“That’s right! Pretty strongly braced up, eh?”
“Quite so!”
“Glad to know it. Able to bear a pretty severe shock?”
“I do not know. What do you mean?” exclaimed Justin, uneasily.
“Because I shall have to give you a devil of a shock presently.”
“In the name of Heaven what has happened? Have you any ill news of my friends?” anxiously inquired Colonel Rosenthal.
“No,” said Monck, coolly replacing the cigar in his mouth and drawing the end of it into a bright coal. “No; no ill news of your friends! ill news for your friends, however?”
“What do you mean, Major Monck?”
“Colonel Rosenthal, you are a brave man?” said Monck, semi-interrogatively.
“My friends think so.”