Help yourself!” He took a thimbleful. “Help yourself, man!” He took another thimbleful. I seized the flask from his hand and poured him enough for a good tumbler. “Now, there's the water; help yourself to that.”
He obeyed, and tasted the mixture with a solemn satisfaction.
“My friend, Lieutenant Breschia, tells me,” I said then, for by this time I had made up my mind how to begin with him, “that you are constantly breaking the rules of the fortress. He tells me that you have been giving the prisoners tobacco.”
“That's a fact, sir,” he admitted.
“Give them some more,” I said, “first chance you get.” I laid a gold coin on the table before him, and sat down in front of him. “I'd give some of the poor beggars something better than tobacco if I had my way.”