"What are you doing there, my friend?" asked Charles.
The man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round,
and shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.
"The cellar," he answered, "always the cellar. It is human nature.
We get it from the animals."
He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been
addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled
curse. He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his
face were filled with dust. Since quitting the banks of the Vistula
no opportunity for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him.
He stood at attention, his lips working over sunken gums.
"I want you to take this letter," said Charles, "to the officer on
service at head-quarters, and ask him to include it in his courier.
It is, as you see, a private letter--to my wife at Dantzig."
The man looked at it, and grumbled something inaudible. He took it
in his hand and turned it over with the slow manner of the
illiterate.
CHAPTER XV. THE GOAL.
God writes straight on crooked lines.
Charles, having given his letter to the sentry with the order to
take it to its immediate destination, turned towards the stairs
again. In those days an order was given in a different tone to that
which servitude demands in later times.
He returned to his room on the first floor without even waiting to
make sure that he would be obeyed.
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