"Monsieur will again excuse me; but I have most particular business with a gentleman in this neighborhood; and having travelled all the way from Paris, expressly to have it settled, I beg that I may be excused the pain of prevarication. The circumstance of my having served under the great Duke of Malborough against my own King and countrymen is sufficiently explained when I acquaint you, that I was then a French Protestant refugee; but now, without changing my religion, I have King Louis's gracious pardon and kind protection extended to me." "And so you were with Wandenberg when his troopers made that daring onfall at Pont-a-Vendin, and drove back the horse picquets of Villars," said the Major, to lead the conversation from a point which evidently seemed unpleasant to the stranger. "'Twas sharp, short, and decisive, as all cavalry affairs should be. You will of course remember that unpleasant affair of Wandenberg's troopers, who were accused of permitting a French prisoner to escape. It caused a great excitement in the British camp, where some condemned the dragoons, others Van Wandenberg, and not a few our great Marlborough himself." "I did hear something of it," said the stranger in a low voice. "The prisoner whose escape was permitted was, I believe, the father of the youths who captured him, a circumstance which might at least have won them mercy--" "From the Baron!" "I forgot me--he was indeed merciless." "But as I left his dragoons, and indeed the army about that time, I will be glad to hear _your_ account of the affair." "It is a very unpleasant story--the more so as I was somewhat concerned in it myself," said the Major, slowly filling his long stemmed glass, and watching the white worm in its stalk, so intently as he recalled all the circumstances he was about to relate, that he did not observe the face of the French gentleman, which was pale as death; and after a short pause, he began as follows: "In the onfall at Pont-a-Vendin, it happened that two young Frenchmen who served as gentlemen volunteers with you in the dragoon regiment of Van Wandenberg, had permitted--how, or why, I pretend not to say--the escape of a certain prisoner of distinction. Some said he was no other than M. le Mareschal Villars himself. They claimed a court martial, but the old Baron, who was a savage-hearted Dutchman, insisted that they should be given up unconditionally to his own mercy, and in an evil moment of heedlessness or haste, Marlborough consented, and sent me (I was his Aid-de-Camp) with a written order to that effect, addressed to Colonel the Baron Van Wandenberg, whose regiment of horse I met _en route_ for St. Venant, about nightfall on a cold and snowy evening in the month of November.