The way was long; the road ill formed, leading for the most part across a sear and desolate country, with nothing to relieve its barrenness except long stretches of the great spear-headed reeds.  At noon the heat was intense; the little cavalcade halted for half an hour under the shade of some black, towering rocks which broke the monotony of the district, and commenced a more hilly and more picturesque portion of the country.  Cigarette came to the side of the temporary ambulance in which Cecil was placed.  He was asleep—­sleeping for once peacefully, with little trace of pain upon his features, as he had slept the previous night.  She saw that his face and chest had not been touched by the stinging insect-swarm; he was doubly screened by a shirt hung above him dexterously on some bent sticks.

“Who has done that?” thought Cigarette.  As she glanced round she saw—­without any linen to cover him, Zackrist had reared himself up and leaned slightly forward over against his comrade.  The shirt that protected Cecil was his; and on his own bare shoulders and mighty chest the tiny armies of the flies and gnats were fastened, doing their will, uninterrupted.

As he caught her glance a sullen, ruddy glow of shame shown through the black, hard skin of his sun-burned visage—­shame to which he had been never touched when discovered in any one of his guilty and barbarous actions.

“Dame!” he growled savagely—­“he gave me his wine; one must do something in return.  Not that I feel the insects—­not I; my skin is leather, see you! they can’t get through it; but his is white and soft—­bah! like tissue-paper!”

“I see, Zackrist; you are right.  A French soldier can never take a kindness from an English fellow without outrunning him in generosity.  Look—­here is some drink for you.”

She knew too well the strange nature with which she had to deal to say a syllable of praise to him for his self-devotion, or to appear to see that, despite his boast of his leather skin, the stings of the cruel, winged tribes were drawing his blood and causing him alike pain and irritation which, under that sun, and added to the torment of his gunshot-wound, were a martyrdom as great as the noblest saint ever endured.

“Tiens—­tiens!  I did him wrong,” murmured Cigarette.  “That is what they are—­the children of France—­even when they are at their worst, like that devil, Zackrist.  Who dare say they are not the heroes of the world?”

And all through the march she gave Zackrist a double portion of her water dashed with red wine, that was so welcome and so precious to the parched and aching throats; and all through the march Cecil lay asleep, and the man who had thieved from him, the man whose soul was stained with murder, and pillage, and rapine, sat erect beside him, letting the insects suck his veins and pierce his flesh.

It was only when they drew near the camp of the main army that Zackrist beat off the swarm and drew his old shirt over his head.  “You do not want to say anything to him,” he muttered to Cigarette.  “I am of leather, you know; I have not felt it.”