"Well, sir--the fact is, sir--I was with him."
George jumped up off the floor, and seizing Lance's hand, wrung it hard in his enthusiasm. Lance smiled one of his grim smiles.
"Young gentlemen are apt to think more of a little thing like that than it's worth," was the old soldier's commentary on this, as George again seated himself on the floor, and with eloquent and shining eyes besought Lance to tell him of his entrance into the besieged fortress.
"It was about a week after that, when one night, as I was toasting a piece of cheese on a ramrod over the fire, up comes quite a nice-looking young woman and begins to jabber to me in French. She had on a red petticoat and a blue bodice, like the peasant women in those parts wear, and a shawl around her, and a cap on her head; but she did not look like a peasant, but rather like a town milliner. She had a basket of eggs in her hand, as the people sometimes brought us to sell, though, poor things, they had very few eggs or chickens, or anything else. Now I could speak the French lingo tolerably, for I had served so many years where it was spoke, so we begun bargaining for the eggs, and she kept up a terrible chattering. At last we agreed on two pistoles for the lot, and I handed out the money, when suddenly she flew into a rage, threw the money in my face, and, what was worse, began to pelt me with sticks and stones, and even the eggs. That brought some of my comrades around, and, to my surprise, she begun to talk in a queer sort of French-English, saying I had cheated her, and a lot more stuff, and stamping on the ground, demanded to be taken to an officer. Just then two young officers happened to be passing, and they stopped to ask what the row was about. The young woman then poured forth her story, and I was in an ace of being put in the guard-house, when she whispered something to one of them, and he started as if he had been shot. Then he whispered it to the other one, and presently all three--the young woman and the two officers--begun to laugh as if they would crack their sides. This was not very pleasant for me, standing there like a post, with rage in my heart; the more so, when one of the officers, laughing still, told me it was all right, and I could go back to my cheese and ramrod, and they went off in one direction in the darkness and the young woman in another. They were hardly out of sight when back comes the young woman again. As you may think, I never wanted to clap my eyes on her again; but she slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Lance, my man, don't you know me?' and it was--it was--"