in her hand with the butt-end
resting on her foot. With the sun on her child-like brunette face, her
eyes flashing like brown diamonds in the light, and her marvellous
horsemanship, showing its skill in a hundred _desinvoltures_ and daring
tricks, the little Friend of the Flag had come hither among her
half-savage warriors, whose red robes surrounded her like a sea of
blood.

And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had floated, never sinking
in that awful flood, but buoyant ever above its darkest waves, catching
ever some ray of sunlight upon her fair young head, and being oftentimes
like a star of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed.
Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and lustful
warriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred, by whom in
their wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whose
law was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these
brutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like the
devouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of her
curling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buried
by the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond triumphant
love these vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried in
her with fierce passionate delight. To-day she was to her wild wolves of
Africa what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs was to her brethren of France. And
to-day was the crown of her young life. It is given to most, if the
desire of their soul ever become theirs, to possess it only when long
and weary and fainting toil has brought them to its goal; when beholding
the golden fruit so far off, through so dreary a pilgrimage, dulls its
bloom as they approach; when having so long centred all their thoughts
and hopes in the denied possession of that one fair thing, they find but
little beauty in it when that possession is granted to satiate their
love. But thrice happy, and few as happy, are they to whom the dream of
their youth is fulfilled _in_ their youth, to whom their ambition comes
in full sweet fruitage, while yet the colours of glory have not faded to
the young, eager, longing eyes that watch its advent. And of these was
Cigarette.

In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a
courage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's, a
soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired by
poet's words or patriot's bidding, spon