istributed the surplus of their rations to
mendicants without. The latter were already assembling--laborers in
neat, common clothing, with idlers and profligates not more forbidding,
while a soldier on guard directed them where to rest and in what order
or number to enter the building. Pisgah halted a moment with his heart
in his throat. But he was very hungry, and his silver was half gone
already; if he purchased a dinner, he might not be left with sufficient
to obtain a bed for the night.

"Great God!" he said aloud, lifting his clenched hands and swollen eyes
to the stars, "am I, then, among the very dogs, that I should beg the
crumbs of a common soldier?"

He took his place in the line, and when at length his turn was
announced, followed the rabble shamefacedly. The _chasseurs_ in the
mess-room were making merry after dinner with pipes and cards, and one
of these, giving Pisgah a piece of bread and a tin basin of strong
soup, slapped him smartly upon the shoulder, and cried:

"My fine fellow! you have the stuff in you for a soldier."

"I am just getting a soldier's stuff into me," responded Pisgah,
antithetically.

"Why do you go abroad, hungry, ill-dressed, and houseless, when you can
wear the livery of France?"

Pisgah thought the soldier a very presuming person.

"I am a foreigner," he said, "a--a--a French Canadian (we speak
_patois_ there). My troubles are temporary merely. A day or two may make
me rich."

"Yet for that day or two," continued the _chasseur_, "you will have the
humiliation of begging your bread. What signifies seven years of
honorable service to three days of mendicancy and distress? We are well
cared for by the nation; we are respected over the world. It is a mean
thing to be a soldier in other lands; here we are the gentlemen of
France."

Pisgah had never looked upon it in that light, and said so.

"Your poverty may have unmanned you," repeated the other; "to recover
your own esteem do a manly act! We have all feared death as citizens;
but take cold steel in your hand, and you can look into your grave
without a qualm. I say to you," spoke the _chasseur_, clearly and
eloquently, "be one of us. Decide now, before a doubt mars your better
resolve! You are a young man, though the soulless career of a citizen
has anticipated the whitening of your hairs. Plant your foot; throw back
your shoulders; say 'yes!'"

"I do!" cried Pisgah, with something of the other's enthusiasm; "I was
born