"Forty-five or fifty," the officer said.
"I shall not be seventeen for some months," Ralph answered.
The officer looked at him with an air of intense astonishment, and there was a burst of laughter from the men standing round. The commandant frowned angrily at them.
"Quite so, my dear sir," he said, soothingly. "I was only joking with you. It is evident that you are not yet seventeen."
"You think I have lost my senses, with the shock," Ralph said, smiling. "I can assure you that that is my age. My beard and whiskers are so firmly fixed on, with cobbler's wax, that I shall have an awful trouble to get them off; and my hair the same. If you feel along here, from one ear to the other, you will feel a ridge. That is the cobbler's wax, that sticks all this mass of frizzled hair on.
"Did you not notice that both my brother's and my face and hands were much darker than the rest of our skin?"
"Yes, the doctor did notice that," the captain said--now beginning to think that Ralph was not insane, after all.
Passing his finger where Ralph directed him, he felt the ridge of the false hair.
"Who are you then, may I ask?" he said.
"My brother and myself are named Barclay," Ralph said. "We are lieutenants in the army, and are both decorated for service in the field. We left Tours four days ago, and are bearers of dispatches from Gambetta to General Trochu."