When the warm weather had set in we would go out a few miles, on the road to Ain-Sefra and the desert, to a cluster of big olive trees--our favourite spot. We would lie down on the grass in the shade and talk over our chances of seeing active service, either in Tonquin or on the frontier of Morocco, until, tired of doing so, we would lapse into silence and, stretched flat on our backs, stare up at the patches of light blue sky visible between the green foliage, or at the ascending smoke of our cigarettes as it faded into space. Sometimes the soft warmth of the Algerian spring, the drone of the bees, and the monotonous chirp of the big grasshoppers would seduce us into a siesta, from which we awoke to watch with lazy eyes, which blinked at the strong sunlight, the veiled women coming from a spring near by, as with easy and graceful carriage they balanced on their heads the big earthenware pitchers full to the brim with water; or a long line of camels, laden with fresh dates and figs, striding along in their ungainly way towards the town, the silence broken only by the dull, shuffling sound made by their hoofs in the dust, or an occasional "Arawa!" from their white-clad Arab conductors. During the month of May we made the acquaintance of a private whose name was Daly. He was an American, and an artist of no mean talent. He had studied painting in Paris, and was for some time, I believe, in the studio of Gérôme. Daly was a man of about five-and-twenty, under the average height, and of refined and pleasant manners. He had joined, he told me, after a run of very bad luck at Monte Carlo, where he had lost all the money allowed him by his father to defray his expenses during his period of study in France. Although he had already been more than a year in the regiment when I met him, he had never handled a rifle. Since he had joined he had done nothing but paint the portraits and decorate the quarters of the officers. He willingly accompanied Knox and myself in our excursions, and shared our small pleasures, and we found him a most entertaining companion. He possessed the smallest feet I have ever seen on a man; and we would often chaff him about this trait, which was the despair of the regimental "corporal shoemaker," who was forced to make special boots for him, for the stores contained no fit for such diminutive extremities. I lost touch with him when I left Algeria, and have never heard of him since. I trust, however, that he continued an artist till the end of his military career, and that he is now enjoying the success his talent deserves somewhere in "God's country," as he used to call his native land. Although I have only spoken of my intimates, Knox and Daly, I was soon on good terms with all the other men in my company whom I came in contact with, and the fact that I could converse in the languages most in use was of great help to me in maintaining good relations with them.