y! She, who had scores of
lovers, from princes, to piou-pious, and never had a heartache for one
of them, to go and care for a silent "ci-devant," who had never even
noticed that her eyes had any brightness or her face had any charm!

"You deserve to be shot--you!" said Cigarette, fiercely abusing herself
as she put his head off her lap, and rose abruptly and shouted to a
Tringlo, who was at some distance searching for the wounded. "Here is a
Chasse-Marais with some breath in him," she said curtly, as the man with
his mule-cart and his sad burden of half-dead, moaning, writhing frames
drew near to her summons. "Put him in. Soldiers cost too much training
to waste them on jackals and kites, if one can help it. Lift him
up--quick!"

"He is badly hurt?" said the Tringlo.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, no! I have had worse scratches myself. The horse fell on him, that
was the mischief. I never saw a prettier thing--every Lascar has killed
his own little knot of Arbicos. Look how nice and neat they lie."

Cigarette glanced over the field, with the satisfied appreciation of
a dilettante glancing over a collection unimpeachable for accuracy and
arrangement; and drank a toss of her brandy, and lighted her little
amber pipe, and sang loudly, as she did so, the gayest ballad of the
Langue Verte.

She was not going to have him imagine she cared for that Chasseur
whom he lifted up on his little wagon with so kindly a care--not she!
Cigarette was as proud in her way as was ever the Princesse Venetia
Corona.

Nevertheless, she kept pace with the mules, carrying little Flick-Flack,
and never paused on her way, though she passed scores of dead Arabs,
whose silver ornaments and silk embroideries, commonly replenished the
knapsack and adorned in profusion the uniform of the young filibuster;
being gleaned by her, right and left, as her lawful harvest after the
fray.

"Leave him there. I will have a look at him," she said, at the first
empty tent they reached. The camp had been the scene of as fierce a
struggle as the part of the plain which the cavalry had held, and it was
strewn with the slaughter of Zouaves and Tirailleurs. The Tringlo obeyed
her, and went about his errand of mercy. Cigarette, left alone with the
wounded man, lying insensible still on a heap of forage, ceased her song
and grew very quiet. She had a certain surgical skill, learned as
her untutored genius learned most things, with marvelous rapidity,
by ob