--that parishioner."

Not only had no one heard of Charles Darragon, but few knew the name of
the commander to whose staff he had been attached in Moscow. There
was nothing for it but to go on towards Kowno, where it was understood
temporary head-quarters had been established.

Rapp himself had told D'Arragon that officers had been despatched to
Kowno to form a base--a sort of rock in the midst of a torrent to divert
the currents. There had then been a talk of Tilsit, and diverting the
stream, or part of it towards Macdonald in the north. But D'Arragon knew
that Macdonald was likely to be in no better plight than Murat; for
it was an open secret in Dantzig that Yorck, with four-fifths of
Macdonald's army, was about to abandon him.

The road to Kowno was not to be mistaken. On either side of it, like
fallen landmarks, the dead lay huddled on the snow. Sometimes D'Arragon
and Barlasch found the remains of a fire, where, amid the ashes, the
chains and rings showed that a gun-carriage had been burnt. The trees
were cut and scored where, as a forlorn hope, some poor imbecile had
stripped the bark with the thought that it might burn. Nearly every
fire had its grim guardian; for the wounds of the injured nearly always
mortified when the flesh was melted by the warmth. Once or twice, with
their ragged feet in the ashes, a whole company had never awakened from
their sleep.

Barlasch pessimistically went the round of these bivouacs, but rarely
found anything worth carrying away. If he recognized a veteran by
the grizzled hair straggling out of the rags in which all faces were
enveloped, or perceived some remnant of a Garde uniform, he searched
more carefully.

"There may be salt," he said. And sometimes he found a little. They
had been on foot since Gumbinnen, because no horse would be allowed by
starving men to live a day. They existed from day to day on what they
found, which was, at the best, frozen horse. But Barlasch ate singularly
little.

"One thinks of one's digestion," he said vaguely, and persuaded
D'Arragon to eat his portion because it would be a sin to throw it away.

At length D'Arragon, who was quick enough in understanding rough men,
said--

"No, I don't want any more. I will throw it away."

And an hour later, while pretending to be asleep, he saw Barlasch get
up, and crawl cautiously into the trees where the unsavoury food had
been thrown.

"Provided," muttered Barlasch one day, "that you keep your