g ago,"
she answered him. (She had only eaten a biscuit well-nigh as hard as a
flint.) "Take it--here, I will hold it for you."

She perched herself on the wheel like a bird on a twig; she had a bird's
power of alighting and sustaining herself on the most difficult and most
airy elevation; but Cecil turned his eyes on the only soldier in the
cart besides himself, one of the worst men in his regiment--a murderous,
sullen, black-browed, evil wretch, fitter for the bench of the
convict-galley than for the ranks of the cavalry.

"Give half to Zackrist," he said. "I know no hunger; and he has more
need of it."

"Zackrist! That is the man who stole your lance and accouterments, and
got you into trouble by taking them to pawn in your name, a year or more
ago."

"Well, what of that? He is not the less hungry."

"What of that? Why, you were going to be turned into the First
Battalion,[*] disgraced for the affair, because you would not tell of
him; if Vireflau had not found out the right of the matter in time!"

[*] The Battalion of the criminal outcasts of all corps,
whether horse or foot.

"What has that to do with it?"

"This, M. Victor, that you are a fool."

"I dare say I am. But that does not make Zackrist less hungry."

He took the bowl from her hands and, emptying a little of it into
the wooden bidon that hung to her belt, kept that for himself and,
stretching his arm across the straw, gave the bowl to Zackrist, who
had watched it with the longing, ravenous eyes of a starving wolf, and
seized it with rabid avidity.

A smile passed over Cecil's face, amused despite the pain he suffered.

"That is one of my 'sensational tricks,' as M. de Chateauroy calls them.
Poor Zackrist! Did you see his eyes?"

"A jackal's eyes, yes!" said Cigarette, who, between her admiration for
the action and her impatience at the waste of her good bread and wine,
hardly knew whether to applaud or to deride him. "What recompense do you
think you will get? He will steal your things again, first chance."

"May be. I don't think he will. But he is very hungry, all the same;
that is about the only question just now," he answered her as he drank
and ate his portion, with a need of it that could willingly have made
him take thrice as much, though for the sake of Zackrist, he had denied
his want of it.

Zackrist himself, who could hear perfectly what was said, uttered no
word; but when he had finished the contents of the bowl,