ng as any.

Nevertheless, Louis rarely passed a dead man on the road, but drew
up, and quitting his sleigh, turned over the body, which was almost
invariably huddled with its back offered to the deadly, prevailing North
wind. Against each this wind had piled a sloping bank of that fine snow
which, even in the lightest breeze, drifts over the surface of the land
like an ivory mist, waist high, and cakes the clothes. In a high wind it
will rise twenty feet in the air, and blind any who try to face it.

As often as not a mere glance sufficed to show that this was not
Charles, for few of the bodies were clad. Many had been stripped, while
still living, by their half-frozen comrades. But sometimes Louis had to
dust the snow from strange bearded faces before he could pass on with a
quick sigh of relief.

Beyond Kowno, the country is thinly populated, and spreading
pine-forests bound the horizon. The Cossacks--the wild men of Toula, who
reaped the laurels of the rearguard fighting--were all along the road.
D'Arragon frequently came upon a picket--as often as not the men were
placidly sitting on a frozen corpse, as on a seat--and stopped to say a
few words and gather news.

"You will find your friend at Vilna," said one young officer, who had
been attached to General Wilson's staff, and had many stories to tell of
the energetic and indefatigable English commissioner. "At Vilna we
took twenty thousand prisoners--poor devils who came and asked us for
food--and I don't know how many officers. And if you see Wilson there,
remember me to him. If Napoleon has need to hate one man more than
another for this business, it is that firebrand, Wilson. Yes, you will
assuredly find your cousin at Vilna among the prisoners. But you must
not linger by the road, for they are being sent back to Moscow to
rebuild that which they have caused to be destroyed."

He laughed and waved his gloved hand as D'Arragon drove on.

After the broken land and low abrupt hills of Kowno, the country was
flat again until the valley of the Vilia opened out. And here, almost
within sight of Vilna, D'Arragon drove down a short hill which must ever
be historic. He drove slowly, for on either side were gun-carriages deep
sunken in the snow where the French had left them. This hill marked
the final degeneration of the Emperor's army into a shapeless rabble
hopelessly flying before an exhausted enemy.

Half on the road and half in the ditch were hundreds of carria