they buzzed approval. It was only the
Legionnaires who talked little, and in tones almost humbly suppressed.
Once, years ago, they had violently asserted their right to promenade
the Place Carnot, and enjoy the music of their own famous band, when
local authority would insolently have banished them; but now the boon
was won, they were subdued in manner, as if they had never smashed
chairs and wrecked bandstand in fierce protest against _bourgeois_
tyranny. Immaculate in every detail of their uniform as though each man
had his own servant, these soldiers who spent half their so-called
leisure in scrubbing clothes, polishing steel and brass, and varnishing
leather, had nevertheless a piteously dejected bearing whenever they
passed pretty, well-dressed young women. They knew that, whatever they
might once have been, as Foreign Legion men on pay of five centimes a
day they were in the eyes of Bel-Abbes girls hopeless ineligibles,
poverty-stricken social outcasts, the black sheep of the world. It was
to vie with each other and to make the Legion far outshine Chasseurs and
Spahis that they sacrificed two thirds of their spare time in the cause
of smartness, not because even the handsomest and youngest cherished any
hope of catching a woman's approving eye.

Just at the moment, however, there was an exception to the depressing
rule. The prettiest girls, French, Spanish, and Algerian-born, all
condescended to glance at the _bleu_ who had "knocked out" the former
champion of the Legion, and, taking his place in the match with the
Marseillais, had kept the championship for the First _Regiment
Etrangere_. Since the day more than a week ago when the barrack-yard of
the Legion had been the scene of the great fight--officers looking on in
the front ranks of the invited crowd, and soldiers hanging out of
dormitory windows--every one in Sidi-bel-Abbes had learned to know the
hero by sight; and a blackened eye, a bruised cheek-bone, and a swelled
lip (the unbecoming badges of his triumph) made recognition easy. But
the Legion was proud of St. George. Not a man, least of all Four Eyes,
grudged him his success, such "luck" as had never fallen to any mere
recruit within the memory of the oldest Legionnaires, unless in the
battlefield, where all are equal.

Max realized fully what this "luck" had done for him, and was aware that
eyes turned his way; but, far from being proud, he was half-ashamed of
his conspicuousness, fearing that Colonel