arty.

Their spare chargers enabled them to be on horseback every day,
while half the troop rested in turn. Sometimes their halts were
made in small towns and villages, but more often they bivouacked in
the open country; being thus, the Count considered, more watchful
and less apt to be surprised.

On their return from these expeditions, Pierre always had a meal
prepared for them. In addition to the rations of meat and bread,
chicken and eggs, he often contrived to serve up other and daintier
food. His old poaching habits were not forgotten. As soon as the
camp was formed, he would go out and set snares for hares, traps
for birds, and lay lines in the nearest stream; while fish and
game, of some sort, were generally added to the fare.

"Upon my word," the Count, who sometimes rode with them, said one
evening, "this varlet of yours, Master Philip, is an invaluable
fellow; and Conde, himself, cannot be better served than you are. I
have half a mind to take him away from you, and to appoint him
Provider-in-General to our camp. I warrant me he never learned thus
to provide a table, honestly; he must have all the tricks of a
poacher at his fingers' end."

"I fancy, when he was young, he had to shift a good deal for
himself, sir," Philip replied.

"I thought so," La Noue laughed. "I marked him once or twice,
behind your chair at Orleans; and methought, then, that he looked
too grave to be honest; and there was a twinkle in his eye, that
accorded badly with the gravity of his face, and his sober attire.

"Well, there can be no doubt that, in war, a man who has a spice of
the rogue in him makes the best of servants; provided he is but
faithful to his master, and respects his goods, if he does those of
no one else. Your rogue is necessarily a man of resources; and one
of that kind will, on a campaign, make his master comfortable,
where one with an over-scrupulous varlet will well-nigh starve. I
had such a man, when I was with Brissac in Northern Italy; but one
day he went out, and never returned. Whether a provost marshal did
me the ill service of hanging him, or whether he was shot by the
peasants, I never knew; but I missed him sorely, and often went
fasting to bed, when I should have had a good supper had he been
with me.

"It is lucky for you both that you haven't to depend upon that
grim-visaged varlet of Francois'. I have no doubt that the countess
thought she was doing well by my cousin, when she appointed him t