the sabers played about their heads so quick that it was like lightning, as they flashed and twirled in the sun; the hoofs trampled up the sand till a yellow cloud hid their struggle, and out of it all you could see was the head of a horse tossing up and spouting with foam, or a sword-blade lifted to strike.  Then the tawny cloud settled down a little, the sand mist cleared away, the Arab’s saddle was empty—­but Rire-pour-tout sat like a rock.  The old Chief bowed his head.  ’It is over!  Allah is great!’ And he knew his son lay there dead.  Then we broke from the ranks, and we rushed to the place where the chargers and men were piled like so many slaughtered sheep.  Rire-pour-tout laughed such a gay, ringing laugh as the desert never had heard.  ‘Vive la France!’ he cried.  ‘And now bring me my toss of brandy.’  Then down headlong out of his stirrups he reeled and fell under his horse; and when we lifted him up there were two broken sword-blades buried in him, and the blood was pouring fast as water out of thirty wounds and more.  That was how Rire-pour-tout died, piou-piou; laughing to the last.  Sacre bleu!  It was a splendid end; I wish I were sure of the like.”

And Claude de Chanrellon drank down his third beaker, for overmuch speech made him thirsty.

The men around him emptied their glasses in honor of the dead hero.

“Rire-pour-tout was a croc-mitaine,” they said solemnly, with almost a sigh; so tendering by their words the highest funeral oration.

“You have much of such sharp service here, I suppose?” asked a voice in very pure French.  The speaker was leaning against the open door of the cafe; a tall, lightly built man, dressed in a velvet shooting tunic, much the worse for wind and weather, a loose shirt, and jack-boots splashed and worn out.

“When we are at it, monsieur,” returned the Chasseur.  “I only wish we had more.”

“Of course.  Are you in need of recruits?”

“They all want to come to us and to the Zouaves,” smiled Chanrellon, surveying the figure of the one who addressed him, with a keen sense of its symmetry and its sinew.  “Still, a good sword brings its welcome.  Do you ask seriously, monsieur?”

The bearded Arabs smoking their long pipes, the little piou-piou drowning his mortification in some curacoa, the idlers reading the “Akbah” or the “Presse,” the Chasseurs lounging over their drink, the ecarte players lost in their game, all looked up at the newcomer.  They thought he looked a likely wearer of the dead honors of Rire-pour-tout.

He did not answer the question literally, but came over from the doorway and seated himself at the little marble table opposite Claude, leaning his elbows on it.

“I have a doubt,” he said.  “I am more inclined to your foes.”

“Dieu de Dieu!” exclaimed Chanrellon, pulling at his tawny mustaches.  “A bold thing to say before five Chasseurs.”

He smiled, a little contemptuously, a little amusedly.