; a merry, busy, smiling, tender-hearted soul, who
was always happy, trudging along the sunburned road, and caroling in
his joyous voice chansonnettes and gaudrioles to the African flocks and
herds, amid the African solitudes. If there were a man they loved, it
was Biribi; Biribi, whose advent in camp had always been the signal
for such laughter, such abundance, such showers of newspapers, such
quantities of intelligence from that France for tidings of which the
hardest-featured veteran among them would ask with a pang at the heart,
with a thrill in the words. And they had sworn, and would keep what they
had sworn in bitter intensity, to avenge him to the uttermost point of
vengeance. Yet five minutes afterward when the provisions Plick, Plack,
et Plock had brought were divided and given out, they were shouting,
eating, singing, devouring, with as eager a zest, and as hearty an
enjoyment, as though Biribi were among them, and did not lie dead two
leagues away, with a dozen wounds slashed on his stiffening frame.

"What heartless brutes! Are they always like that?" muttered a gentleman
painter who, traveling through the interior to get military sketches,
had obtained permission to take up quarters in the camp.

"If they were not like that they could not live a day," a voice answered
curtly, behind him. "Do you know what this service is, that you venture
to judge them? Men who meet death in the face every five minutes they
breathe cannot afford the space for sentimentalism which those who
saunter at ease and in safety can do. They laugh when we are dead,
perhaps, but they are true as steel to us while we live--it is the
reverse of the practice of the world!"

The tourist started, turned, and looked aghast at the man who had
reproved him; it was a Chasseur d'Afrique, who, having spoken, was
already some way onward, moving through the press and tumult of the camp
to his own regiment's portion of it.

Cigarette, standing by to see that Plick, Plack, and Plock were property
baited on the greenest forage to be found, heard, and her eyes flashed
with a deep delight.

"Dame!" she thought, "I could not have answered better myself! He is a
true soldier, that." And she forgave Cecil all his sins to her with the
quick, impetuous, generous pardon of her warm little Gallic heart.

Cigarette believed that she could hate very bitterly; indeed, her power
of resentment she rated high among her grandest qualities. Had the
little leop