he did to any private.

She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his
colonel, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish my
corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"

Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a
ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds
cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who
had waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who
had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close
discipline.

From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of
hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur,
though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had
grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them,
with a rough, dog-like love.

Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his
servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.

And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the
death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The
title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger
brother.

_IV.--From Death to Life_

The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess
Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley,
Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from
recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the
grave unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in
the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.

"Have you lived stainlessly _since_?" were Cecil's only words, stern as
the demand of a judge.

"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my
first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I
say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"

It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.

"I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still," said Cecil
gravely. "Only leave Algeria at once."

A slight incident revealed the corporal's identity to the Princess
Corona. By his bearing he had attracted the attention of the visitors to
the camp, and on being admitted to the villa of the princess to restore
a gold chain dropped carelessly in the road, he disclosed the little
enamelled box, marked "Venetia," the gif