"What mean you?" Felix asked wonderingly.
"What I said."
"But there is nothing on which we can rest the ladder," the clerk urged.
"Then that is a whole man," quoth the stranger, curtly. "Perhaps two. I told you you would have need of me." He looked from one to the other with a smile—a careless, reckless, self-contented smile.
"You are a soldier," said Marie. And abruptly she fixed her eyes upon him.
"At times," he replied, shrugging his shoulders.
"For which side?"
He shook his head. "For my own," he answered naïvely.
"A soldier of fortune?"
"At your service, mistress; now and ever."