ded "deserter." Precisely why Max had
joined Stanton's caravan instead of returning to Sidi-bel-Abbes, perhaps
a few days late, Four Eyes was not certain; but there was no one better
instructed than he in pretending to know things he merely conjectured.
He had seen Ahmara, the dancer, and had told Max the scandal connecting
her with the explorer. "What more natural than that a soldier of the
Legion should, for his colonel's sake, sacrifice his whole career to
protect the daughter from such a husband as Stanton? No doubt the boy
knew that Stanton meant to take Ahmara with him, and had left everything
to stand between the girl and such a pair."

In his own picturesque and lurid language Four Eyes presented these
conjectures of his as if they were facts; and to do him justice he
believed in them. Also, he took pains to rake up every old tale of
cruelty, vanity, or lust that had been told in the past about Richard
Stanton, and embroider them. Beside the satyr figure which he flaunted
like a dummy Guy Fawkes, Max St. George shone a pure young martyr. Never
had old Four Eyes enjoyed such popularity among the townfolk of
Sidi-bel-Abbes as in these days, and he had the satisfaction of seeing
veiled allusions to his anecdotes in newspapers when he could afford to
buy or was able to steal them. On the strength of his triumph he got up
among his fellow Legionnaires a petition for the pardon and
reinstatement of Corporal St. George. Not a man refused to sign, for
even those who might have hesitated would not have done so long under
the basilisk stare of the ex-champion of boxing.

"Sign, or I'll smash you to a jelly," was his remark to one recruit who
had not heard enough of St. George or Four Eyes to dash his name on
paper the instant he saw a pen.

While the petition was growing Colonel DeLisle (who gave no sign that he
had heard of it) obtained ten days' leave, the first he had asked for in
many years, and took ship for Algiers to Alexandria to see his daughter.
But that did not discourage Four Eyes; on the contrary, "The Old Man
doesn't want to be in it, see?" said Pelle. "It ain't for him, in the
circus, to do the trick; it's for us, _ses enfants!_ And damn all four
of my eyes, we'll _do_ it, if we have to mutiny as our comrades once did
before us, when they made big history in the Legion."

The third person who, unasked, took an active interest in Max St.
George's affairs was, of all people on earth, the last whom he or an