Neither of them allowed himself to be crushed.  To the last they counted among the most active, the least demoralised of the battalion; their vigorous vitality invested them both with the appearance of an heroic pair in the eyes of their comrades.  And they never exchanged more than a casual word or two, except one day when, skirmishing in front of the battalion against a worrying attack of cavalry, they found themselves cut off by a small party of Cossacks.  A score of wild-looking, hairy horsemen rode to and fro, brandishing their lances in ominous silence.  The two officers had no mind to lay down their arms, and Colonel Feraud suddenly spoke up in a hoarse, growling voice, bringing his firelock to the shoulder: 

“You take the nearest brute, Colonel D’Hubert; I’ll settle the next one.  I am a better shot than you are.”

Colonel D’Hubert only nodded over his levelled musket.  Their shoulders were pressed against the trunk of a large tree; in front, deep snowdrifts protected them from a direct charge.

[Illustration:  088.jpg “You take the nearest brute, Colonel D’Hubert”]

Two carefully aimed shots rang out in the frosty air, two Cossacks reeled in their saddles.  The rest, not thinking the game good enough, closed round their wounded comrades and galloped away out of range.  The two officers managed to rejoin their battalion, halted for the night.  During that afternoon they had leaned upon each other more than once, and towards the last Colonel D’Hubert, whose long legs gave him an advantage in walking through soft snow, peremptorily took the musket from Colonel Feraud and carried it on his shoulder, using his own as a staff.

On the outskirts of a village, half-buried in the snow, an old wooden barn burned with a clear and immense flame.  The sacred battalion of skeletons muffled in rags crowded greedily the windward side, stretching hundreds of numbed, bony hands to the blaze.  Nobody had noted their approach.  Before entering the circle of light playing on the multitude of sunken, glassy-eyed, starved faces, Colonel D’Hubert spoke in his turn: 

“Here’s your firelock, Colonel Feraud.  I can walk better than you.”

Colonel Feraud nodded, and pushed on towards the warmth of the fierce flames.  Colonel D’Hubert was more deliberate, but not the less bent on getting a place in the front rank.  Those they pushed aside tried to greet with a faint cheer the reappearance of the two indomitable companions in activity and endurance.  Those manly qualities had never, perhaps, received a higher tribute than this feeble acclamation.