on top of
it, together with the shelter-tent and stakes, the load nevertheless
appeared light, such an excellent system he had of packing his trunk, as
he himself expressed it.

"It's a beastly country, all the same!" Chouteau kept repeating from
time to time, casting a look of intense disgust over the dreary plains
of "lousy Champagne."

Broad expanses of chalky ground of a dirty white lay before and around
them, and seemed to have no end. Not a farmhouse to be seen anywhere,
not a living being; nothing but flocks of crows, forming small spots of
blackness on the immensity of the gray waste. On the left, far away in
the distance, the low hills that bounded the horizon in that direction
were crowned by woods of somber pines, while on the right an unbroken
wall of trees indicated the course of the river Vesle. But over there
behind the hills they had seen for the last hour a dense smoke was
rising, the heavy clouds of which obscured the sky and told of a
dreadful conflagration raging at no great distance.

"What is burning over there?" was the question that was on the lips of
everyone.

The answer was quickly given and ran through the column from front to
rear. The camp of Chalons had been fired, it was said, by order of the
Emperor, to keep the immense collection of stores there from falling
into the hands of the Prussians, and for the last two days it had been
going up in flame and smoke. The cavalry of the rear-guard had been
instructed to apply the torch to two immense warehouses, filled with
tents, tent-poles, mattresses, clothing, shoes, blankets, mess utensils,
supplies of every kind sufficient for the equipment of a hundred
thousand men. Stacks of forage also had been lighted, and were blazing
like huge beacon-fires, and an oppressive silence settled down upon the
army as it pursued its march across the wide, solitary plain at sight
of that dusky, eddying column that rose from behind the distant hills,
filling the heavens with desolation. All that was to be heard in the
bright sunlight was the measured tramp of many feet upon the hollow
ground, while involuntarily the eyes of all were turned on that livid
cloud whose baleful shadows rested on their march for many a league.

Their spirits rose again when they made their midday halt in a field of
stubble, where the men could seat themselves on their unslung knapsacks
and refresh themselves with a bite. The large square biscuits could only
be eaten by crumblin