word down through the chest-bones of the Bedouin's mighty form.

"Well struck! The day is turned! Charge!"

She gave the order as though she were a Marshal of the Empire, the
sun-blaze full on her where she sat on the rearing, fretting, half-bred
gray, with the Tricolor folds above her head, and her teeth tight
gripped on the chain-bridle, and her face all glowing and warm and full
of the fierce fire of war--a little Amazon in scarlet and blue and
gold; a young Jeanne d'Arc, with the crimson fez in lieu of the silvered
casque, and the gay broideries of her fantastic dress instead of the
breastplate of steel. And with the Flag of her idolatry, the Flag that
was as her religion, floating back as she went, she spurred her mare
straight against the Arabs, straight over the lifeless forms of the
hundreds slain; and after her poured the fresh squadrons of cavalry, the
ruby burnous of the Spahis streaming on the wind as their darling led
them on to retrieve the day for France.

Not a bullet struck, not a saber grazed her; but there, in the heat
and the press of the worst of the slaughter, Cigarette rode hither
and thither, to and fro, her voice ringing like a bird's song over the
field, in command, in applause, in encouragement, in delight; bearing
her standard aloft and untouched; dashing heedless through a storm of
blows; cheering on her "children" to the charge again and again; and all
the while with the sunlight full on her radiant, spirited head, and with
the grim, gray raven flying above her, shrieking shrilly its "Tue, tue,
tue!" The Army believed with superstitious faith in the potent spell
of that veteran bird, and the story ran that, whenever he flew above a
combat, France was victor before the sun set. The echo of the raven's
cry, and the presence of the child who, they knew, would have a thousand
musket-balls fired in her fair young breast rather than live to see them
defeated, made the fresh squadrons sweep in like a whirlwind, bearing
down all before them.

Cigarette saved the day.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LOVE OF THE AMAZON.

Before the sun had declined from his zenith the French were masters of
the field, and pursued the retreat of the Arabs till, for miles along
the plain, the line of their flight was marked with horses that had
dropped dead in the strain, and with the motionless forms of their
desert-riders, their cold hands clinched in the loose, hot sands, and
their stern faces turned upward to the