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The --young, chestnut-haired, and quite attractive--viewed the English officer at her door with a deep suspicion, but when he followed his request for Captain Carruthers bythat he was an old friend of the captain’s, her face relaxed

"Bon," she said, swinging the door open abruptly "He needs friends"

He ascended two flights of narrow stairs to Carruthers’s attic, feeling the air about hirow stifling by mid-afternoon He knocked and felt a s Carruthers’s voice bid him enter

Carruthers was seated at a rickety table in shirt and breeches, writing, an inkwell ourd at one elbow, a pot of beer at the other He looked at Grey blankly for an instant, then joy washed across his features, and he rose, nearly upsetting both

"John!"

Before Grey could offer his hand, he found himself embraced--and returned the eh him as he smelled Carruthers’s hair, felt the scrape of his unshaven cheek against Grey’s own Even in the htness of Carruthers’s body, the bones that pressed through his clothes

"I never thought you’d co, for perhaps the fourth ti as he dashed the back of his hand across his eyes, which were unabashedly wet

"Well, you have an electric eel to thank forhi story--tell you later For the , Charlie?"

The happiness faded soether

"Ah Well That’s a long story, too Let me send Martine for more beer" He waved Grey toward the room’s only stool and went out before Grey could protest He sat, gingerly, lest the stool collapse, but it held his weight Besides the stool and table, the attic was very plainly furnished; a narrow cot, a chamber pot, and an ancient washstand with an earthenware basin and ewer completed the ensemble It was very clean, but there was a faint s sweet and sickly, which he traced at once to a corked bottle standing at the back of the washstand

Not that he had needed the saunt face told hi on They appeared to be notes in preparation for the court-martial; the one on top was an account of an expedition undertaken by troops under Carruthers’s command, on the orders of a Major Gerald Siverly

Our orders instructed us to e called Beaulieu, there to ransack and fire the houses, driving off such anie offered us resistance, armed with scythes and other implements Two of these were shot, the others fled We returned with taggons filled with flour, cheeses, and sot no further before the door opened Carruthers ca toward the papers

"I thought I’d best write everything down Just in case I don’t live long enough for the court- the look on Grey’s face, smiled faintly "Don’t be troubled, John I’ve always known I’d not ht hand upward, letting the drooping cuff of his shirt fall back,--"isn’t all of it" He tapped his chest gently with his left hand

"More than one doctor’s told ross defect of the heart Don’t know, quite, if I have two of those, too"--he grinned, the sudden, char smile Grey remembered so well--"or only half of one, or what Used to be I just went faint now and then, but it’s getting worse So and just flutter in o all black and breathless So far, it’s always started beating again--but one of these days it isn’t going to"

Grey’s eyes were fixed on Charlie’s hand, the s as though Charlie held a strange flower cupped in his palers ht," he said quietly "Tell e--difficult to prove and thus unlikely to be brought, unless other factors were involved Which, in the present instance, they undoubtedly were

"Know Siverly, do you?" Carruthers asked, taking the papers onto his knee

"Not at all I gather he’s a bastard" Grey gestured at the papers "What kind of bastard, though?"

"A corrupt one" Carruthers tapped the pages square, carefully evening the edges, eyes fixed on them "That--what you read--it wasn’t Siverly It’s General Wolfe’s directive I’m not sure whether the point is to deprive the fortress of provisions, in hopes of starving them out eventually, or to put pressure on Montcalm to send out troops to defend the countryside, where Wolfe could get at them--possibly both But he means deliberately to terrorize the settleeneral’s orders" His face twisted a little, and he looked up suddenly at Grey "You rehlands, John?"

"You know that I do" No one involved in Cuet He had seen es like Beaulieu

Carruthers took a deep breath

"Yes Well The trouble was that Siverly took to appropriating the plunder we took fro it in order tothe troops"

"What?" This was contrary to the normal custom of the army, whereby any soldier was entitled to what plunder he seized "Who does he think he is, an ad the crew, according to forle entities than did army companies, and there were Admiralty courts set up to deal with the sale of captured prize ships

Carruthers laughed at the question

"His brother’s a coot the notion At any rate," he added, sobering, "he never did distribute the funds Worse--he began withholding the soldiers’ pay Paying later and later, stopping pay for petty offenses, clai that the pay chest hadn’t been delivered--when several men had seen it unloaded froh--but the soldiers were still being fed and clothed adequately But then he went too far"

Siverly began to steal fro them privately

"I had un to watch hi him, so he trod carefully for a bit But he couldn’t resist the rifles"

A shipment of a dozen new rifles, vastly superior to the ordinary Brown Bess musket, and very rare in the arht that sent them to us in the first place We hadn’t any riflemen, and there was no real need for theet aith it"

But he hadn’t Two private soldiers had unloaded the box and, curious at the weight, had opened it Excited word had spread--and exciteruntled surprise when, instead of new rifles,considerable ere later distributed The talk--already angry--had escalated

"Egged on by a hogshead of rum we confiscated froh "They drank all night--it was January; the nights are dao and find the rifles Which they did--under the floor in Siverly’s quarters"