“And I should say I had good cause,” replied the old officer, without raising his eyes. “Come, come, no regrets! Look at me. Am I depressed? And yet I would wager that I have quite as much cause as you.” “I doubt it, Baron Randmer; I have lost all I possessed; I have lost everything I loved.” “Captain Lory, our misfortunes are precisely the same. It is not a fortnight since Lieutenant Alberick won my castle and estate at a single deal of the cards. I am ruined; but am I the less gay?” The captain answered in a very melancholy tone: “Lieutenant, you have only lost your castle; but I have lost my dog.” At this answer the light-minded baron seemed uncertain whether to laugh or sympathize; but he said: “Be comforted, Captain. Only think, I, who have lost my castle--” The captain broke in upon his words:-- “What of that? Besides, you may win back another castle.” “And you may find another dog.” 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?” “Stone-cutters, highwaymen, fellows who don’t know the first rudiments of warfare! A fine set of blackguards to face a man like me, who has served in all the wars in Pomerania and Holstein, in the campaigns of Scania and Dalecarlia; who fought under the glorious General Schack and the brave Count Guldenlew!” “But don’t you know,” interrupted Randmer, “that these fellows are led by a formidable chief,--a giant as big and as brutal as Goliath, a rascal who drinks nothing but human blood, a very Satan incarnate?” “And who may he be?” asked the captain. “Why, the famous Hans of Iceland!” “Pooh! I’ll wager that this great general does not know how to shoulder a musket or handle a carbine properly.” Randmer laughed.