and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the frozen snow to keep them warm. Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards from the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place where, since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his former orderly, an old soldier. Horrible anxiety laid hold of him. Like all others who were controlled during this fatal retreat by some powerful sentiment, he found a strength to save his friends which he could not have put forth to save himself. Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a spot sheltered from the enemy's balls, he had stationed the carriage, containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being most dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the vehicle he now found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an immense fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers, wheels, and broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the last comers of that crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and huts,--a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible, and giving forth a murmuring sound that rose at times 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."