for which the Legion lives. For
the Legion is meant for the hardest marching (with the heaviest kits in
the world) as well as the fiercest fighting; and when the Legion marches
through the desert, it is "_marcher ou mourir_."

The cry of the bugles reached the ears of the heaviest sleepers in town;
for those who knew the Legion and the Legion's music knew that the
soldiers were off for a great march, or that wild air would not be
played. Windows flew up and heads looked down as the soldiers tramping
the bright moonlit street went to the railway station. So the "lucky
ones" of the Legion passed out of Sidi-bel-Abbes, some of them never to
return. And perhaps that was lucky, too, for it's as well for a
Legionnaire to rest in the desert as under one of the little black
crosses behind the wall of cypresses in the Legion's burial ground.

* * * * *

They had to go by the new railway line to Touggourt, as Sanda DeLisle
had gone, but instead of travelling by passenger train, the soldiers
went as Max had seen the batch of recruits from Oran arrive at
Bel-Abbes: in wagons which could be used for freight or France's human
merchandise: "_32 hommes_, _6 cheveaux_." After Touggourt their way
would diverge from Sanda's. There was no chance for Colonel DeLisle to
go and see his daughter, but in a letter he had told her the date of his
arrival in the oasis town and the hope he had--a hope almost a
certainty--of hearing from his girl there, or having a message of love
to take with him on the long march, warmed his heart. It was very
strange, almost horrible, to remember how he had felt toward his
daughter until the day she came to him, in the image of his dead love,
at Sidi-bel-Abbes. He had not wanted to see her. He had even felt that
he could not bear to see her. Unjust and brutal as it was, he had never
been able to banish the thought that, if it had not been for her, his
wife might have been with him through the years. Sanda had cost him the
happiness of his life.

He had easily persuaded himself that in any case, even if he had wanted
her with him, for her sake it was far better not. Such an existence as
his was not for a young woman to share, even after she had passed the
schoolgirl age. It had seemed to DeLisle that the only place for Sanda
was with her aunts, and passing half her time in France, half in
Ireland, gave the girl a chance to see something of the world. She was
not poor, for she had