Waterbury Democrat., 1901-05-11

regularly kept, and the Krumas were scattered at will Here a low one of canvas, there one of goatskin: here a white towering canopy of teleZe. there a low striped little nest of shelter, and, loftier than all. the stately tent of the sheik, with his standard stuck into the earth in front of it. with It's heavy folds hanging listlessly in the suItry, breath less air. In the central tent, tall and crimson striped, with its opening free to the night, sat the khalifa, the head of the tribe, with a circle of Arabs about him. He was thrown on his cushions, rich enough for seraglio, while the rest squatted on the morocco carpet that covered the bare ground, and that was strewn with round brass Moorish trays and little cups emptied of their coffee. Near him was guest whom the khaIifa delighted to honor, only corporal of chasseurs and once a foe, yet one with whom the Arab found the brotherhood of brave men and on whom he layished in all he could the hospitalities and honors of the desert
 The story of their friendship ran thus:
 The tribe was now allied with France or at least had accepted French SOW ereignty and pledged itself to neutral ity in the hostilities still rife, but few years before far in the interior and leagued with the Kabyles it had been one of the fercest and most dangerous among the enemies of France. At that time the khalifa and the chasseur met in many a skirmish, hot, desperate struggles, when the desert sand and the smoke of musketry circled in clouds above the close locked struggle, and the leopard of France and the lion of Sahara wrestled in a death grip.
 In these, through four or five sea- sons of warfare, the sheik and the chasseur had encountered each other, fill each had grown to look for the others face as soon as the standard Of the Bedouins flashed in the sum- shine opposite the guidons of the inn perial forces; till each had watched and noted the others unmatched prowess and borne away the wounds of the others home strokes with the admiration of a bold soldier for bold rivals dauntlessness and skill.
 
 were sorely pressed by the French troops and had to flee southward to the desert and. incumbered by their fiocks and their women, were hardly driven and greatly decimated. Now, among those women was one whom the sheik held above all earthly things except his honor in war, a beautiful, antelope eyed creature, 1.-the and grace ful as a palm and the daughter of pure Arab race on whom he could not endure for any other sight than his own to look and whom he guarded fin his tent as the chief pearl of all his treasures; all, save the honor of his tribe, he would hayet surrendered rather than surrender DjeIma. It was passion with him-a passion that not even the iron of his temper and the dignity of his austere calm could abate or conceal-and the rumor of it and of the beauty of it's object reached the French camp till an impatient curi- ositys was reused about her, and q raid that should bear her of became the 4avorIte speculation round the picket fires at night and the scorching moons. The heat was intense; the water was bad and very rare; dysentery came with the scorch and the toll of this endless charge. The chief In command, M le Marquis de Chateauroy, swore heavily as he saw many Of his best men dropping off like sheep in a mur- rain, and he offered 200 napoleons to whosoever should bring either the dead sheik's head or the living beauty of DJemIa-.
 One day. the chasseurs had pitched their camp where a few barren, with cred trees gave a semblance of shelter and a little thread of braekish water oozed through the yellow earth. Sud- denly the noon lethargy of the camp was broken. A trumpet call rang through the stiffness. Against the am Eber transparency Of the horizon line the outlines of half dozen horsemen swe seen coming nearer and nearer iw every moment. They were some ST is who had been out sweeping the country for food. The mighty frame of Chateauroy, almost as unclothed as an athlete, started from its slunberous panting rest. His eyes frightened hun grily. .'Hah, they have the woman!' he cried.
 They had the woman. She had been melted near a water spring, to which she had wandered too loosely guarded, and the colonePs face flushed darkly with an eager, lustful warmth as he looked upon his captive. Rumor had not outboasted the Arab girls beauty. Only DjemIa was as innocent as the gazelle, whose grace she resembled, and loved her lord with great love. Of her suffering her captor took no more heed than if she were a young bird dying of shot wounds; but with one triumphant admiring glance at her, he wrote a message in Arabic to send 4o the khaIifa ere her loss was discov- ered-a message more cruel than iron. He hesitated a second where he lay at the opening of his tent whom he should send with it. His men were almost all half dead with the sun blaze. His glance chanced to light In the distance on a soldier to whom he bore no love, causelessIy, but bitterly all the same. He had him summoned and eyed him with a curious amusement. Chateau roy treated his squadrons with much <t.n ~.ox-,<x %nrai1for-f<v a ud brutality that