It was almost noon when, under the sun-scorched branches of the pine that stretched its somber fans up against the glittering azure of the morning skies, he approached the gates of the Algerine house-of-call—­a study for the color of Gerome, with the pearly gray of its stone tints, and the pigeons wheeling above its corner towers, while under the arch of its entrance a string of mules, maize-laden, were guided; and on its bench sat a French soldier, singing gayly songs of Paris while he cut open a yellow gourd.

Cecil went within, and bathed, and dressed, and drank some of the thin, cool wine that found its way thither in the wake of the French army.  Then he sat down for a while at one of the square, cabin-like holes which served for casements in the tower he occupied, and, looking out into the court, tried to shape his thoughts and plan his course.  As a soldier he had no freedom, no will of his own, save for this extra twelve or twenty-four hours which they had allowed him for leisure in his return journey.  He was obliged to go back to his camp, and there, he knew, he might again encounter one whose tender memories would be as quick to recognize him as the craven dread of his brother had been.  He had always feared this ordeal, although the arduous service in which his chief years in Africa had been spent, and the remote expeditions on which he had always been employed, had partially removed him from the ever-present danger of such recognition until now.  And now he felt that if once the brave, kind eyes of his old friend should meet his own, concealment would be no longer possible; yet, for the sake of that promise he had sworn in the past night, it must be maintained at every hazard, every cost.  Vacantly he sat and watched the play of the sunshine in the prismatic water of the courtyard fountain, and the splashing, and the pluming, and the murmuring of the doves and pigeons on its edge.  He felt meshed in a net from which there was no escape—­none—­unless, on his homeward passage, a thrust of Arab steel should give him liberty.

The trampling of horses on the pavement below roused his attention.  A thrill of hope went through him that his brother might have lingering conscience, latent love enough, to have made him refuse to obey the bidding to leave Africa.  He rose and leaned out.  Amid the little throng of riding-horses, grooms, and attendants who made an open way through the polyglot crowd of an Algerian caravanserai at noon, he saw the one dazzling face of which he had so lately dreamed by the water-freshet in the plains.  It was but a moment’s glance, for she had already dismounted from her mare, and was passing within with two other ladies of her party; but in that one glance he knew her.  His discovery of the chain gave him a plea to seek her.  Should he avail himself of it?  He hesitated a while.  It would be safest, wisest, best, to deliver up the trinket to her courier, and pass on his way without another look