od, hot supper
to-night at the canteen, and I foot the bill!' and as he spoke he pulled
out a handful of silver from his pocket and showed it with a laugh to
his friend.

Hot suppers were a rarity in that camp, and the very thought of such a
treat was cheering to the half-starved men.

'You are a good fellow, Hetais,' said one of the men, 'and you deserve
your luck.'

'Hold your tongue, you silly fellow,' said Hetais, with a good-natured
thump on the speaker's back. 'Get on with your coffee-making, and do not
talk nonsense!'

'All right,' said the man, cautiously lifting his head above the shelter
of the trench, so as to see what the Russians were about. 'The "Moscos"'
(so the French termed the enemy) 'seem keeping quiet to-day, and we
shall be able to enjoy our coffee in peace,' he continued.

A fire was lighted, and the water put on to boil in a saucepan, the men
all sitting round in eagerness, for it was bitterly cold in the
trenches, and a hot cup, or rather tin, of coffee seemed to warm and
cheer them better than anything else.

'Now then,' at last said the coffee-maker, 'hold out your mess-tins, and
we will divide fairly.'

Every man held out his mess-tin--but not one drop of coffee was to be
drunk by any of them, for at that very moment a bomb from the Russian
battery landed in their midst, upsetting the saucepan of coffee and
exploding in the midst of the little crowd of men.

It seemed as if none could escape! Yet, strange to say--for this is a
true story--of all that group, no one was hurt, except the brave Hetais,
whose head had been all but blown away by the bursting of the bomb.

It is impossible to describe the grief and consternation of his
comrades, who felt, one and all, that each could have been better spared
than the man who lay dead at their feet.

Just then the officer in charge of the party came up, and the senior man
told him how Hetais had met his death. The officer was no less sorry
than the men, for Hetais was popular with all ranks.

'Poor fellow! he was a brave man if there ever was one,' said the
officer. 'Carry his body back to camp, my lads; he shall be honoured in
death, if he has just missed it in life,' for the officer was thinking
of the medal and the ceremony of presentation which was to have taken
place that evening.

The men extemporised a sort of bier out of a litter on which the dead
man was lying and their muskets, and thus they reverently carried him
back to camp