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The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
page 78 of 167 (46%)
from me--indeed, that he was all a secret together, seeing that he
always hung a veil over his past. And when by chance that veil was for
an instant whisked away, we always caught just a glimpse of something
bloody and violent and dreadful upon the other side. The very look of
his body was terrible. I bathed with him once in the summer, and I saw
then that he was haggled with wounds all over. Besides seven or eight
scars and slashes, his ribs on one side were all twisted out of shape,
and a part of one of his calves had been torn away. He laughed in his
merry way when he saw my face of wonder.

"Cossacks! Cossacks!" said he, running his hand over his scars.
"And the ribs were broke by an artillery tumbril. It is very bad to
have the guns pass over one. Now with cavalry it is nothing. A horse
will pick its steps however fast it may go. I have been ridden over by
fifteen hundred cuirassiers A and by the Russian hussars of Grodno, and
I had no harm from that. But guns are very bad."

"And the calf?" I asked.

"_Pouf!_ It is only a wolf bite," said he. "You would not think how I
came by it! You will understand that my horse and I had been struck,
the horse killed, and I with my ribs broken by the tumbril. Well, it
was cold--oh, bitter, bitter!--the ground like iron, and no one to help
the wounded, so that they froze into such shapes as would make you
smile. I too felt that I was freezing, so what did I do? I took my
sword, and I opened my dead horse, so well as I could, and I made space
in him for me to lie, with one little hole for my mouth. _Sapristi!_ It
was warm enough there. But there was not room for the entire of me, so
my feet and part of my legs stuck out. Then in the night, when I slept,
there came the wolves to eat the horse, and they had a little pinch of
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