Produced by Susan Skinner, Chris Curnow, Pamela Patten and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: THE PRIMROSE GATHERER. From the Painting by W. A. MENZIES.] [Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER VOL. XX.—NO. 1001.] MARCH 4, 1899. [PRICE ONE PENNY.] [Illustration: The Princess of Wales’s Dairy. Sandringham.] _All rights reserved._] “OUR HERO.” A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO. BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc. CHAPTER XXIII. LIFE IN A FRENCH DUNGEON. Eight long long months at Bitche! No wonder Roy Baron was altered. He had left Verdun a careless and light-hearted lad; almost a child still; young in many respects for his age. Eight months at Bitche had snuffed all remnants of childishness out of him. Sometimes he caught himself wondering if he really were the same Roy Baron, who once had lived in a happy London home, with never a care or a trouble; who had wept salt tears in a Paris bedroom, because Denham had to leave him behind for a few days; who had carried himself with a gay heart through more than three years of Verdun captivity. The weight of the last eight months amounted to far more than all that had gone before. Not that the whole of that time had been spent in the great crowded dungeon below. The gendarmes knew better, when a prisoner possessed a little money. The very first morning after Roy’s arrival, he had been conducted above ground, glad enough to go, though grieved to leave little Will Peirce behind; and it had been intimated to him that, if he chose to pay for the benefit, he might be put into a room with a few other prisoners of a better grade. Roy had thankfully availed himself of the chance, and he had done his best to get Will brought up also, but there he had failed. During more than four months he had lived, monotonously enough, in a barely-furnished room, with half-a-dozen companions—an elderly Naval officer of the rougher sort, a half-pay Colonel, a musician who solaced his own imprisonment and made worse that of others by incessant piping upon a flute, and three well-to-do men in the merchant line. It was a lonely existence for the boy. The men were kind to him, but utterly uncongenial, and they spent most of their time in high play. Roy had no interests, no employments, nothing in common with these men, among whom his lot was cast. The temptation to be drawn in, to find relief from his own thoughts in the excitement of gambling, was often terribly severe; but he remembered always his own reiterated promise to Denham in the past, and he resisted manfully. He was not conquered; and through all his after life Roy Baron was the stronger man for that successful fight in his boyish days. Every victory makes one stronger, every defeat makes one weaker, for the years to follow.