m flashed on his memory, he
was raising it proudly, deferentially, in the salute of a subordinate to
his superior, when Chanrellon's grasp closed on it readily. The victim
of Coeur d'Acier was of as gallant a temper as ever blent the reckless
condottiere with the thoroughbred noble.

The Chasseur colored slightly, as he remembered that he had forgotten
alike his own position and their relative stations.

"I beg your pardon, M. le Viscomte," he said simply, as he gave the
salute with ceremonious grace, and passed onward rapidly, as though he
wished to forget and to have forgotten the momentary self-oblivion of
which he had been guilty.

"Dieu!" muttered Chanrellon, as he looked after him, and struck his
hand on the marble-topped table till the glasses shook. "I would give a
year's pay to know that fine fellow's history. He is a gentleman--every
inch of him."

"And a good soldier, which is better," growled the General of Brigade,
who had begun life in his time driving an ox-plow over the heavy tillage
of Alsace.

"A private of Chateauroy's?" asked the Tirailleur, lifting his eye-glass
to watch the Chasseur as he went.

"Pardieu--yes--more's the pity," said Chanrellon, who spoke his thoughts
as hastily as a hand-grenade scatters its powder. "The Black Hawk hates
him--God knows why--and he is kept down in consequence, as if he were
the idlest lout or the most incorrigible rebel in the service. Look at
what he has done. All the Bureaux will tell you there is not a finer
Roumi in Africa--not even among our Schaouacks! Since he joined, there
has not been a hot and heavy thing with the Arabs that he has not had
his share in. There has not been a campaign in Oran or Kabaila that
he had not gone out with. His limbs are slashed all over with Bedouin
steel. He rode once twenty leagues to deliver dispatches with a
spear-head in his side, and fell, in a dead faint, out of his saddle
just as he gave them up to the commandant's own hands. He saved the day,
two years ago, at Granaila. We should have been cut to pieces, as
sure as destiny, if he had not collected a handful of broken Chasseurs
together, and rallied them, and rated them, and lashed them with their
shame, till they dashed with him to a man into the thickest of the
fight, and pierced the Arabs' center, and gave us breathing room,
till we all charged together, and beat the Arbicos back like a herd of
jackals. There are a hundred more like stories of him--every one of t