ef, was as rough
a one in most respects as any of her comrades'. These delicate artistic
carvings were a revelation to her.

She touched them reverently one by one; all the carvings had their
beauty for her, but those of the flowers had far the most. She had never
noted any flowers in her life before, save those she strung together for
the Zephyrs. Her youth was a military ballad, rhymed vivaciously to the
rhythm of the Pas de Charge; but other or softer poetry had never by
any chance touched her until now--now that in her tiny, bronzed,
war-hardened palms lay the while foliage, the delicate art-trifles of
this Chasseur, who bartered his talent to get a touch of ice for the
burning lips of his doomed comrade.

"He is an aristocrat--he has such gifts as this--and yet he must sell
all this beauty to get a slice of melon for Leon Ramon!" she thought,
while the silvery moon strayed in through a broken arch, and fell on an
ivory coil of twisted leaves and river grasses.

And, lost in a musing pity, Cigarette forgot her vow of vengeance.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE IVORY SQUADRONS.

The barracks of the Chasseurs was bright and clean in the morning light;
in common with all Algerian barrack rooms as unlike the barrack rooms of
the ordinary army as Cigarette, with her debonair devilry, smoking on
a gun-wagon, was unlike a trim Normandy soubrette, sewing on a bench in
the Tuileries gardens.

Disorder reigned supreme; but Disorder, although a disheveled goddess,
is very often a picturesque one, and more of an artist than her
better-trained sisters; and the disorder was brightened with a thousand
vivid colors and careless touches that blent in confusion to enchant a
painter's eyes. The room was crammed with every sort of spoil that the
adventurous pillaging temper of the troopers could forage from Arab
tents, or mountain caves, or river depths, or desert beasts and birds.
All things, from tiger skins to birds' nests, from Bedouin weapons to
ostrich eggs, from a lion's mighty coat to a tobacco-stopper chipped out
of a morsel of deal, were piled together, pell-mell, or hung against
the whitewashed walls, or suspended by cords from bed to bed. Everything
that ingenuity and hardihood, prompted by the sharp spur of hunger,
could wrest from the foe, from the country, from earth or water, from
wild beasts or rock, were here in the midst of the soldiers' regimental
pallets and regimental arms, making the barracks at once atelier,
stor