; they all relied on
him, who, as they expressed it, could get bread out of a stone. And the
corporal's conscience smote him for having abandoned his men; he took
pity on them and divided among them half the bread that he had in his
sack.

"Name o' God! Name o' God!" grunted Lapoulle as he contentedly munched
the dry bread; it was all he could find to say; while Pache repeated a
_Pater_ and an _Ave_ under his breath to make sure that Heaven should
not forget to send him his breakfast in the morning.

Gaude, the bugler, with his darkly mysterious air, as of a man who has
had troubles of which he does not care to speak, sounded the call for
evening muster with a glorious fanfare; but there was no necessity for
sounding taps that night, the camp was immediately enveloped in profound
silence. And when he had verified the names and seen that none of his
half-section were missing, Sergeant Sapin, with his thin, sickly face
and his pinched nose, softly said:

"There will be one less to-morrow night."

Then, as he saw Jean looking at him inquiringly, he added with calm
conviction, his eyes bent upon the blackness of the night, as if reading
there the destiny that he predicted:

"It will be mine; I shall be killed to-morrow."

It was nine o'clock, with promise of a chilly, uncomfortable night, for
a dense mist had risen from the surface of the river, so that the stars
were no longer visible. Maurice shivered, where he lay with Jean beneath
a hedge, and said they would do better to go and seek the shelter of
the tent; the rest they had taken that day had left them wakeful, their
joints seemed stiffer and their bones sorer than before; neither could
sleep. They envied Lieutenant Rochas, who, stretched on the damp ground
and wrapped in his blanket, was snoring like a trooper, not far away.
For a long time after that they watched with interest the feeble light
of a candle that was burning in a large tent where the colonel and
some officers were in consultation. All that evening M. de Vineuil had
manifested great uneasiness that he had received no instructions to
guide him in the morning. He felt that his regiment was too much "in the
air," too much advanced, although it had already fallen back from the
exposed position that it had occupied earlier in the day. Nothing had
been seen of General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, who was said to be ill in bed
at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and the colonel decided to send one
of his officer