and natural refinement I know nothing—­bagged a dog on the outskirts of a village and subsequently devoured him.  As far as I can remember the weapon used was a cavalry sabre, and the issue of the sporting episode was rather more of a matter of life and death than if it had been an encounter with a tiger.  A picket of Cossacks was sleeping in that village lost in the depths of the great Lithuanian forest.  The three sportsmen had observed them from a hiding-place making themselves very much at home amongst the huts just before the early winter darkness set in at four o’clock.  They had observed them with disgust and perhaps with despair.  Late in the night the rash counsels of hunger overcame the dictates of prudence.  Crawling through the snow they crept up to the fence of dry branches which generally encloses a village in that part of Lithuania.  What they expected to get and in what manner, and whether this expectation was worth the risk, goodness only knows.  However, these Cossack parties, in most cases wandering without an officer, were known to guard themselves badly and often not at all.  In addition, the village lying at a great distance from the line of French retreat, they could not suspect the presence of stragglers from the Grand Army.  The three officers had strayed away in a blizzard from the main column and had been lost for days in the woods, which explains sufficiently the terrible straits to which they were reduced.  Their plan was to try and attract the attention of the peasants in that one of the huts which was nearest to the enclosure; but as they were preparing to venture into the very jaws of the lion, so to speak, a dog (it is mighty strange that there was but one), a creature quite as formidable under the circumstances as a lion, began to bark on the other side of the fence. . . .

At this stage of the narrative, which I heard many times (by request) from the lips of Captain Nicholas B.’s sister-in-law, my grandmother, I used to tremble with excitement.

The dog barked.  And if he had done no more than bark three officers of the Great Napoleon’s army would have perished honourably on the points of Cossack’s lances, or perchance escaping the chase would have died decently of starvation.  But before they had time to think of running away, that fatal and revolting dog, being carried away by the excess of his zeal, dashed out through a gap in the fence.  He dashed out and died.  His head, I understand, was severed at one blow from his body.  I understand also that later on, within the gloomy solitudes of the snow-laden woods, when, in a sheltering hollow, a fire had been lit by the party, the condition of the quarry was discovered to be distinctly unsatisfactory.  It was not thin—­on the contrary, it seemed unhealthily obese; its skin showed bare patches of an unpleasant character.  However, they had not killed that dog for the sake of the pelt.  He was large . . .  He was eaten . . .  The rest is silence . . .