Yes."

"Then stand here beside me. It is I who have to keep count. They say
there are eight thousand in here. They will be carried past here to the
carts. Have a cigarette."

It is hard to talk when the thermometer registers more than twenty
degrees of frost, for the lips stiffen and contract into wrinkles like
the lips of a very old woman. Perhaps neither of the watchers was in the
humour to begin an acquaintance.

They stood side by side, stamping their feet to keep the blood going,
without speaking. Once or twice Louis stepped forward, and at a signal
from the officer the bearers stopped. But Louis shook his head, and they
passed on. At midday the officer was relieved, his place being taken by
another, who bowed stiffly to Louis and took no more notice of him. For
war either hardens or softens. It never leaves a man as it found him.

All day the work was carried on. Through the hours this procession of
the bearded dead went silently by. At the invitation of a sergeant,
Louis took some soup and bread from the soldiers' table. The men
laughingly apologized for the quality of both.

Towards evening the officer who had first come on duty returned to his
work.

"Not yet?" he asked, offering the inevitable cigarette.

"Not yet," answered Louis, and even as he spoke he stepped forward and
stopped the bearers. He brushed aside the matted hair and beard.

"Is that your friend?" asked the officer.

"Yes."

It was Charles at last.

"The doctor says these have been dead two months," volunteered the first
bearer, over his shoulder.

"I am glad you have found him," said the officer, signing to the men to
go on with their burden. "It is better to know--is it not?"

"Yes," answered Louis slowly. "It is better to know."

And something in his voice made the Russian officer turn and watch him
as he went away.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE BARGAIN.

Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.

"Oh yes," Barlasch was saying, "it is easier to die--it is that that you
are thinking--it is easier to die."

Desiree did not answer. She was sitting in the little kitchen at the
back of the house in the Frauengasse. For they had no firing now, and
were burning the furniture. Her father had been buried a week. The siege
was drawn closer than ever. There was nothing to eat, nothing to do, no
one to talk to. For Sebastian's po