while the muleteer and the camel-drivers, the Kabyls and
the French, who were mingled there, crowded around him in fear and in
wonder. When consciousness returned to him he was lying on a stone bench
in the shadow of the wall, and a throng of lean, bronzed, eager faces
about him in the midday sunlight which had broken through the windstorm.

Instantly he remembered all.

"Where is he?" he asked.

They knew he meant the dead man, and answered him in a hushed murmur of
many voices. They had placed the body gently down within, in a darkened
chamber.

A shiver passed over him; he stretched his hand out for water that they
held to him.

"Saddle me a fresh horse; I have my work to do."

He knew that for no friendship, or grief, or suffering, or self-pity
might a soldier pause by the wayside while his errand was still undone,
his duty unfulfilled.

He drank the water thirstily; then, reeling slightly still, from the
weakness that was still upon him, he rose, rejecting their offers of
aid. "Take me to him," he said simply. They understood him; there were
French soldiers among them, and they took him, without question or
comment, across the court to the little square stone cell within one of
the towers, where they had laid the corpse, with nothing to break the
quiet and the solitude except the low, soft cooing of some doves that
had their homes in its dark corners, and flew in and out at pleasure
through the oval aperture that served as window.

He motioned them all back with his hand, and went into the gloom of the
chamber alone. Not one among them followed.

When he came forth again the reckless and riotous soldiers of France
turned silently and reverentially away, so that they should not look
upon his face. For it was well known throughout the army that no common
tie had bound together the exiles of England, and the fealty of comrade
to comrade was sacred in their sight.

The fresh animal, saddled, was held ready outside the gates. He crossed
the court, moving still like a man without sense of what he did; he
had the instinct to carry out the mission trusted to him, instantly and
accurately, but he had no distinct perception or memory of aught else,
save of those long-familiar features of which, ere he could return, the
cruel sun of Africa would not have spared one trace.

He passed under the shadow of the gateway arch--a shadow black and
intense against the golden light which, with the ceasing of the storm,
fl