“He is badly hurt?” said the Tringlo.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh, no!  I have had worse scratches myself.  The horse fell on him, that was the mischief.  I never saw a prettier thing—­every Lascar has killed his own little knot of Arbicos.  Look how nice and neat they lie.”

Cigarette glanced over the field, with the satisfied appreciation of a dilettante glancing over a collection unimpeachable for accuracy and arrangement; and drank a toss of her brandy, and lighted her little amber pipe, and sang loudly, as she did so, the gayest ballad of the Langue Verte.

She was not going to have him imagine she cared for that Chasseur whom he lifted up on his little wagon with so kindly a care—­not she!  Cigarette was as proud in her way as was ever the Princesse Venetia Corona.

Nevertheless, she kept pace with the mules, carrying little Flick-Flack, and never paused on her way, though she passed scores of dead Arabs, whose silver ornaments and silk embroideries, commonly replenished the knapsack and adorned in profusion the uniform of the young filibuster; being gleaned by her, right and left, as her lawful harvest after the fray.

“Leave him there.  I will have a look at him,” she said, at the first empty tent they reached.  The camp had been the scene of as fierce a struggle as the part of the plain which the cavalry had held, and it was strewn with the slaughter of Zouaves and Tirailleurs.  The Tringlo obeyed her, and went about his errand of mercy.  Cigarette, left alone with the wounded man, lying insensible still on a heap of forage, ceased her song and grew very quiet.  She had a certain surgical skill, learned as her untutored genius learned most things, with marvelous rapidity, by observation and intuition; and she had saved many a life by her knowledge and her patient attendance on the sufferers—­patience that she had been famed for when she had been only six years old, and a surgeon of the Algerian regiments had affirmed that he could trust her to be as wakeful, as watchful, and as sure to obey his directions as though she were a Soeur de Charite.  Now, “the little fagot of opposites,” as Cecil had called her, put this skill into active use.

The tent had been a scullion’s tent; the poor marmiton had been killed, and lay outside, with his head clean severed by an Arab flissa; his fire had gone out, but his brass pots and pans, his jar of fresh water, and his various preparations for the General’s dinner were still there.  The General was dead also; far yonder, where he had fallen in the van of his Zouaves, exposing himself with all the splendid, reckless gallantry of France; and the soup stood unserved; the wild plovers were taken by Flick-Flack; the empty dishes waited for the viands which there were no hands to prepare and no mouths to eat.  Cigarette glanced round, and saw all with one flash of her eyes; then she knelt down beside the heap of forage, and, for the first thing, dressed his wounds with the cold, clear water, and washed away the dust and the blood that covered his breast.