to frightful outbursts. Driven by
famine and despair, these poor wretches must have rifled the carriage
before de Sucy reached it. The old general and his young wife, whom he
had left lying in piles of clothes and wrapped in mantles and pelisses,
were now on the snow, crouching before the fire. One door of the
carriage was already torn off.

No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the major's horse
than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,--

"A horse! a horse!"

Those voices formed but one voice.

"Back! back! look out for yourself!" cried two or three soldiers, aiming
at the mare. Philippe threw himself before his animal, crying out,--

"You villains! I'll throw you into your own fire. There are plenty of
dead horses up there. Go and fetch them."

"Isn't he a joker, that officer! One, two--get out of the way," cried a
colossal grenadier. "No, you won't, hey! Well, as you please, then."

A woman's cry rose higher than the report of the musket. Philippe
fortunately was not touched, but Bichette, mortally wounded, was
struggling in the throes of death. Three men darted forward and
dispatched her with their bayonets.

"Cannibals!" cried Philippe, "let me at any rate take the horse-cloth
and my pistols."

"Pistols, yes," replied the grenadier. "But as for that horse-cloth, no!
here's a poor fellow afoot, with nothing in his stomach for two days,
and shivering in his rags. It is our general."

Philippe kept silence as he looked at the man, whose boots were worn
out, his trousers torn in a dozen places, while nothing but a ragged
fatigue-cap covered with ice was on his head. He hastened, however, to
take his pistols. Five men dragged the mare to the fire, and cut her
up with the dexterity of a Parisian butcher. The pieces were instantly
seized and flung upon the embers.

The major went up to the young woman, who had uttered a cry on
recognizing him. He found her motionless, seated on a cushion beside the
fire. She looked at him silently, without smiling. Philippe then saw
the soldier to whom he had confided the carriage; the man was wounded.
Overcome by numbers, he had been forced to yield to the malingerers who
attacked him; and, like the dog who defended to the last possible moment
his master's dinner, he had taken his share of the booty, and was now
sitting beside the fire, wrapped in a white sheet by way of cloak, and
turning carefully on the embers a slice of the mare. Philippe saw upon
h