r many months, consequently he
would be unable to keep Sanda with him. She did not want to go back to
France or Ireland, so she was told about the Agha of Djazerta and the
sixteen-year-old girl, Ourieda, whose Arab name meant "Little Rose."

Next to staying at the headquarters of the Foreign Legion with its
colonel, Sanda liked the idea of going into the desert and living for a
while the life of an Arab woman with the daughter of a great chief of
the south. The more she thought of it, the more it appealed to her.
Besides, when her father pointed out Djazerta on the map, and not more
than twenty kilometres away the _douar_, or tribal encampment under the
rule of Ben Raana, she noticed that they seemed to be scarcely a hundred
kilometres distant from Touggourt. Probably Richard Stanton would be
spending many days or even weeks at Touggourt before he set off across
vast desert spaces searching for the Lost Oasis. So the girl said to
Colonel DeLisle that, since she could not at present stay with him, she
would like beyond everything else such a romantic adventure as a visit
to the Agha's house.

The one objection was that, if she went at all, she must start at once,
because there was at the moment a great chance for her to travel well
chaperoned. A captain of the Chasseurs d'Afrique had just been ordered
from Sidi-bel-Abbes to Touggourt, and was leaving at once with his wife.
They could take Sanda with them: and at Touggourt Ben Raana would have
his friend's daughter met by an escort and several women servants. It
was an opportunity not to miss; though otherwise Colonel DeLisle might
have kept the girl with him for a fortnight longer.

Sanda would have liked to bid Max good-bye, or if that were not
possible, to write him a letter. But DeLisle said it "would not do." Not
that the newly enlisted soldier would misunderstand: but--he would
realize why he heard nothing more from his colonel's daughter. She need
not fear that he would be hurt. So Sanda could send only a thought
message to her friend, and perhaps it reached him in a dream, for the
night of her departure--knowing nothing of it--he was back again in the
dim cabin of the _General Morel_ gazing through the dusk at a long,
swinging plait of gold-brown hair.

Sanda, with Captain Amaranthe and his wife, travelled to Oran, thence to
Biskra, and from Biskra on the newly finished railway line to Touggourt.
It was there that, twenty-two years ago, the beautiful Irish girl