ce, perplexed
and ill satisfied, under the shelter of the rock, with the great, dim,
desolate African landscape stretching before him, with here and there
a gleam of light upon it when the wind swept the clouds apart. His
volatile speech was chilled, and his buoyant spirits were checked. That
Cecil was justly outlawed he would have thought it the foulest treason
to believe for one instant; yet he felt that he might as soon seek to
wrench up the great stones above him from their base as seek to change
the resolution of this man, whom he had once known pliant as a reed and
careless as a child.

They were before long in saddle again and off, the country growing
wilder at each stride the horses took.

"It is all alive with Arabs for the next ten leagues," said Cecil, as
he settled himself in his saddle. "They have come northward and been
sweeping the country like a locust-swarm, and we shall blunder on some
of them sooner or later. If they cut me down, don't wait; but slash my
pouch loose and ride off with it."

"All right, sir," said Rake obediently; but he thought to himself,
"Leave you alone with them demons? Damn me if I will!"

And away they went once more, in speed and in silence, the darkness
of full night closing in on them, the skies being black with the heavy
drift of rising storm-clouds.

Meanwhile Cigarette was feasting with the officers of the regiment. The
dinner was the best that the camp-scullions could furnish in honor
of the two or three illustrious tourists who were on a visit to the
headquarters of the Algerian Army; and the Little One, the heroine
of Zaraila, and the toast of every mess throughout Algeria, was as
indispensable as the champagnes.

Not that she was altogether herself to-night; she was feverish, she was
bitter, she was full of stinging ironies; but that delicious gayety,
like a kitten's play, was gone from her, and its place, for the first
time in her life was supplied by unreal and hectic excitation. In truth,
while she laughed, and coquetted, and fenced with the bright two-edged
blade of her wit, and tossed down the wines into her little throat like
a trooper, she was thinking nothing at all of what was around her,
and very little of what she said or she did. She was thinking of the
starless night out yonder, of the bleak, arid country, of the great,
dim, measureless plains; of one who was passing through them all, and
one who might never return.

It was the first time that the