nd, the animal
obeyed him and flew across the plains. He looked after her awhile,
through the dim tremulous darkness that seemed cleft by the rush of the
gallop as the clouds are cleft by lightning, while his tribe sat silent
on their horses in moody unwilling consent, savage in that they had
been deprived of prey, moved in that they were sensible of this
martyrdom which had been offered to them.

"Verily the courage of a woman has put the best among us unto shame," he
said, rather to himself than them, as he mounted the stallion brought
him from the rear and rode slowly northward, unconscious that the thing
he had done was great, because conscious only that it was just.

And, borne by the fleetness of the desert-bred beast, she went away
through the heavy bronze-hued dulness of the night. Her brain had no
sense, her hands had no feeling, her eyes had no sight; the rushing as
of waters was loud on her ears, the giddiness of fasting and of fatigue
sent the gloom eddying round and round like a whirlpool of shadow. Yet
she had remembrance enough left to ride on, and on, and on without once
flinching from the agonies that racked her cramped limbs and throbbed in
her beating temples; she had remembrance enough to strain her blind eyes
toward the east and murmur, in her terror of that white dawn, that must
soon break, the only prayer that had been ever uttered by the lips no
mother's kiss had ever touched:

"_O God! keep the day back!_"

* * *

One of the most brilliant of Algerian autumnal days shone over the great
camp in the south. The war was almost at an end for a time; the Arabs
were defeated and driven desertwards; hostilities irksome, harassing,
and annoying, like all guerilla warfare, would long continue, but peace
was virtually established, and Zaraila had been the chief glory that had
been added by the campaign to the flag of Imperial France. The kites
and the vultures had left the bare bones by thousands to bleach upon the
sands, and the hillocks of brown earth rose in crowds where those more
cared for in death had been hastily thrust beneath the brown crust of
the earth. The dead had received their portion of reward--in the
jackall's teeth, in the crow's beak, in the worm's caress. And the
living received theirs in this glorious rose-flecked glittering autumn
morning, when the breath of winter made the air crisp and cool, but the
ardent noon still lighted with its furnace glow the hillside