s the
raising of the siege. I retreated with the rest, for eight and forty
hours. I endured the rain during the day, and the cold during the
night tolerably well, but the third morning my horse died of cold. Poor
brute--accustomed to be covered up and to have a stove in the stable,
the Arabian finds himself unable to bear ten degrees of cold in Arabia."

"That's why you want to purchase my English horse," said Debray, "you
think he will bear the cold better."

"You are mistaken, for I have made a vow never to return to Africa."

"You were very much frightened, then?" asked Beauchamp.

"Well, yes, and I had good reason to be so," replied Chateau-Renaud. "I
was retreating on foot, for my horse was dead. Six Arabs came up, full
gallop, to cut off my head. I shot two with my double-barrelled gun, and
two more with my pistols, but I was then disarmed, and two were still
left; one seized me by the hair (that is why I now wear it so short, for
no one knows what may happen), the other swung a yataghan, and I already
felt the cold steel on my neck, when this gentleman whom you see here
charged them, shot the one who held me by the hair, and cleft the skull
of the other with his sabre. He had assigned himself the task of saving
a man's life that day; chance caused that man to be myself. When I am
rich I will order a statue of Chance from Klagmann or Marochetti."

"Yes," said Morrel, smiling, "it was the 5th of September, the
anniversary of the day on which my father was miraculously preserved;
therefore, as far as it lies in my power, I endeavor to celebrate it by
some"--

"Heroic action," interrupted Chateau-Renaud. "I was chosen. But that is
not all--after rescuing me from the sword, he rescued me from the cold,
not by sharing his cloak with me, like St. Martin, but by giving me the
whole; then from hunger by sharing with me--guess what?"

"A Strasbourg pie?" asked Beauchamp.

"No, his horse; of which we each of us ate a slice with a hearty
appetite. It was very hard."

"The horse?" said Morcerf, laughing.

"No, the sacrifice," returned Chateau-Renaud; "ask Debray if he would
sacrifice his English steed for a stranger?"

"Not for a stranger," said Debray, "but for a friend I might, perhaps."

"I divined that you would become mine, count," replied Morrel; "besides,
as I had the honor to tell you, heroism or not, sacrifice or not, that
day I owed an offering to bad fortune in recompense for the favors good
fortune h