Cecil said nothing.

Yet he reeled slightly as he threw himself out of saddle; a nausea and a giddiness had come on him.  To have passed nigh an hour motionless in his stirrups, with the skies like brass above him, while he was already worn with riding from sunrise well-nigh to sunset, with little to appease hunger and less to slake thirst, made him, despite himself, stagger dizzily under a certain sense of blindness and exhaustion as he dismounted.

The Chasseur who had brought him the message caught his arm eagerly.

“Are you hurt, mon Caporal?”

Cecil shook his head.  The speaker was one known in the regiment as Petit Picpon, who had begun life as a gamin of Paris, and now bade fair to make one of the most brilliant of the soldiers of Africa.  Petit Picpon had but one drawback to this military career—­he was always in insubordination; the old gamin dare-devilry was not dead in him, and never would die; and Petit Picpon accordingly was perpetually a hero in the field and a ragamuffin in the times of peace.  Of course he was always arrayed against authority, and now—­being fond of his galonne with that curious doglike, deathless attachment that these natures, all reckless, wanton, destructive, and mischievous though they may be, so commonly bestow—­he muttered a terrible curse under his fiercely curled mustaches.

“If the Black Hawk were nailed up in the sun like a kite on a barn-door, I would drive twenty nails through his throat!”

Cecil turned rapidly on him.

“Silence, sir! or I must report you.  Another speech like that, and you shall have a turn at Beylick.”

It went to his heart to rebuke the poor fellow for an outburst of indignation which had its root in regard for himself, but he knew that to encourage it by so much even as by an expression of gratitude for the affection borne him, would be to sow further and deeper the poison-seeds of that inclination to mutiny and that rebellious hatred against their chief already only planted too strongly in the squadrons under Chateauroy’s command.

Petit Picpon looked as crestfallen as one of his fraternity could; he knew well enough that what he had said could get him twenty blows of the stick, if his corporal chose to give him up to judgment; but he had too much of the Parisian in him still not to have his say, though he should be shot for it.

“Send me to Beylick, if you like, Corporal,” he said sturdily; “I was in wrath for you—­not for myself.”

Cecil was infinitely more touched than he dared, for the sake of discipline, for sake of the speaker himself, to show; but his glance dwelt on Petit Picpon with a look that the quick, black, monkey-like eyes of the rebel were swift to read.

“I know,” he said gravely.  “I do not misjudge you, but at the same time, my name must never serve as a pretext for insubordination.  Such men as care to pleasure me will best do so in making my duty light by their own self-control and obedience to the rules of their service.”