“More than twenty-five.”
The Musketeers exchanged looks. He did not appear nearly so much. Captain George continued—
“Your certificates of baptism and gentle birth?”
Again the young man changed colour. He hesitated—he looked down—he seemed ill at ease.
“You need not produce these if other particulars are satisfactory,” observed the Captain, with a certain rough sympathy which won him a gratitude he little suspected; far more, indeed, than it deserved.
“Reach me that muster-roll, Bras-de-Fer,” continued the officer. “We can put his name down, at least for the present, as a cadet. The rest will come in time. But look you, young sir,” he added, turning sharply round on the recruit, “before going through any more formalities, I have still a few questions to ask. Answer them frankly, or decline to answer at all.”
The visitor bowed and stole another look in his questioner’s face. Frank, romantic, impressionable, he had become strangely prepossessed with this manly, soldier-like captain of musketeers—younger in years than himself, yet so many more steps up the social ladder, he thought, than he could now ever hope to reach.
“I will answer,” he said, with a hesitation and simplicity almost boyish, yet engaging in its helplessness—“if you will promise not to use my answers to my injury, and to take me all the same.”
Captain George smiled good-humouredly.