ory tribe; and returned, jaded, weary, parched with thirst,
scorched through with heat, and covered with white dust, to be kept
waiting in his saddle, by his Colonel's orders, outside the barrack for
three-quarters of an hour, whether to receive a command or a censure he
was left in ignorance.

When the three-quarters had passed, he was told M. le Commandant had
gone long ago, and did not require him!

Cecil said nothing.

Yet he reeled slightly as he threw himself out of saddle; a nausea and a
giddiness had come on him. To have passed nigh an hour motionless in his
stirrups, with the skies like brass above him, while he was already worn
with riding from sunrise well-nigh to sunset, with little to appease
hunger and less to slake thirst, made him, despite himself, stagger
dizzily under a certain sense of blindness and exhaustion as he
dismounted.

The Chasseur who had brought him the message caught his arm eagerly.

"Are you hurt, mon Caporal?"

Cecil shook his head. The speaker was one known in the regiment as Petit
Picpon, who had begun life as a gamin of Paris, and now bade fair to
make one of the most brilliant of the soldiers of Africa. Petit
Picpon had but one drawback to this military career--he was always in
insubordination; the old gamin dare-devilry was not dead in him, and
never would die; and Petit Picpon accordingly was perpetually a hero
in the field and a ragamuffin in the times of peace. Of course he was
always arrayed against authority, and now--being fond of his galonne
with that curious doglike, deathless attachment that these natures, all
reckless, wanton, destructive, and mischievous though they may be, so
commonly bestow--he muttered a terrible curse under his fiercely curled
mustaches.

"If the Black Hawk were nailed up in the sun like a kite on a barn-door,
I would drive twenty nails through his throat!"

Cecil turned rapidly on him.

"Silence, sir! or I must report you. Another speech like that, and you
shall have a turn at Beylick."

It went to his heart to rebuke the poor fellow for an outburst of
indignation which had its root in regard for himself, but he knew that
to encourage it by so much even as by an expression of gratitude for the
affection borne him, would be to sow further and deeper the poison-seeds
of that inclination to mutiny and that rebellious hatred against
their chief already only planted too strongly in the squadrons under
Chateauroy's command.

Petit Picpon l