Exclamations of surprise broke from his hearers.
"Well, sir," the count said, smiling, "as his majesty King Charles, although not yet one-and-twenty, is one of the greatest generals in Europe, I cannot consider it strange that you, who appear to me to be no older, should be a captain in his service. But I own that I pictured, to myself, that the officers of these wonderful soldiers were fierce-looking men, regular iron veterans."
"I am but eighteen," Charlie said, "and I myself feel it absurd that I should be a captain. It is but two years since I was appointed an ensign, and the king happening to be with my company, when we had a sharp fight with the Russians, he rewarded us by having us made into a regiment; so each of us got promotion. I was appointed captain last May, as a reward for a suggestion that turned out useful."
"May I ask what it was, Captain Carstairs, for it seems to me that you are full of happy ideas?"
"King Charles, as you may have heard, speaks freely to officers and soldiers as he moves about the camp. I was standing on the edge of the river, looking across at the Saxons, on the day before we made the passage, when the king came up and spoke to me. He said there was no hope of our passage being covered--as our advance against the Russians at Narva had been--by a snowstorm; and I said that, as the wind was at our backs, if we were to set fire to the great straw stacks the smoke would hide our movements from the Saxons. The idea was a very simple one, and would no doubt have occurred to the king himself; however, he put it into execution with success, and was good enough, afterwards, to promote me to the rank of captain."
"So it was owing to you that our army--or rather the Saxon army, for but few Poles were engaged in the battle--was defeated," the count said, smiling. "Well, sir, it will do you no harm with us, for personally we are entirely opposed to Augustus of Saxony. But you have not yet explained how you, an officer in the Swedish service, came to be here."
"I was sent by King Charles to Warsaw, to ascertain the feeling of the trading classes there. I had an introduction to a Scottish merchant, and I passed as a countryman of his, who had come out to enter his business. One of the objects of my mission was to endeavour to induce the foreign merchants in Warsaw to do what they could to promote a feeling in favour of peace with the Swedes, and the substitution of another king in place of Augustus."
"It is not very clear, Captain Carstairs, how you can be fulfilling that object by passing your winter with a party of robbers--for I suppose your disbanded soldiers were little better--in a forest on the confines of Russia."
Charlie laughed.
"It is rather a long story, count. Perhaps you will kindly tell me the news about public affairs, first."