The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

her at a grave dis­advantage. On the other hand he will, I think, be fighting with a half-blunted sword.'

'How mean you, Sir?'

'He is popular with his people but much disliked by his nobility; since he has deprived them of the power they had held in earlier reigns. Therefore his officers will not follow him to war with any

great enthusiasm. Moreover, he has not a single good General, whereas Russia is well-found in that way; and both her officers and men will show the most desperate valour against any foe that their Empress may order them to attack. Having fought in the Russian army myself I can vouch for its metal.'

Roger looked his surprise. 'Sir James told me that as a youth you had military ambitions, Sir; but how came it that you saw service with the Russians?'

'Simply because the British would not have me,' came the smiling reply. 'When I was ten a friend of my father's exercised his right as Colonel of a newly-raised regiment to present me with a Lieutenant's commission in it. Naturally my parents would not allow me to take it up until I had completed my education, but from that day I looked upon myself as a soldier. I spent two years at a military school in Paris before going to Oxford and afterwards resumed my military studies at Metz and Strasbourg. Only then did I learn that the War Secretary, Lord Barrington, had refused to ratify my commission with the seniority technically due to me.'

'What a wretched stroke of fortune.'

'Yes. I was most bitterly disappointed; because by that time I was nineteen, and I had no fancy to go in as junior to a dozen lads several years younger than myself. Instead I got the authorities to grant me the honorary rank of Captain with permission to serve in a foreign army. Austria seemed to offer the best prospects, as there were over five hundred British officers serving with the Austrian army at that time. But fortune proved against me in Vienna, and later in both Warsaw and Constantinople. I was in Bucharest, and almost in despair, when I learned that Russia was about to open a new campaign against the Turks, and that Marshal Romantzof was forming his headquarters at jassy. I had scarce heard the news when I received a letter from my father, ordering me home; but I ignored it and offered myself to the Marshal. Under him I was present at Giurgevo, where we were sur­prised and outnumbered by the Turks. Quite a tale was made of the manner in which I jumped over the heads and scimitars of a line of fierce-looking Janissaries right into the Danube, and swam across to the other bank; though the fact is that my only thought was to escape with my life, and that for more than half the distance I was clinging to the tail of a Cossack's horse.'

'I vow you're being over-modest, Sir.'

'Nay, 'tis the fact,' Elliot laughed. 'But 'twas a stroke of luck for me that the Russians should have taken it for a feat of valour. The Marshal gave me a most handsome mention in despatches and that, reaching my irate father's ears, pacified him for my having run half-round Europe when I was supposed to be gone only for a sojourn in Vienna.'

'How liked you the Russians?'

'As soldiers and boon companions they left nothing to be desired; yet if I were ordered to Petersburg as Ambassador I confess that I'd set out with considerable misgivings. I recall, even now, a passage from a letter Sir James Harris wrote me during his Embassy; he said: 'The monarch is an arrant woman—a vain, spoilt woman—with more masculine than manly virtues, and more female vices than weak­nesses. The men in high life, monkeys grafted on bears, and those in lower, bears not inoculated. Religion, virtue and morality nowhere to be found; honour cannot be expressed in this language'.'

They had reached the gate of the British Legation, and as Elliot brought his mount to a halt he added: 'But soon now, you will be able to form your own judgment of Semiramis and her people. When you reach Stockholm I suggest that you should endeavour to cultivate the acquaintance of the Russian Ambassador there, Count Andrew Razumofsky. 'Twill give you a foretaste of their style and char­acter.'

Roger smiled. 'I've already had that in certain dealings with Count Vorontzoff, their Ambassador in London.'

'Even so, 'twould repay you to become persona gratawith Razumofsky, if you can. That will not be easy. Like most of Catherine's representatives he is as proud as a peacock, and considers no one less than a prince fitted to consort with him on equal terms. Yet he is high in the Empress's confidence, and if you can flatter him into giving you the entreeto his circle, 'tis just possible that he might speak before you as a Frenchman with a freedom he would never use in the presence of English ears.'

'I will bear your advice in mind, Sir,' Roger promised. Then he thanked the British Minister for all his help and kindness, and rode off through the gathering dusk back to the city.

He was, however, to see Hugh Elliot once more before leaving Copenhagen. Having found a four-masted barque that was sailing from the Oster Port for Stockholm on the afternoon tide of Saturday, the 12th of May, he gave a farewell breakfast that morning at a French restaurant he had discovered in the Reverentz Gaarten on Kongens Nytorv. The place was run by a Parisian named Mareschal, and he provided a most excellent meal at which Elliot, la Houze, Count Reventlow, and several other gentlemen who had entertained Roger during the past week, met to wish him a good journey.

At two o'clock in the afternoon Monsieur le Chevalier de Breuc went on board carrying a heavy cargo of good French Claret and a letter in his pocket from Monsieur le Baron la Houze to Monsieur le Marquis de Pons, the French Minister in Stockholm; and he did not feel that his fortnight in Copenhagen had been by any means wasted. The weather was moderately good and three mornings later the barque carried him through the lovely waterways that grace the entrance to the beautiful Swedish capital.

On going ashore he had his baggage carried to the Vasa inn; and after taking his midday meal there, sent a note to Monsieur de Pons asking when it would be convenient to present a letter from Monsieur la Houze. He then went out for a walk round the town.

When he got back he found to his surprise and pleasure that the French Ambassador had already sent a reply, which ran:

The annual entertainment which I give to celebrate the ascension of our gracious sovereigns to the throne should have been held on Thursday the tenth last; but has been postponed until to-night in the hope that HM. King Gustavus will have returned to his capital and be able to honour us with his presence.

I pray you therefore, my dear fellow-countryman, to dispense with formality, and give me the pleasure of welcoming you to Sweden this evening.

I have the honour, etc., etc.

Enclosed was a large crested card showing the entertainment to be a Bal Masque, for which guests were bidden to assemble at eight o'clock. So Roger promptly made arrangements at the inn for a coach to take him to the French Embassy, and hurried out again to get him­self a domino.

In Stockholm, as in Copenhagen, he found that the shopkeepers as well as the upper classes all spoke either French or German, and at a big mercer's in Paul's Gatan he secured a pale blue domino and mask. Back at the inn he had a barber dress his hair in the prevailing French fashion; with side curls, toupee and turned up behind, and, for such an occasion, heavily powdered. The domino, like the loose, light costume of a pierrot, entirely concealed his long scarlet coat, gold-laced waist­coat and frilled shirt, but his quizzing-glass hung outside it on a black moire ribbon. To complete his toilette he scented himself and put a beauty patch on the lower part of his left cheek. Then, at a little after seven-thirty, he went down to the waiting coach.

He had already ascertained that the French Embassy was a country mansion situated a little way outside the city on one of the many promontories that fringed the fiord, so he was not surprised when ms coach left the cobbled ways and entered a belt of sweet-scented pine woods. About half-a-mile further on it turned a sharp corner, then suddenly swerved to one side of the track.

Recovering his balance Roger saw at once the reason for his coach­man's sudden swerve. Just ahead of them was another coach, a huge gilded vehicle with six horses, postillions and outriders; one of its wheels had come off and it was lying at an angle half in and half out of the ditch. Beside it, among the richly-liveried servants, stood a big broad-shouldered man and a girl with flowers and feathers in her high-dressed hair. Both of them were masked and wearing dominoes.

Roger at once called on his own coachman to halt and got out. In spite of the presence of the girl the owner of the broken-down vehicle was cursing his servants in French with language which would have made a fishwife blush. As Roger came up the angry man hit his coach­man with his clenched fist and sent the poor wretch sprawling