Dick next, observing that a certain prating corporal affected expert knowledge of the town's defences, and had a truly Scotch tenacity of assertion, lured him subtly into an argument regarding the present state of Quebec as compared with that in Wolfe's time; and thus elicited, as to the disposition of artillery, a statement so exact and full that, to be relied on, it required only to agree with some report from another source. Dick secretly assigned each section of a piece of biscuit to represent some particular post named by the corporal, and on that section he made tiny finger-nail scratches equal in number to the cannon said to be at the post. Being under orders to remain with the sergeant, he found, by using his eyes skilfully while about the barracks, that the corporal's account was correct as far as concerned certain guns in the vicinity of St. John's Gate. During the morning there came to the barracks a barber who had customers among soldiers stationed at different parts of the town. Now that the troops remained near their posts when off duty, ready to respond in case of sudden attack, this practitioner, instead of keeping shop as usually, made the rounds to visit the customers who could not visit him. Dick was shaved by him, and, during the operation, led him to discourse upon those parts of the city to which duty called him. The observant barber incidentally let fall numerous bits of information that confirmed, if they did not augment, certain details of the knowing corporal's disclosures. This barber and the corporal had the knack possessed by small boys and dogs, of nosing into every opening whence anything might be seen, and had come by far more and far other information than they were properly entitled to possess. Dick had begun the day with the knowledge, won in his own experience, that in every score of people there are two or three such investigating persons. Keen observation had enabled him to single out the two such from the host of men he met in the barracks, and by the closest attention he had picked out, from the chaff of their talk, the few grains that were to his purpose. It was not, therefore, mere good luck that had brought him so promptly a better approximate account of the city's heavy armament than he could have obtained in hours of suspicious loitering around the various batteries. At ten o'clock he reported to Colonel Maclean at the latter's temporary headquarters. He had to give an account of his supposed journey from Montreal and of how he had contrived to pass the American camp. Maclean said it would be useless to send him back with a message to General Carleton, as the latter's whereabouts would doubtless remain unknown until his arrival at Quebec, which might occur at any time. He proposed, therefore, that Dick should enlist in the Royal Highland Emigrants.