he core of her heart so tired a pang was aching! She who
had gloried in being the child of the whole people, the daughter of
the whole army, felt lonely and abandoned, as though she were some bird
which an hour ago had been flying in all its joy among its brethren
and now, maimed with one shot, had fallen, with broken pinion and torn
plumage, to lie alone upon the sand and die.

The touch of a bird's wing brushing her hair brought the dreamy
comparison to her wandering thoughts. She started and lifted her head;
it was a blue carrier-pigeon, one of the many she fed at that casement,
and the swiftest and surest of several she sent with messages for the
soldiers between the various stations and corps. She had forgotten she
had left the bird at the encampment.

She caressed it absently, while the tired creature sank down on her
bosom; then only she saw that there was a letter beneath one wing. She
unloosed it, and looked at it without being able to tell its meaning;
she could not read a word, printed or written. Military habits were too
strong with her for the arrival not to change her reverie into action;
whoever it was for, it must be seen. She gave the pigeon water and
grain, then wound her way down the dark, narrow stairs, through the
height of the tower, out into the passage below.

She found an old French cobbler sitting at a stall in a casement,
stitching leather; he was her customary reader and scribe in this
quarter. She touched him with the paper. "Bon Mathieu! Wilt thou read
this to me?"

"It is for thee, Little One, and signed 'Petit Pot-de-terre.'"

Cigarette nodded listlessly.

"'Tis a good lad, and a scholar," she answered absently. "Read on!"

And he read aloud:

"'There is ill news. I send the bird on a chance to find thee.
Bel-a-faire-peau struck the Black Hawk--a slight blow, but with threat
to kill following it. He has been tried, and is to be shot. There is
no appeal. The case is clear; the Colonel could have cut him down, were
that all. I thought you should know. We are all sorry. It was done on
the night of the great fete. I am thy humble lover and slave.'"

So the boy-Zouave's scrawl, crushed, and blotted, and written with great
difficulty, ran in its brief phrases that the slow muttering of the old
shoemaker drew out in tedious length.

Cigarette heard; she never made a movement or gave a sound, but all
the blood fled out of her brilliant face, leaving it horribly blanched
beneath its br