him as no
physical torture would have done--and the sight was not without a strong
effect for good on them. They could tell that he suffered under these as
they never suffered themselves, yet he bore them and did his duty with a
self-control and patience they had never attained.

Almost insensibly they grew ashamed to be beaten by him, and strove
to grow like him as far as they could. They never knew him drunk,
they never heard him swear; they never found him unjust--even to
a poverty-stricken indigene; or brutal--even to a fille de joie.
Insensibly his presence humanized them. Of a surety, the last part
Bertie dreamed of playing was that of a teacher to any mortal thing;
yet, here in Africa, it might reasonably be questioned if a second
Augustine or Francis Xavier would ever have done half the good among
the devil-may-care Roumis that was wrought by the dauntless, listless,
reckless soldier who followed instinctively the one religion which has
no cant in its brave, simple creed, and binds man to man in links that
are true as steel--the religion of a gallant gentleman's loyalty and
honor.

CHAPTER XX.

CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE.

"Corporal Victor, M. le Commandant desires you to present yourself at
his campagne to-night, at ten precisely, with all your carvings; above
all, with your chessmen."

The swift, sharp voice of a young officer of his regiment wakened Cecil
from his musing, as he went on his way down the crowded, tortuous,
stifling street. He had scarcely time to catch the sense of the words,
and to halt, giving the salute, before the Chasseur's skittish little
Barbary mare had galloped past him; scattering the people right
and left, knocking over a sweetmeat seller, upsetting a string of
maize-laden mules, jostling a venerable marabout on to an impudent
little grisette, and laming an old Moor as he tottered to his mosque,
without any apology for any of the mischief, in the customary insolence
which makes "Roumis" and "Bureaucratic" alike execrated by the
indigenous populace with a detestation that the questionable benefits
of civilized importations can do very little to counter-balance in the
fiery breasts of the sons of the soil.

Cecil involuntarily stood still. His face darkened. All orders that
touched on the service, even where harshest and most unwelcome, he had
taught himself to take without any hesitation, till he now scarcely felt
the check of the steel curb; but to be ordered thus