h colourless faces turned towards the
staff riding behind him.

Most of the faces were strange: others were so altered that the features
had to be sought for as in the face of a mummy. Neither Charles nor
de Casimir was among the horsemen. One or two of them bowed, as their
leader had done, to the two girls.

"That is Captain de Villars," said Mathilde, "and the other I do not
know. Nor that tall man who is bowing now. Who are they?"

Desiree did not answer. None of these men was Charles. Unconsciously
holding her two mittened hands at her throat, she searched each face.

They were well placed to see even those who followed on foot. Many of
them were not French. It would have been easy to distinguish Charles or
de Casimir among the dark-visaged southerners. Desiree was not conscious
of the crowd around her. She heard none of the muttered remarks. All her
soul was in her eyes.

"Is that all?" she said at length--as the others had said at the
entrance to the town.

She found she was standing hand-in-hand with Mathilde, whose face was
like marble.

At last, when even the crowd had passed away beneath the Grunes Thor,
they turned and walked home in silence.

CHAPTER XIX. KOWNO.

Distinct with footprints yet
Of many a mighty marcher gone that way.

There are many who overlook the fact that in Northern lands, more
especially in such plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in
winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run
sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that
the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost
impassable--mere ruts across the plain--are for the time ignored, and
the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a level of
frozen snow.

Louis d'Arragon had worked out a route across the plain, as he had been
taught to shape a course across a chart.

"How did you return from Kowno?" he asked Barlasch.

"Name of my own nose," replied that traveller. "I followed the line of
dead horses."

"Then I will take you by another route," replied the sailor.

And three days later--before General Rapp had made his entry into
Dantzig--Barlasch sold two skeletons of horses and a sleigh at an
enormous profit to a staff officer of Murat's at Gumbinnen.

They had passed through Rapp's army. They had halted at Konigsberg to
make inquiry, and now, almost in sight of the Niemen, where the land
begins t