tient that he would never grow communicative or thread many phrases
together, even over the best wine which ever warmed the hearts of its
drinkers or loosened all rein from their lips.

"I wish I had come straight to you, Sidi, when I first set foot in
Africa," he said at last, while the fragrant smoke uncurled from under
the droop of his long, pendent mustaches.

"Truly it had been well," answered the Khalifa, who would have given the
best stallions in his stud to have had this Frank with him in warfare,
and in peace. "There is no life like our life."

"Faith! I think not!" murmured the Chasseur, rather to himself than the
Bedouin. "The desert keeps you and your horse, and you can let all the
rest of the world 'slide.'"

"But we are murderers and pillagers, say your nations," resumed the
Emir, with the shadow of a sardonic smile flickering an instant over the
sternness and composure of his features. "To rifle a caravan is a crime,
though to steal a continent is glory."

Bel-a-faire-peur laughed slightly.

"Do not tempt me to rebel against my adopted flag."

The Sheik looked at him in silence; the French soldiers had spent
twelve years in the ceaseless exertions of an amused inquisitiveness
to discover the antecedents of their volunteer; the Arabs, with their
loftier instincts of courtesy, had never hinted to him a question of
whence or why he had come upon African soil.

"I never thought at all in those days; else, had I thought twice, I
should not have gone to your enemies," he answered, as he lazily watched
the Bedouins without squat on their heels round the huge brass bowls
of couscoussou, which they kneaded into round lumps and pitched between
their open, bearded lips in their customary form of supper. "Not but
what our Roumis are brave fellows enough; better comrades no man could
want."

The Khalifa took the long pipe from his mouth and spoke; his slow,
sonorous accents falling melodiously on the silence in the lingua sapir
of the Franco-Arab tongue.

"Your comrades are gallant men; they are great warriors, and fearless
foes; against such my voice is never lifted, however my sword may
cross with them. But the locust-swarms that devour the land are the
money-eaters, the petty despots, the bribe-takers, the men who wring
gold out of infamy, who traffic in tyrannies, who plunder under official
seals, who curse Algiers with avarice, with fraud, with routine, with
the hell-spawn of civilization. It is the '