"Then do it and be damned," said Jacques. The bugle was sounding "Fall in," and the morning exercises went on. At eleven o'clock, sweating, dusty, fagged out but cheerful, the vast regiment of légionnaires, wheeling in column formation to the sound of drums as well as bugles, marched back to barracks. As they passed through the gates, Jacques flung a word to a small and dusty figure that was hanging about by the gate. It was Choc. He had picked up Choc one night, a year ago, in the town. A dog that seemed compounded of all the known breeds of dogs--with the exception of the noblest. Choc was dust-coloured, his hair stood in permanent bristle upon his shoulders, and he was terrific in battle; he had fought everything in Sidi-bel-Abbès and in the negro village that lies by the parade ground of the Foreign Legion, and without any manner of doubt, his family tree, had it been worked back, would have disclosed an Irish terrier somewhere in the not remote distance. But the fighting qualities of Choc made less appeal to Jacques than the fact that he was an out and out blackguard, an expert thief, an Apache. I have said that Choc was hanging about the gate. That was the impression he gave one. It was not the honest waiting of a dog for its master, it was the waiting of a confederate for his mate at a public-house door or the corner of a race-course. There was no tail-wagging. As the column passed in, the dust-coloured one, sniffing about, did not even cast an eye at Jacques. Then, when the last files had passed the gateway, he slunk in after them and hung about in the courtyard till Jacques, who was a friend of the cook, came out of the cook-house with a bone for him. This happened every day. Choc, who slept in some hole or corner of the town best known to himself, paid two daily visits to the barracks, at eleven and six. At eleven o'clock he got a bone or by chance a bit of meat, at six o'clock he appeared to accompany his master into the town. At six o'clock every day the work of the Legion is over, and you may see the légionnaires, spick and span, streaming through the barrack gates to the town, there to amuse themselves as best they can. They have no money. Literally no money, save what is sent to them by friends or relatives. The halfpenny a day paid them by Government scarcely serves for tobacco; they have to buy their own soap, mostly, and washing is a big item in a regiment where white fatigue uniforms of washable material are worn, and must be worn speckless.