'I am rather an acute physiognomist,' replied the count, looking down and affecting to select and manipulate a cigar, 'and think I can see--can read in his face, by a certain gravity of expression there, that he will--after all he has escaped--die a violent death.' '_A violent death!_' repeated Pelham, with an expression of surprise in his face; 'from what do you gather this?' 'I cannot say--a kind of prescience--an intuition of destiny--that I have no control over; but I have rarely been mistaken.' 'Well,' replied Pelham, 'I might predict as much about many of us; we may perhaps be engaged to-morrow, and some that are above the turf just now, may be under it soon enough.' The count gave an inscrutable smile, and began to smoke; and Pelham was glad only that Cecil--going, as he was so soon to do, on a duty of some peril--had not overheard a prediction so strange and gloomy concerning himself. 'Destiny--prescience--bosh!' thought Pelham; but the count's face and manner impressed the volatile Englishman, who had only come to fight in Servia as the means to a 'new sensation.' He became perplexed, silent, and when Cecil spoke, his voice seemed somehow to stir a painful chord in the breast of Pelham. 'A violent death!' This strange prophecy gave him some cause to think. Did the count refer to the chances of war, or that Cecil was fore-doomed prematurely, and had his destiny--his kismet, like an Osmanlie--written on his brow? Or was it that he resented, with all his apparent candour and generosity, some love-passages between his sister and the late prisoner, and meant to have the latter cut off?--a matter easily achieved in that lawless land. Pelham was restlessly uneasy on the subject, and sat reflectively sucking at his briar-root in silence, till the bugles sounded for lights and fires out--for silence in camp, and all retired to their tents or huts. At midnight, punctually, Cecil, cloaked and armed, rode to the headquarters of Tchernaieff, in front of which he found his troop mounted, and a sergeant calling the roll by lantern-light, the rays of which fell feebly on the dark faces and darker uniforms of the Servian troopers, who were all in light marching order, without valises or other encumbrance, save forage-nets, sponge-bags and spare shoes. By lantern-light he opened the ranks and inspected them; the pistols and carbines were loaded. From Palenka he got a written memorandum of the path or route he was to pursue, though much was left to his own discretion. The party, consisting of twenty sabres, broke into sections of fours. '_Shagoum-marche!_' (walk-march) was the first command, and they got into motion. '_Rishu!_' (trot) cried Cecil, and away they went, and quickly left the camp behind them, looking somewhat ghost-like amid the starless gloom, as they glided noiselessly over the soft turf, on which, as yet, the hoofs of their horses made no sound. CHAPTER XII. THE RECONNAISSANCE.