She knew too well the strange nature with which she had to deal to say a
syllable of praise to him for his self-devotion, or to appear to see
that, despite his boast of his leather skin, the stings of the cruel
winged tribes were drawing his blood and causing him alike pain and
irritation which, under that sun, and added to the torment of his
gunshot wound, were a martyrdom as great as the noblest saint ever
endured.

"_Tiens! tiens!_ I did him wrong," murmured Cigarette. "That is what
they are--the children of France--even when they are at their worst,
like that devil, Zackrist. Who dare say they are not the heroes of the
world?"

And all through the march she gave Zackrist a double portion of her
water dashed with red wine, that was so welcome and so precious to the
parched and aching throats; and all through the march Cecil lay asleep,
and the man who had thieved from him, the man whose soul was stained
with murder, and pillage, and rapine, sat erect beside him, letting the
insects suck his veins and pierce his flesh.

It was only when they drew near the camp of the main army that Zackrist
beat off the swarm and drew his old shirt over his head. "You do not
want to say anything to him," he muttered to Cigarette. "I am of
leather, you know; I have not felt it."

She nodded; she understood him. Yet his shoulders and his chest were
well-nigh flayed, despite the tough and horny skin of which he made his
boast.

"_Dieu!_ we are droll!" mused Cigarette. "If we do a good thing, we hide
it as if it were a bit of stolen meat, we are so afraid it should be
found out; but, if they do one in the world there, they bray it at the
tops of their voices from the houses' roofs, and run all down the
streets screaming about it for fear it should be lost. _Dieu!_ we are
droll!"

And she dashed the spurs into her mare and galloped off at the height of
her speed into camp--a very city of canvas, buzzing with the hum of
life, regulated with the marvellous skill and precision of French
warfare, yet with the carelessness and the picturesqueness of the
desert-life pervading it.

* * *

Like wave rushing on wave of some tempestuous ocean, the men swept out
to meet her in one great surging tide of life, impetuous, passionate,
idolatrous, exultant, with all the vivid ardour, all the uncontrolled
emotion, of natures south-born, sun-nurtured. They broke away from their
mid-day rest as from their military toil, moved a