Almost insensibly they grew ashamed to be beaten by him, and strove to grow like him as far as they could. They never knew him drunk, they never heard him swear; they never found him unjust--even to a poverty-stricken indigene; or brutal--even to a fille de joie. Insensibly his presence humanized them. Of a surety, the last part Bertie dreamed of playing was that of a teacher to any mortal thing; yet, here in Africa, it might reasonably be questioned if a second Augustine or Francis Xavier would ever have done half the good among the devil-may-care Roumis that was wrought by the dauntless, listless, reckless soldier who followed instinctively the one religion which has no cant in its brave, simple creed, and binds man to man in links that are true as steel--the religion of a gallant gentleman's loyalty and honor. CHAPTER XX. CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. “Corporal Victor, M. le Commandant desires you to present yourself at his campagne to-night, at ten precisely, with all your carvings; above all, with your chessmen.” The swift, sharp voice of a young officer of his regiment wakened Cecil from his musing, as he went on his way down the crowded, tortuous, stifling street. He had scarcely time to catch the sense of the words, and to halt, giving the salute, before the Chasseur's skittish little Barbary mare had galloped past him; scattering the people right and left, knocking over a sweetmeat seller, upsetting a string of maize-laden mules, jostling a venerable marabout on to an impudent little grisette, and laming an old Moor as he tottered to his mosque, without any apology for any of the mischief, in the customary insolence which makes “Roumis” and “Bureaucratic” alike execrated by the indigenous populace with a detestation that the questionable benefits of civilized importations can do very little to counter-balance in the fiery breasts of the sons of the soil. Cecil involuntarily stood still. His face darkened. All orders that touched on the service, even where harshest and most unwelcome, he had taught himself to take without any hesitation, till he now scarcely felt the check of the steel curb; but to be ordered thus like a lackey--to take his wares thus like a hawker! “We are soldiers, not traders--aren't we? You don't like that, M. Victor? You are no peddler. And you think you would rather risk being court-martialed and shot than take your ivory toys for the Black Hawk's talons?”