The old man shook his head.
“I may find another dog, but I shall never find my poor Drake.”
He paused; great tears gathered in his eyes and rolled one by one down his hard, stern face.
“He was all I ever had to love,” he added; “I never knew my parents. God grant them peace, and my poor Drake too! Lieutenant Randmer, he saved my life in the Pomeranian war. I called him Drake in honor of the famous admiral. My good dog! He never changed, as did my fortunes. After the battle of Oholfen, the great General Schack patted him, and said: ‘You’ve a fine dog there, Sergeant Lory!’—for I was only a sergeant then.”
“Ah!” interrupted the young baron, slashing his switch, “how queer it must seem to be a sergeant.”
The old soldier of fortune did not hear him; he appeared to be talking to himself, and Randmer could only catch a word here and there.
“Poor Drake! After surviving so many breaches and trenches, to be drowned like a blind kitten in that confounded Throndhjem fjord! My poor dog! my trusty friend! You deserved to die on the field of battle, as I hope to do.”
“Come, come, Captain!” cried the lieutenant, “how can you be so despondent? We may get a chance to fight to-morrow.”
“Yes,” contemptuously answered the old captain, “with a pretty enemy!”
“What! do you despise those rascally miners, those devilish mountaineers?”