sake, but for that of his starving comrades,
that Etienne Gerard's cheeks were lined by his tears, frozen even as
they were shed.

"What's this?" said a gruff voice at my elbow; and I turned to face the
huge, black-bearded Dragoon who had dragged me from my saddle. "Look at
the Frenchman crying! I thought that the Corsican was followed by brave
men and not by children."

"If you and I were face to face and alone, I should let you see which is
the better man," said I.

For answer the brute struck me across the face with his open hand. I
seized him by the throat, but a dozen of his soldiers tore me away from
him, and he struck me again while they held my hands.

"You base hound," I cried, "is this the way to treat an officer and a
gentleman?"

"We never asked you to come to Russia," said he. "If you do you must
take such treatment as you can get. I would shoot you off-hand if I had
my way."

"You will answer for this some day," I cried, as I wiped the blood from
my moustache.

"If the Hetman Platoff is of my way of thinking you will not be alive
this time to-morrow," he answered, with a ferocious scowl. He added some
words in Russian to his troops, and instantly they all sprang to their
saddles.

Poor Violette, looking as miserable as her master, was led round and
I was told to mount her. My left arm was tied with a thong which was
fastened to the stirrup-iron of a sergeant of Dragoons. So in most sorry
plight I and the remnant of my men set forth from Minsk.

Never have I met such a brute as this man Sergine, who commanded the
escort. The Russian army contains the best and the worst in the world,
but a worse than Major Sergine of the Dragoons of Kieff I have never
seen in any force outside of the guerillas of the Peninsula.

He was a man of great stature, with a fierce, hard face and a bristling
black beard, which fell over his cuirass.

I have been told since that he was noted for his strength and his
bravery, and I could answer for it that he had the grip of a bear, for
I had felt it when he tore me from my saddle. He was a wit, too, in his
way, and made continual remarks in Russian at our expense which set all
his Dragoons and Cossacks laughing. Twice he beat my comrades with his
riding-whip, and once he approached me with the lash swung over his
shoulder, but there was something in my eyes which prevented it from
falling.

So in misery and humiliation, cold and starving, we rode in a
disconsolate col