“You almost make me feel warm! Your news has put me in a fever; I have two friends to bring through. Ah! but for those marmots, I should have been dead before now, old fellow. On their account I am taking care of my horse instead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for pity’s sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any victuals. I have been fighting like a madman to keep up a little warmth in my body and what courage I have left.” “Poor Philip! I have nothing--not a scrap!--But is your General in there?” “Don’t attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right--that is where the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a quadrille in a ballroom in Paris--” He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the northeast wind that whistled about them froze Major Philip’s lips, and the aide-de-camp kept moving for fear of being frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed, scarcely broken by the groans of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled sounds made by M. de Sucy’s horse crunching on the frozen bark with famished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at the bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to keep for so long, and drew her away from the miserable fodder that she was bolting with apparent relish. “Come along, Bichette! come along! It lies with you now, my beauty, to save Stephanie’s life. There, wait a little longer, and they will let us lie down and die, no doubt;” and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which doubtless he owed his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet on the frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred paces away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where he had left his carriage that morning with an old soldier to guard it. A dreadful misgiving seized upon him. Many a man under the influence of a powerful feeling during the Retreat summoned up energy for his friend’s sake when he would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was with Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a carriage sheltered from the cannonade, a carriage that held a young woman, his playmate in childhood, dearer to him than any one else on earth.