Coming close up to where he lay on the straw, she saw the exhausted languor of his regard, the heavy darkness under his eyelids, the effort with which his lips moved as the faint words came broken through them.

“Not very much, ma belle, I thank you.  I shall be fit for harness in a day or two.  Do not let them send me into hospital.  I shall be perfectly—­well—­soon.”

Cigarette swayed herself upon the wheel and leaned toward him, touching and changing his bandages with clever hands.

“They have dressed your wound ill; whose doing is that?”

“It is nothing.  I have been half cut to pieces before now; this is a mere bagatelle.  It is only—­”

“That it hurts you to breathe?  I know!  Have they given you anything to eat this morning?”

“No.  Everything is in confusion.  We——­”

She did not stay for the conclusion of his sentence; she had darted off, quick as a swallow.  She knew what she had left in her dead scullion’s tent.  Everything was in confusion, as he had said.  Of the few hundreds that had been left after the terrific onslaught of the past day, some were employed far out, thrusting their own dead into the soil; others were removing the tents and all the equipage of the camp; others were busied with the wounded, of whom the greatest sufferers were to be borne to the nearest hospital (that nearest many leagues away over the wild and barren country); while those who were likely to be again soon ready for service were to be escorted to the headquarters of the main army.  Among the latter Cecil had passionately entreated to be numbered; his prayer was granted to the man who had kept at the head of his Chasseurs and borne aloft the Tricolor through the whole of the war-tempest on which the dawn had risen, and which had barely lulled and sunk by the setting of the sun.  Chateauroy was away with the other five of his squadrons; and the Zouave chef-de-bataillon, the only officer of any rank who had come alive through the conflict, had himself visited Bertie, and given him warm words of eulogy, and even of gratitude, that had soldierly sincerity and cordiality in them.

“Your conduct was magnificent,” he had said, as he had turned away.  “It shall be my care that it is duly reported and rewarded.”

Cigarette was but a few seconds absent; she soon bounded back like the swift little chamois she was, bringing with her a huge bowlful of red wine with bread broken in it.

“This is the best I could get,” she said; “it is better than nothing.  It will strengthen you.”

“What have you had yourself, petite?”

“Ah, bah!  Leave off thinking for others; I have breakfasted long ago,” she answered him. (She had only eaten a biscuit well-nigh as hard as a flint.) “Take it—­here, I will hold it for you.”

She perched herself on the wheel like a bird on a twig; she had a bird’s power of alighting and sustaining herself on the most difficult and most airy elevation; but Cecil turned his eyes on the only soldier in the cart besides himself, one of the worst men in his regiment—­a murderous, sullen, black-browed, evil wretch, fitter for the bench of the convict-galley than for the ranks of the cavalry.