em.

The Pregel had been frozen for three months, with only the one temporary
thaw in November which cost Napoleon so many thousands at his broken
bridge across the Beresina. Though no water had flowed beneath this
bridge, many strange feet had passed across it.

It had vibrated beneath Napoleon's heavy carriage, under the lumbering
guns that Macdonald took northward to blockade Riga. Within the last few
weeks it had given passage to the last of the retreating army, a mere
handful of heartsick fugitives. Macdonald with his staff had been
ignominiously driven across it by the Cossacks who followed hard after
them, the great marshal still wild with rage at the defection of Yorck
and the Prussian contingent.

And now the Cossacks on their spare and ill-tempered horses passed to
and fro, wild men under an untamed leader whose heart was hardened to
stone by bereavement. The cobbler looked at them with a countenance of
wood. It was hard to say whether he preferred them to the French, or
was indifferent to one as to the other. He looked at their boots with
professional disdain. For all men must look at the world from their own
standpoint and consider mankind in the light of their own interests.
Thus those who live on the greed or the vanity, or batten on the charity
of their neighbour, learn to watch the lips.

The cobbler, by reason of looking at the lower end of men, attracted
little attention from the passer-by. He who has his eyes on the ground
passes unheeded. For the surest way of awakening interest is to appear
interested. It would seem that this cobbler was waiting for a pair of
boots not made in Konigsberg. And on the third day his expressionless
black eyes lighted on feet not shod in Poland, or France, or Germany,
nor yet in square-toed Russia.

The owner of these far-travelled boots was a lightly-built dark-faced
man, with eyes quietly ubiquitous. He caught the interested glance of
the cobbler, and turned to look at him again with the uneasiness that is
bred of war. The cobbler instantly hobbled towards him.

"Will you help a poor man?" he said.

"Why should I?" was the answer, with one hand already half out of its
thick glove. "You are not hungry; you have never been starved in your
life."

The German was quick enough, but it was not quite the Prussian German.

The cobbler looked at the speaker slowly.

"An Englishman?" he asked.

And the other nodded.

"Come this way."

The cobbler hobbled towards