hild of the Army whom they knew so well. She
was a creature, desperate, hard-pressed, mute as death, strong as steel;
above all, hunted by despair.

They hesitated to take her message, to do her bidding. The one whom she
sought was great and supreme here as a king; they dreaded to approach
his staff, to ask his audience.

Cigarette looked at them a moment, then loosened her Cross and held it
out to an adjutant standing beneath the gates.

"Take that to the man who gave it me. Tell him Cigarette waits; and with
each moment that she waits a soldier's life is lost. Go!"

The adjutant took it, and went. Over and over again she had brought
intelligence of an Arab movement, news of a contemplated razzia, warning
of an internal revolt, or tidings of an encounter on the plains, that
had been of priceless value to the army which she served. It was not
lightly that Cigarette's words were ever received when she spoke as she
spoke now; nor was it impossible that she now brought to them that which
would brook neither delay nor trifling.

She waited patiently; all the iron discipline of military life had never
bound her gay and lawless spirit down; but now she was singularly still
and mute. Only there gleamed thirstily in her eyes that fearful avarice
which begrudges every moment in its flight as never the miser grudged
his hoarded gold into the robber's grasp.

A few minutes and the decoration was brought back to her, and her demand
granted. She was summoned to the Marshal's presence. It was the ordnance
room, a long, vast, silent chamber filled with stands of arms, with all
the arts and appliances of war brought to their uttermost perfection,
and massed in all the resource of a great empire against the sons of
the desert, who had nothing to oppose to them save the despair of a
perishing nationality and a stifled freedom.

The Marshal, leaning against a brass field-piece, turned to her with a
smile in his keen, stern eyes.

"You, my young one! What brings you here?"

She came up to him with her rapid leopard-like grace, and he started as
he saw the change upon her features. She was covered with sand and dust,
and with the animal's blood-flecked foam. The beating of her heart from
the fury of the gallop had drained every hue from her face; her voice
was scarcely articulate in its breathless haste as she saluted him.

"Monsieur, I have come from Algiers since noon--"

"From Algiers!" He and his officers echoed the name of