“No, no!  I have told you a thousand times we are comrades and equals now.”

“And I’ve told you a thousand times, sir, that we aren’t, and never will be, and don’t oughtn’t to be,” replied the soldier doggedly, drawing off the spurred and dust-covered boots.  “A gentleman’s a gentleman, let alone what straits he fall into.”

“But ceases to be one as soon as he takes a service he cannot requite, or claims a superiority he does not possess.  We have been fellow-soldiers for twelve years—­”

“So we have, sir; but we are what we always was, and always will be—­one a gentleman, the other a scamp.  If you think so be as I’ve done a good thing, side by side with you, now and then in the fighting, give me my own way and let me wait on you when I can.  I can’t do much on it when those other fellow’s eyes is on us; but here I can and I will—­begging your pardon—­so there’s an end of it.  One may speak plain in this place with nothing but them Arabs about; and all the army know well enough, sir, that if it weren’t for that black devil, Chateauroy, you’d have had your officer’s commission, and your troop too, long before now—­”

“Oh, no!  There are scores of men in the ranks merit promotion better far than I do.  And—­leave the Colonel’s name alone.  He is our chief, whatever else he be.”

The words were calm and careless, but they carried a weight with them that was not to be disputed.  “Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort” hung his head a little and went on unharnessing his Corporal in silence, contenting himself with muttering in his throat that it was true for all that, and the whole regiment knew it.

“You are happy enough in Algeria?” asked the one he served, as he stretched himself on the skins and carpets, and drank down a sherbet that his self-attached attendant had made with a skill learned from a pretty cantiniere, who had given him the lesson in return for a slashing blow with which he had struck down two “Riz-pain-sels,” who, as the best paid men in the army, had tried to cheat her in the price of her Cognac.

“I, sir?  Never was so happy in my life, sir.  I’d be discontented indeed if I wasn’t.  Always some spicy bit of fighting.  If there aren’t a fantasia, as they call it, in the field, there’s always somebody to pot in a small way; and, if you’re lying by in barracks, there’s always a scrimmage hot as pepper to be got up with fellows that love the row just as well as you do.  It’s life, that’s where it is; it ain’t rusting.”

“Then you prefer the French service?”

“Right and away, sir.  You see this is how it is,” and the redoubtable, yellow-haired “Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort” paused in the vigorous cleansing and brushing he was bestowing on his Corporal’s uniform and stood at ease in his shirt and trousers; with his eloquence no way impeded by the brule-gueule that was always between his teeth.  “Over there in England, you know, sir, pipe-clay is the deuce-and-all; you’re