ched
commissaries, who had to endure the abuse and execrations of the whole
army, while their sole fault lay in being punctual at rendezvous at
which the troops failed to appear.

"It serves you right, you dirty pigs!" continued Jean in his wrath, "and
you don't deserve the trouble that I am going to have in finding you
something to eat, for I suppose it is my duty not to let you starve, all
the same." And he started off to see what he could find, as every good
corporal does under such circumstances, taking with him Pache, who was
a favorite on account of his quiet manner, although he considered him
rather too priest-ridden.

But Loubet's attention had just been attracted to a little farmhouse,
one of the last dwellings in Contreuve, some two or three hundred yards
away, where there seemed to him to be promise of good results. He called
Chouteau and Lapoulle to him and said:

"Come along, and let's see what we can do. I've a notion there's grub to
be had over that way."

So Maurice was left to keep up the fire and watch the kettle, in which
the water was beginning to boil. He had seated himself on his blanket
and taken off his shoe in order to give his blister a chance to heal.
It amused him to look about the camp and watch the behavior of the
different squads now that there was to be no issue of rations; the
deduction that he arrived at was that some of them were in a chronic
state of destitution, while others reveled in continual abundance, and
that these conditions were ascribable to the greater or less degree of
tact and foresight of the corporal and his men. Amid the confusion that
reigned about the stacks and tents he remarked some squads who had not
been able even to start a fire, others of which the men had abandoned
hope and lain themselves resignedly down for the night, while others
again were ravenously devouring, no one knew what, something good,
no doubt. Another thing that impressed him was the good order that
prevailed in the artillery, which had its camp above him, on the
hillside. The setting sun peeped out from a rift in the clouds and his
rays were reflected from the burnished guns, from which the men had
cleansed the coat of mud that they had picked up along the road.

In the meantime General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, commanding the brigade,
had found quarters suited to his taste in the little farmhouse toward
which the designs of Loubet and his companions were directed. He had
discovered something