"Yes; what do you want?" the answer came more curt than courteous.
"What do I want?" the fellow repeated with a broad smile. "Now that's good! Perhaps it would be more to the point to ask what do you want? And here," indicating a loaf and jug in his hand, "I've got them, though why the commandant should have cared, and ordered them brought—"
"He did?" said the prisoner, with a flash of quick surprise. "Well, I'm not hungry, but you can leave them."
"Not hungry?" And the soldier, who seemed a little the worse for liquor, but more friendly in consequence, walked in. "I don't wonder, though," he went on, closing the door, hanging his lantern above and placing the jug on the ground; "in such a foul hole! What you need, comrade, is company, and," touching significantly his breast, "something warmer than flows from the spring of St. Aubert."
"I tell you," began the mountebank, when the soldier, staring, got a fair look at the other for the first time and started back.
"Eh? What's this?"
"Oh, I took them off! You don't suppose I'd sleep in my white clothes in such a dirty—"
"Right you are, comrade!" returned the other, seating himself before the door on a three-legged stool he found in a corner. "But for the moment you gave me a start. I thought you some other person."
"What—person?"
"No one in particular. You might," unbuttoning his coat to draw forth a bottle, "have been any one! But I dare say you have had them off in worse places than this—which, after all, is not bad, compared to some of the rooms for guests at the Mount!"