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bearers of the weapon which was to do so much to win the battles of the Peninsular War, prepared to keep his night-watch on the chilly mountain-side by stripping off his coatee and unrolling his carefully folded greatcoat to cover the wounded lad. And that night-watch was where he could hear the howling and answering howls of the loathsome beasts that seemed to him to say: "This way, comrades: here, and here, for men are lying wounded and slain; the watch-fires are distant, and there are none to hinder us where the banquet is spread. Come, brothers, come!"
CHAPTER THREE.
WHERE THE WOLVES HOWL.
"Ugh!" A long, shivering shudder following upon the low, dismal howl of a wolf.
"Bah! How cold it is lying out here in this chilly wind which comes down from the mountain tops! I say, what an idiot I was to strip myself and turn my greatcoat into a counterpane! No, I won't be a humbug; that wasn't the cold. It was sheer fright--cowardice--and I should have felt just the same if I had had a blanket over me. The brutes! There is something so horrible about it. The very idea of their coming down from the mountains to follow the trail of the fighting, and hunt out the dead or the wounded who have been forgotten or have crawled somewhere for shelter."
Pen Gray lay thinking in the darkness, straining his ears the while to try and convince himself that the faint sound he heard was not a movement made by a prowling wolf scenting them out; and as he lay listening, he pictured to himself the gaunt, grisly beast creeping up to spring upon him.
"Only fancy!" he said sadly. "That wasn't the breathing of one of the beasts, only the wind again that comes sighing down from the mountains.--I wish I was more plucky."
He stretched out his hand and laid his rifle amongst the shrubs with its muzzle pointed in the direction from whence the sighing sound had come.
"I'll put an end to one of them," he muttered bitterly, "if I don't miss him in the dark. Pooh! They won't come here, or if they do I have only to jump up and the cowardly beasts will dash off at once; but it is horrid lying here in the darkness, so solitary and so strange. I wouldn't care so much if the stars would come out, but they won't to-night. To-night? Why, it must be nearly morning, for I have been lying here hours and hours. And how dark it is in this valley, with the mountains towering up on each side. I wish the day would come, but it always does seem ten times as long when you are waiting and expecting it. It is getting cold though. Seems to go right through to one's bones.--Poor boy," he continued, as he stretched out one hand and gently passed it beneath his companion's covering. "He's warm enough. No--too hot; and I suppose that's fever from his wound. Poor chap! Such a boy too! But as brave as brave. He must be a couple of years younger than I am; but he's more of a man. Oh, I do wish it was morning, so that I could try and do something. There must be cottages somewhere-- shepherds' or goat-herds'--where as soon as the people understand that we are not French they might give me some black-bread and an onion or two."
The young soldier laughed a soft, low, mocking kind of laugh.
"Black-bread and an onion! How queer it seems! Why, there was a time when I wouldn't have touched such stuff, while now it sounds like a feast. But let's see; let's think about what I have got to do. As soon as it's daylight I must find a cottage and try to make the people understand what's the matter, and get them to help me to carry poor Punch into shelter. Another night like this would kill him. I don't know, though. I always used to think that lying down in one's wet clothes, and perhaps rain coming in the night, would give me a cold; but it doesn't. I must get him into shelter, though, somehow. Oh, if morning would only come! The black darkness makes one feel so horribly lonely.--What nonsense! I have got poor Punch here. But he has the best of it; he can sleep, and here I haven't even closed my eyes. Being hungry, I suppose.--I wonder where our lads are. Gone right off perhaps. I hope we haven't lost many. But the firing was very sharp, and I suppose the French have kept up the pursuit, and they are all miles and miles away."
At that moment there was a sharp flash with the report of a musket, and its echoes seemed to be thrown