Bureaucracy,' as your tongue
phrases it, that is the spoiler and the oppressor of the soil. But--we
endure only for a while. A little, and the shame of the invader's tread
will be washed out in blood. Allah is great; we can wait."

And with Moslem patience that the fiery gloom of his burning eyes
belied, the Djied stretched himself once more into immovable and silent
rest.

The Chasseur answered nothing; his sympathies were heartfelt with the
Arabs, his allegiance and his esprit de corps were with the service
in which he was enrolled. He could not defend French usurpation; but
neither could he condemn the Flag that had now become his Flag, and
in which he had grown to feel much of national honor, to take much of
national pride.

"They will never really win again, I am afraid," he thought, as his eyes
followed the wraith-like flash of the white burnous, as the Bedouins
glided to and fro in the chiar-oscuro of the encampment; now in the
flicker of the flames, now in the silvered luster of the moon. "It is
the conflict of the races, as the cant runs, and their day is done.
It is a bolder, freer, simpler type than anything we get in the world
yonder. Shall we ever drift back to it in the future, I wonder?"

The speculation did not stay with him long; Semitic, Latin, or Teuton
race was very much the same to him, and intellectual subtleties had not
much attraction at any time for the most brilliant soldier in the French
cavalry; he preferred the ring of the trumpets, the glitter of the sun's
play along the line of steel as his regiment formed in line on the eve
of a life-and-death struggle, the wild, breathless sweep of a midnight
gallop over the brown, swelling plateau under the light of the stars,
or,--in some brief interval of indolence and razzia-won wealth,--the
gleam of fair eyes and the flush of sparkling sherbet when some
passionate, darkling glance beamed on him from some Arab mistress whose
scarlet lips murmured to him through the drowsy hush of an Algerine
night the sense, if not the song of Pelagia,

"Life is so short at best!
Take while thou canst thy rest,
Sleeping by me!"

His thoughts drifted back over many varied scenes and changing memories
of his service in Algiers, as he lay there at the entrance of the
Sheik's tent, with the night of looming shadow and reddened firelight
and picturesque movement before him. Hours of reckless, headlong
delight, when men grew drunk with bloodshed as w