ard been told that she could not resent to the death what
offended her, she would have held herself most infamously insulted.
Yet hate was, in truth, foreign to her frank, vivacious nature; its
deadliness never belonged to her, if its passion might; and at a trait
akin to her, at a flash of sympathetic spirit in the object of her
displeasure, Cigarette changed from wrath to friendship with the true
instinct of her little heart of gold. A heart which, though it had been
tossed about on a sea of blood, and had never been graven with so much
as one tender word or one moral principle from the teachings of any
creature, was still gold, despite all; no matter the bruises and the
stains and the furnace-heats that had done their best to harden it into
bronze, to debase it into brass.

The camp was large, and a splendid picture of color, movement,
picturesque combination, and wonderful light and shadow, as the sun-glow
died out and the fires were lighted; for the nights were now intensely
cold--cold with the cutting, icy, withering bise, and clear above as an
Antarctic night, though the days were still hot and dry as flame.

On the left were the Tirailleurs, the Zouaves, the Zephyrs; on the right
were the Cavalry and the Artillery; in the center of all was the tent
of the chief. Everywhere, as evening fell, the red warmth of fires rose;
the caldron of soup or of coffee simmered, gypsy-like, above; the men
lounged around, talking, laughing, cooking, story-telling at their
pleasure; after the semi-starvation of the last week, the abundance of
stores that had come in with other Tringlos besides poor Biribi caused
a universal hilarity. The glitter of accouterments, the contents of open
knapsacks, the skins of animals just killed for the marmite, the boughs
of pines broken for firewood, strewed the ground. Tethered horses,
stands of arms, great drums and eagle-guidons, the looming darkness of
huge cannon, the blackness, like dromedaries couched, of caissons and
ambulance-wagons, the whiteness of the canvas tents, the incessant
movement as the crowds of soldiery stirred, and chattered, and worked,
and sang--all these, on the green level of the plain, framed in by the
towering masses of the rugged rocks, made a picture of marvelous effect
and beauty.

Cecil, looking at it, thought so; though the harsh and bitter misery
which he knew that glittering scene enfolded, and which he had suffered
so many years himself--misery of hunger, of