ench bands echoed away to
the dim, distant, terrible south, where the desert-scorch and the
desert-thirst had murdered their bravest and best--and the Army was en
fete. En fete, for it did honor to its darling. Cigarette received the
Cross.

Mounted on her own little, bright bay, Etoile-Filante, with tricolor
ribbons flying from his bridle and among the glossy fringes of his mane,
the Little One rode among her Spahis. A scarlet kepi was set on her
thick, silken curls, a tricolor sash was knotted round her waist,
her wine-barrel was slung on her left hip, her pistols thrust in her
ceinturon, and a light carbine held in her hand with the butt-end
resting on her foot. With the sun on her childlike brunette face,
her eyes flashing like brown diamonds in the light, and her marvelous
horsemanship showing its skill in a hundred daring tricks, the little
Friend of the Flag had come hither among her half-savage warriors, whose
red robes surrounded her like a sea of blood.

And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had floated; never sinking
in that awful flood, but buoyant ever above its darkest waves; catching
ever some ray of sunlight upon her fair young head, and being oftentimes
like a star of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed.
Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and lustful
warriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred; by whom in
their wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whose
law was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these
brutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like the
devouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of her
curling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buried
by the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond, triumphant
love these vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried in
her with fierce, passionate delight. To-day she was to her wild wolves
of Africa what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs was to her brethren of France. And
today was the crown of her young life.

In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a
courage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's,
a soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired by
poet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the
blossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this child
of the battle, the spirit of genius, the desire to