open for the visitor, who entered with a diffident bow and a timid, hesitating step. Bras-de-Fer could not help remarking how much less assured was his manner now than when he crossed swords last night with the best fencer in the company.
The Musketeers both rose at his entrance, and all three continued standing during the interview.
Captain George scanned the new-comer from head to foot, and from foot to head, as a sergeant inspects a recruit. Its subject blushed painfully during the examination. Then the officer inquired, abruptly—
"You wish to join the Musketeers? As a cadet, of course?"
Something stern in the tone recalled the youth's firmness, and he answered, boldly enough—
"Under certain circumstances—yes."
"Your name?"
"Eugène Beaudésir."
"Your age?"
"More than twenty-five."
The Musketeers exchanged looks. He did not appear nearly so much. Captain George continued—
"Your certificates of baptism and gentle birth?"
Again the young man changed colour. He hesitated—he looked down—he seemed ill at ease.
"You need not produce these if other particulars are satisfactory," observed the Captain, with a certain rough sympathy which won him a gratitude he little suspected; far more, indeed, than it deserved.
"Reach me that muster-roll, Bras-de-Fer," continued the officer. "We can put his name down, at least for the present, as a cadet. The rest will come in time. But look you, young sir," he added, turning sharply round on the recruit, "before going through any more formalities, I have still a few questions to ask. Answer them frankly, or decline to answer at all.
The visitor bowed and stole another look in his questioner's face. Frank, romantic, impressionable, he had become strangely prepossessed with this manly, soldier-like captain of musketeers—younger in years than himself, yet so many more steps up the social ladder, he thought, than he could now ever hope to reach.
