The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1901-05-30
TIL PRINCETON ION: THURsDAY, Ma 80, 1901.


Rim GET on IJNFIl,
and half your regiment win nutiny too.
Il Isl bitter work to obey the Black
Hawk, and IL you give the signal Of
revolt three parts Of your comrades
will join you. Now, what will that end
in, eh p ==s55
Tell lne--you are a soldier yourself,
you say 3ssS5s
Yes, / am soldier!'' said Cigarette
( between her tight set teeth, .and will
tell You one thing I have seen. have
seen soldiers mutiny, a squadron Of
them, because they hated their chief
and loved two of their noncommis-
stoned officers, and / have seen the
end Of it ala few hundred men. blind
and drunk with despair, at bay against
as many thousands, and walled in
with, four lines Of steel and artillery
and fred on from score of cannon
mouths-volley on volley, like the thun-
der-till not one living man was loft
and there was only shapeless, heay-
Ing, moaning mass, with the black
smoke over all. That is what I have
seen. You will not make me see il
again? They would rise at your hid
ding and they would be moved down
like corn. You will not?''
Never! give you my word.'
The promise was from his heart. He
would have endured any indignity, any
outrage, rather than have drawn into
ruin, through him, the fiery, fearless.
untutored lives of the men who
marched, and slept, and rode, and
fought, and lay in the light of the
picket fires, and swept down through
the hot sandstorms on to the desert
foe by his side. Cigarette stretched
out her hand to him-stretched if ont
with frank, winning, childlike, SOL
dierlike grace.
''That's right! You area true SOL
der"
He bent over the hand she held out
to his in the courtesy natural with him
to all her sex and touched it lightly
with his lips
"Thank you, my little comrade," he
said simply, with the graver thought
still on him that her relation and her
entreaty had evoked. "You have given
me lesson that shall not be quick to
forget"
Cigarette colored holly at the grave,
graceful, distant salute, so cold and so
courteous, which was offered her in
lieu Of the rude and boisterous famil-
iarities to which she was accustomed
and drew her hand away with what
was to the shame Of her soldierly hard
ihood and her barrack tutelage ve'y
nearly akin to an impulse of shyness.
"Stuff! Don't humbug me! am not
a court lady!' she cried hastily, almost
petulantly, to cover the unwonted and
unwelcome weakness, while, to make
good the declaration and revindicate
her military renown, she balanced her
self lightly on the stone ledge and
sprang with a young wildcats easy,
vaulting leap over his head and over
the heads of the people beneath on to
the ledge Of the house opposite, a low
built wineshop, whose upper story near
~ touched the leaning walls of the old
Moorish buildings in which she had
been perched. The crowd in the street
below looked up amazed and aghast at
that bound from easement to easement
as she few over their heads like blue
and scarlet winged bird of Oran, but
they laughed as they saw who it was.
1T is Cigarette" growled a Turco
1ndigene. "Ah, ha, the devil for GER
tainty must have been her fatherv'
Cecil looked after her with a certain
touch of pity for her in him.
what a gallant boy is spoiled in that
little amazon!' he thought. The quick
flush of her face, the quick withdrawal
of her hand, he had not noticed. She
had not much interest for him-scarce-
ly any, indeed-save that he saw she
was pretty, with a mischievous face
that all the sun tan of Africa and all
the wild life Of the Caserne could not
harden or debase. But he was sorry a
child so bright and so brave should be
turned into three parts trooper, as she
was, should have been tossed up on the
scum and filth of the lowest barrack
life and should be doomed in a few
years time to become the yellow, bat
tered, foul mouthed, vulture eyed camp
follower that premature old age would
surely render the darling of the tricol-
or, the pythoness of the AS du Pique.
"Hah" said Cigarette between her
little teeth.
She stood in the glittering Algerine
night, brilliant with million stars and
balmy with a million flowers, before
the bronze trellised gate of the villa on
the Sahel, where Chateauroy, when he
was not on active service, Unidentified
himself with the magnifcence that his
private fortune enabled him to enjoy,
for the unsparing exertions and the
rugged privations that he always shar-
ed willingly with the lowest of his SOL
diers. Tonight the windows of the
pretty, low, snow white, far stretching
building were lighted and open, and
through tho Wilderness IF "a ct,,s rnvr.~