the rising sun. He had no difficulty in finding Honore's tent, thanks
to the regulation which assigns to the men of each piece a separate
street, so that a single glance at a camp suffices to show the number
of guns.

When Maurice reached his destination the artillerymen were already
stirring and about to drink their coffee, and a quarrel had arisen
between Adolphe, the forward driver, and Louis, the gunner, his mate.
For the entire three years that they had been "married," in accordance
with the custom which couples a driver with a gunner, they had lived
happily together, with the one exception of meal-times. Louis, an
intelligent man and the better informed of the two, did not grumble at
the airs of superiority that are affected by every mounted over every
unmounted man: he pitched the tent, made the soup, and did the chores,
while Adolphe groomed his horses with the pride of a reigning
potentate. When the former, a little black, lean man, afflicted with
an enormous appetite, rose in arms against the exactions of the
latter, a big, burly fellow with huge blonde mustaches, who insisted
on being waited on like a lord, then the fun began. The subject matter
of the dispute on the present morning was that Louis, who had made the
coffee, accused Adolphe of having drunk it all. It required some
diplomacy to reconcile them.

Not a morning passed that Honore failed to go and look after his
piece, seeing to it that it was carefully dried and cleansed from the
night dew, as if it had been a favorite animal that he was fearful
might take cold, and there it was that Maurice found him, exercising
his paternal supervision in the crisp morning air.

"Ah, it's you! I knew that the 106th was somewhere in the vicinity; I