e contents. "Three
francs! My boy, I most set about feathering this nest again or I shall
be stony when we get back."

"You're not the only one that's broken-backed in the treasury."

"The soldier spends more than he earns, and don't you forget it. I
wonder what'd become of a man that only had his pay?"

Paradis replies with concise simplicity, "He'd kick the bucket."

"And see here, look what I've got in my pocket and never let go
of"--Pepin, with merry eyes, shows us some silver table-things. "They
belonged," he says, "to the ugly trollop where we were quartered at
Grand-Rozoy."

"Perhaps they still belong to her?"

Pepin made an uncertain gesture, in which pride mingled with modesty;
then, growing bolder, he smiled and said, "I knew her, the old sneak.
Certainly, she'll spend the rest of her life looking in every corner
for her silver things."

"For my part," says Volpatte, "I've never been able to rake in more
than a pair of scissors. Some people have the luck. I haven't. So
naturally I watch 'em close, though I admit I've no use for 'em."

"I've pinched a few bits of things here and there, but what of it? The
sappers have always left me behind in the matter of pinching; so what
about it?"

"You can do what you like, you're always got at by some one in your
turn, eh, my boy? Don't fret about it."

"I keep my wife's letters," says Blaire.

"And I send mine back to her."

"And I keep them, too. Here they are." Eudore exposes a packet of worn
and shiny paper, whose grimy condition the twilight modestly veils. "I
keep them. Sometimes I read them again. When I'm cold and humpy, I read
'em again. It doesn't actually warm you up, but it seems to."

There must be a deep significance in the curious expression, for
several men raise their heads and say, "Yes, that's so."

By fits and starts the conversation goes on in the bosom of this
fantastic barn and the great moving shadows that cross it; night is
heaped up in its corners, and pointed by a few scattered and sickly
candles.

I watch these busy and burdened flitters come and go, outline
themselves strangely, then stoop and slide down to the ground; they
talk to themselves and to each other, their feet are encumbered by the
litter. They are showing their riches to each other. "Tiens,
look!"--"Great!" they reply enviously.

What they have not got they want. There are treasures among the squad
long coveted by all; the two-liter water-bottle, for instance,