A wagon with a broken wheel rested close by with two dead mules still in the traces and the corpse of a fair-haired woman flung across them, just as she had crawled out of the way. The Marquis wondered vaguely why they should have dragged this wagon so far; the covering at the back was open, and the heavy canvas flaps rose and fell sluggishly in the bitter wind, while from the interior had fallen a silver dessert service that glittered curiously on the thick snow and some rolls of straw-coloured silk that the Marquis had once seen hanging on the walls of M. de Belleisle’s room in the Hradcany castle. He winced at the bitter irony of it; yet the rolls of silk, when shaken out, were some covering for the young Lieutenant, and the wagon was some protection from the wind. Beyond this he could do nothing; he knelt and took d’Espagnac’s head on his knee for greater warmth, and waited. It was little over a week since he had looked at the beautiful inspired face turned upwards in the chapel of St. Wenceslas; he gazed down now at the poor head on his lap, and the tears rose under his lids. Georges d’Espagnac was wasted till his blue uniform, tarnished and torn, hung on him loosely; his face was so thin that even the hollows in the temples showed clearly and of a bluish tinge, while the lips were strained and distorted; all powder and dressing had left his hair, which hung in a mass of damp locks of a startling brightness about his shoulders; his right cheek was bruised by the fall from the saddle when his horse died, and his gloveless right hand was cracked and bleeding. The Marquis felt his heart, and it was beating reluctantly and wearily. There was no hope, he knew; at any moment the snow might begin again, and this lovely life must go out as the other lives were going out, unnoticed, unsweetened by any care, regret, or tenderness. But it never occurred to M. de Vauvenargues to leave him, though he knew that his own best, perhaps his only, chance of life lay in movement, in pressing on. The darkness fell slowly and with a certain dreadful heaviness; the added ugliness of the distant bark of wolves completed the speechless horror of the Marquis’s mood. Still the army was trailing past him, bent figures supporting each other, a few Generals still on horseback, a few wounded and women in sledges or carts. From an officer of the Black Musqueteers he begged a little wine that brought a tinge of colour into d’Espagnac’s cheeks and proved how pitifully easy it would have been to save him by warmth and care. “There is only rough nursing here, Monsieur,” said the musqueteer kindly; “leave him and save your own life, for I think the snow will begin again.” “Monsieur,” replied the Marquis gently, “he is so very young. And maybe he will be conscious before he dies, and find himself alone and hear the wolves. And it is such a little thing I do.”