With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of Africa, had arrived.  The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her with the cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of Africa he loved and admired her.

Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the corporal’s heroism.  And the marshal promised the sentence should be deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.

With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night—­for at sunrise on the morrow will the sentence be executed.

And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has been brought out to the slope of earth out of sight of the camp.

At the last the Seraph appeared, and found in the condemned man the friend of his youth.  It was only with great difficulty that Rockingham was overpowered, for he swore Cecil should not be killed, and a dozen soldiers were required to get him away.

Then Cecil raised his hand, and gave the signal for his own death-shot.

The levelled carbines covered him; ere they could fire a shrill cry pierced the air:  “Wait!  In the name of France!”

Dismounted and breathless, Cigarette was by the side of Cecil, and had flung herself on his breast.

Her cry came too late; the volley was fired, and while the prisoner stood erect, grazed only by some of the balls, Cigarette fell, pierced and broken by the fire.  She died in Cecil’s arms, with the comrades she had loved around her.

* * * * *

It is spring.  Cecil is Lord of Royallieu, the Lady Venetia is his bride.

“It was worth banishment to return,” he murmured to her.  “It was worth the trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known.”

And the memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the folds of the tricolour drooped over one little grave—­a grave where the troops saluted as they passed it, because on the white stone there was carved a name that spoke to every heart: 

              CIGARETTE
    ENFANT DE L’ARMEE, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE.

* * * * *

JAMES PAYN

Lost Sir Massingberd

James Payn, one of the most prolific literary workers of the second half of the nineteenth century, was born at Cheltenham, England, Feb. 28, 1830, and died March 23, 1898.  After a false start in education for the army, he went to Cambridge University, where he was president of the Union, and published some poems.  The acceptance of his contributions by “Household Words” turned him to his true vocation.  After writing some years for “Chambers’s Journal” he became its editor from 1850 till 1874.  His first work of fiction, “The Foster Brothers,”