as every good corporal does under such circumstances, taking with him
Pache, who was a favorite on account of his quiet manner, although he
considered him rather too priest-ridden.

But Loubet's attention had just been attracted to a little farmhouse,
one of the last dwellings in Contreuve, some two or three hundred
yards away, where there seemed to him to be promise of good results.
He called Chouteau and Lapoulle to him and said:

"Come along, and let's see what we can do. I've a notion there's grub
to be had over that way."

So Maurice was left to keep up the fire and watch the kettle, in which
the water was beginning to boil. He had seated himself on his blanket
and taken off his shoe in order to give his blister a chance to heal.
It amused him to look about the camp and watch the behavior of the
different squads now that there was to be no issue of rations; the
deduction that he arrived at was that some of them were in a chronic
state of destitution, while others reveled in continual abundance, and
that these conditions were ascribable to the greater or less degree of
tact and foresight of the corporal and his men. Amid the confusion
that reigned about the stacks and tents he remarked some squads who
had not been able even to start a fire, others of which the men had
abandoned hope and lain themselves resignedly down for the night,
while others again were ravenously devouring, no one knew what,
something good, no doubt. Another thing that impressed him was the
good order that prevailed in the artillery, which had its camp above
him, on the hillside. The setting sun peeped out from a rift in the
clouds and his rays were reflected from the burnished guns, from which
the men had cleansed the coat of mud that they had picked up along the