had been killed
by a musket-ball.

Cigarette grew very pale, as she had never grown when the hailstorm of
shots had been pouring on her in the midst of a battle; but, with the
rapid skill and strength she had acquired long before, she reached the
place, lifted aside first one, then another of the lifeless Arabs that
had fallen above him, and drew out from beneath the suffocating pressure
of his horse's weight the head and the frame of the Chasseur whom
Flick-Flack had sought out and guarded.

For a moment she thought him dead; then, as she drew him out where
the cooled breeze of the declining day could reach him, a slow breath,
painfully drawn, moved his chest; she saw that he was unconscious from
the stifling oppression under which he had been buried since the noon;
an hour more without the touch of fresher air, and life would have been
extinct.

Cigarette had with her the flask of brandy that she always brought on
such errands as these; she forced the end between his lips, and poured
some down his throat; her hand shook slightly as she did so, a weakness
the gallant little campaigner never before then had known.

It revived him in a degree; he breathed more freely, though heavily,
and with difficulty still; but gradually the deadly, leaden color of his
face was replaced by the hue of life, and his heart began to beat more
loudly. Consciousness did not return to him; he lay motionless and
senseless, with his head resting on her lap, and with Flick-Flack, in
eager affection, licking his hands and his hair.

"He was as good as dead, Flick-Flack, if it had not been for you and
me," said Cigarette, while she wetted his lips with more brandy. "Ah,
bah! and he would be more grateful, Flick-Flack, for a scornful scoff
from Milady!"

Still, though she thought this, she let his head lie on her lap, and, as
she looked down on him, there was the glisten as of tears in the
brave, sunny eyes of the little Friend of the Flag. She was of a vivid,
voluptuous, artistic nature; she was thoroughly woman-like in her
passions and her instincts, though she so fiercely contemned womanhood.
If he had not been beautiful she would never have looked twice at him,
never once have pitied his fate.

And he was beautiful still, though his hair was heavy with dew and dust;
though his face was scorched with powder; though his eyes were closed as
with the leaden weight of death, and his beard was covered with the red
stain of blood that had f