de at his own sweet will. Some of the companies were recruited
from the very worst material imaginable.

"Hallo there, Cabasse! Ducat!" Sambuc was constantly repeating, turning
to his henchmen at every step he took, "Come along, will you, you
snails!"

Maurice was as little charmed with the two men as with their leader.
Cabasse, the little lean fellow, was a native of Toulon, had served
as waiter in a cafe at Marseilles, had failed at Sedan as a broker in
southern produce, and finally had brought up in a police-court, where it
came near going hard with him, in connection with a robbery of which the
details were suppressed. Ducat, the little fat man, quondam _huissier_
at Blainville, where he had been forced to sell out his business on
account of a malodorous woman scrape, had recently been brought face to
face with the court of assizes for an indiscretion of a similar nature
at Raucourt, where he was accountant in a factory. The latter quoted
Latin in his conversation, while the other could scarcely read, but the
two were well mated, as unprepossessing a pair as one could expect to
meet in a summer's day.

The camp was already astir; Jean and Maurice took the francs-tireurs to
Captain Beaudoin, who conducted them to the quarters of Colonel Vineuil.
The colonel attempted to question them, but Sambuc, intrenching himself
in his dignity, refused to speak to anyone except the general. Now
Bourgain-Desfeuilles had taken up his quarters that night with the cure
of Osches, and just then appeared, rubbing his eyes, in the doorway of
the parsonage; he was in a horribly bad humor at his slumbers having
been thus prematurely cut short, and the prospect that he saw before him
of another day of famine and fatigue; hence his reception of the men who
were brought before him was not exactly lamblike. Who were they? Whence
did they come? What did they want? Ah, some of those francs-tireurs
gentlemen--eh! Same thing as skulkers and riff-raff!

"General," Sambuc replied, without allowing himself to be disconcerted,
"we and our comrades are stationed in the woods of Dieulet--"

"The woods of Dieulet--where's that?"

"Between Stenay and Mouzon, General."

"What do I know of your Stenay and Mouzon? Do you expect me to be
familiar with all these strange names?"

The colonel was distressed by his chief's display of ignorance; he
hastily interfered to remind him that Stenay and Mouzon were on the
Meuse, and that, as the Germans had occ