"Back! back! Look out!" shouted two or three of them, leveling their
muskets at the animal.

"I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you blackguards!"
cried Philip, springing in front of the mare. "There are dead horses
lying up yonder; go and look for them!"

"What a rum customer the officer is!--Once, twice, will you get out
of the way?" returned a giant grenadier. "You won't? All right then,
just as you please."

A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none of the
bullets hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the agony of death. Three
of the men came up and put an end to her with thrusts of the bayonet.

"Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols," cried Philip in
desperation.

"Oh! the pistols if you like; but as for the rug, there is a fellow
yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these two days, and is
shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that's our General."

Philips looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a dozen rents
in his trousers; the only covering for his head was a ragged foraging
cap, white with rime. He said no more after that, but snatched up his
pistols.

Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the
carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps
of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole