"Hear him!" came the astonished answer, while the trooper held a floury hand aloft as if to show his amazement. "He asks why, when the reason is plain. _Dites donc, mon fou_; is it so often, then, that we fight under the eye and command of an English _garçon_? Poof! That is the charm of the thing. I tell you, yesterday I said to myself: 'Pierre, you will be chopped to pieces before the sun comes up to-morrow. You and your comrades will be but mince meat.'" The man kneading the dough shivered and grunted his disapproval. "Gently, comrade," he growled. "You will spoil the tart I am making. What then?" "What then? He asks what then? See here, _mon brave_, we have fighting, heaps of it, and it is the peasants--poor fools!--who are chopped to pieces. We have excitement and work fit for a soldier, I say, and, with it all, see also what we get. Ah! I smell meat cooking, and here is something that we have not seen for many a long day." He went clanking his spurs across to a corner where the watchful Howeley had deposited a huge jar of jam, and came staggering back with it. The two men took the pan from the low table, lifted the dough from it, and, having thickly dusted the table top with flour, laid their dough upon it. Then came the task of rolling. "Try that, mate," suggested Howeley, who was now watching the proceedings with a grin of expectation. "Wasn't meant for the job; but beggars can't be choosers." He offered the barrel of an old firelock, the butt and lock of which had gone, and the trooper took it with a flourish. Dusting it well, like the table, he rolled the dough with the hand of an expert, and, having satisfied himself that his work was nearly finished, he pinched a corner from the dough and handed it to the rifleman. "Try," he grunted. "Real fine!" answered the Cockney. "I'm waiting for this here pie to get finished." "Then the jam, Pierre." The second trooper let it fall from the jar into the species of basin which his comrade had now contrived within a shallow pan, and watched as the latter smoothed it down with a wooden ladle. On went the covering of dough, while the cook with skilled eye and hand marked the edges of the pie, dividing it into as many sections as there were defenders. "Now," he cried, "to the kitchen with it. If we are to be cut to fragments this evening, at noon we will at least dine like gentlemen. Take it, Pierre, and see that you do not get it burned. Then indeed would your punishment be terrible."