"Yes, it is very sad," returned the colonel. "But for us this letter means nothing at all. Never speak of it, obliterate it from your memories." He tore the paper into the tiniest shreds. "We have no reproaches, no accusations for what Barbier did before Barbier got out of the train at Sidi Bel-Abbès. That is not our affair. For us the soldier of the Legion is only born on the day when he enlists." Thus, in one sentence, the colonel epitomised the character of the Foreign Legion. It was a fine saying, Stretton thought. He knew it to be a true one. "I will say nothing," said Stretton, "and I will forget." "That is well. Come with me, for there is another letter which concerns you." He turned upon his heel and left the hospital. Stretton followed him to his quarters. "There is a letter from the War Office which concerns you, Sergeant Ohlsen," said the colonel, with a smile. "You will be gazetted, under your own name, to the first lieutenancy which falls vacant. There is the notification." He handed the paper over to Stretton, and shook hands with him. Stretton was not a demonstrative man. He took the notification with no more show of emotion than if it had been some unimportant order of the day. "Thank you, sir," he said, quietly; and for a moment his eyes rested on the paper. But, none the less, the announcement, so abruptly made, caused him a shock. The words danced before his eyes so that he could not read them. He saluted his colonel and went out on to the great open parade ground, and stood there in the middle of that space, alone, under the hot noonday sun. The thing for which he had striven had come to pass, then. He held the assurance of it in his hand. Hoped for and half-expected as that proof had been ever since he had led the survivors of the geographical expedition under the gate of Ouargla, its actual coming was to him most wonderful. He looked southwards to where the streak of yellow shone far away. The long marches, the harassing anxiety, the haunting figures of the Touaregs, with their faces veiled in their black masks and their eyes shining between the upper and the lower strip--yes, even those figures which appalled the imagination in the retrospect by a suggestion of inhuman ferocity--what were they all but contributaries to this event? His ordeal was over. He had done enough. He could go home.