My self-registering thermometer, which hung outside my window with a southeast exposure, marked nineteen degrees below zero, centigrade.

I went early in the morning to bid the Colonel a last farewell, and met Sergeant Garok, who said to me in bad German: "We won't have to kill the Frantzouski, he is frozen to death." I ran to the prison.

The colonel was lying on his back, rigid.

But I found after a few minutes' examination, that the rigidity of the body was not that of death.

The joints, though they had not their ordinary suppleness, could be bent and extended without any great effort.