"Be treated there according to the report I shall transmit with your escort." "What will Volhonski say?" "Just what he pleases; the Count is a prisoner now himself." I read some hidden meaning in his eyes, though he sat quietly cracking walnuts and sipping his hydromel. "An officer on duty, I fall into the hands of an enemy--" I was beginning passionately, when he interrupted me, and his eyes gleamed as he said, "You had a despatch; I think you told Volhonski or his sister so?" "Yes, Colonel--a despatch for Marshal Canrobert." "Where is it?" "I destroyed it." "Bah!--I thought so," said he, scornfully. "On my honour, I did so, Colonel Tolstoff!" "Honour! ha, ha, you are a spy!" "Rascal!" I exclaimed, feeling myself grow white with passion the while; "recall this injurious epithet, or--" "Or what? Dare you threaten me? I can pick the ace of hearts off a card at twenty paces with a revolver, so beware; and yet I am not obliged to meet any one who is amenable to the laws of war, and is in a position so dubious as yours." I was choking with rage; yet a conviction that he spoke with something of warrant, so far as appearances went, and of the absolute necessity for acting with policy, if I would leave myself a chance of winning Valerie and escape greater perils than any I had encountered, compelled me to assume a calmness of bearing I was far from feeling. "Seek neither to threaten nor to trifle with me," said he, loftily and grimly; "you may certainly know the common laws of war regarding the retention of prisoners and the punishment of spies, but you know not those of Russia. If I do not treat you as one of the latter, it is because Volhonski is your friend; but I have it in my power, in treating you as one of the former, to have you transmitted farther than the Ukraine--to where you should never be heard of more. We are not particular to a shade here," he continued, with a sneering smile; "when the Emperor commanded a certain offender to be taken and punished, the minister of police could not find the right individual. What the deuce was to be done? Justice could not remain unsatisfied; so, instead, he seized a poor German, who had just arrived and was known to none. He slit his tongue, tore out his nostrils, sent him to Siberia to hunt the ermine, and reported to the Czar that his orders had been obeyed. So don't flatter yourself that any persons in office among us would be very particular in analysing _any report_ that I may transmit with you, a mere English captain!"