ring
omniscience a leader's genius under the kepi of a common trooper. Though
he should show the qualities of a Massena or a Kleber, the chances were
a million to one that he would never get even as much as a lieutenancy;
and the raids on the decimated tribes, the obscure skirmishes of the
interior, though terrible in slaughter and venturesome enough, were not
the fields on which great military successes were won and great military
honors acquired. The French fought for a barren strip of brown plateau
that, gained, would be of little use or profit to them; he thought
that he did much the same, that his future was much like those arid
sand-plains, these thirsty, verdureless stretches of burned earth--very
little worth the reaching.

The heavy folds of a Bedouin's haick, brushing the papers off the bench,
broke the thread of his musings. As he stooped for them, he saw that one
was an English journal some weeks old. His own name caught his eye--the
name buried so utterly, whose utterance in the Sheik's tent had struck
him like a dagger's thrust. The flickering light and darkness, as the
awning waved to and fro, made the lines move dizzily upward and downward
as he read--read the short paragraph touching the fortunes of the race
that had disowned him:

"The Royallieu Succession.--We regret to learn that the Rt. Hon.
Viscount Royallieu, who so lately succeeded to the family title on his
father's death, has expired at Mentone, whither his health had induced
him to go some months previous. The late Lord was unmarried. His next
brother was, it will be remembered, many years ago, killed on a southern
railway. The title, therefore, now falls to the third and only remaining
son, the Hon. Berkeley Cecil, who, having lately inherited considerable
properties from a distant relative, will, we believe, revive all the
old glories of this Peerage, which have, from a variety of causes, lost
somewhat of their ancient brilliancy."

Cecil sat quite still, as he had sat looking down on the record of his
father's death, when Cigarette had rallied him with her gay challenge
among the Moresco ruins. His face flushed hotly under the warm, golden
hue of the desert bronze, then lost all its color as suddenly, till
it was as pale as any of the ivory he carved. The letters of the paper
reeled and wavered, and grew misty before his eyes; he lost all sense
of the noisy, changing, polyglot crowd thronging past him; he, a common
soldier in the Algeria