muskets at the animal.

"I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!" cried
Philip, springing in front of the mare. "There are dead horses lying up
yonder; go and look for them!"

"What a rum customer the officer is!--Once, twice, will you get out of
the way?" returned a giant grenadier. "You won't? All right then, just
as you please."

A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the bullets
hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three of the
men came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.

"Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols," cried Philip in
desperation.

"Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow
yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is
shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that's our General."

Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents in
his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging
cap, white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his
pistols.

Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps
of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole process
was magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given the cry
of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She
sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warming herself
at the blaze; she said no word, and gazed at him without a smile. He
saw beside her the soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the
carriage; the poor fellow had been wounded; he had been overpowered by
numbers, and forced to surrender to the stragglers who had set upon him,
and, like a dog who defends his master's dinner till the last moment,
he had taken his share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for
himself out of a sheet. At that particular moment he was busy toasting
a piece of horseflesh, and in his face the major saw a gleeful
anticipation of the coming feast.

The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite childish in the
last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife, and stared into
the fire. He was only just beginning to shake off his torpor under
the influence of the warmth. He had been no more affected by Philip's
arrival and danger than by the fight and subsequent pillaging of his
traveling carriage.

At fi