las B., in company of two brother officers--as
to whose morality and natural refinement I know nothing--bagged a dog
on the outskirts of a village and subsequently devoured him. As far as
I can remember the weapon used was a cavalry sabre, and the issue of the
sporting episode was rather more of a matter of life and death than if
it had been an encounter with a tiger. A picket of Cossacks was sleeping
in that village lost in the depths of the great Lithuanian forest. The
three sportsmen had observed them from a hiding-place making themselves
very much at home among the huts just before the early winter darkness
set in at four o'clock. They had observed them with disgust and,
perhaps, with despair. Late in the night the rash counsels of hunger
overcame the dictates of prudence. Crawling through the snow they crept
up to the fence of dry branches which generally encloses a village in
that part of Lithuania. What they expected to get and in what manner,
and whether this expectation was worth the risk, goodness only knows.

However, these Cossack parties, in most cases wandering without an
officer, were known to guard themselves badly and often not at all. In
addition, the village lying at a great distance from the line of French
retreat, they could not suspect the presence of stragglers from the
Grand Army. The three officers had strayed away in a blizzard from the
main column and had been lost for days in the woods, which explains
sufficiently the terrible straits to which they were reduced. Their plan
was to try and attract the attention of the peasants in that one of the
huts which was nearest to the enclosure; but as they were preparing to
venture into the very jaws of the lion, so to speak, a dog (it is mighty
strange that there was but one), a creature quite as formidable under
the circumstances as a lion, began to bark on the other side of the
fence. . . .

At this stage of the narrative, which I heard many times (by request)
from the lips of Captain Nicholas B.'s sister-in-law, my grandmother, I
used to tremble with excitement.

The dog barked. And if he had done no more than bark, three officers of
the Great Napoleon's army would have perished honourably on the points
of Cossacks' lances, or perchance escaping the chase would have died
decently of starvation. But before they had time to think of running
away that fatal and revolting dog, being carried away by the excess of
the zeal, dashed out through a gap in t