e">“Then you intend fighting?” the Colonel asked, at last.

“We do,” answered Tamahu. “Tell thy lord that The Breath of the Wind decline to make submission to the French.”

“You intend attacking Metlili?” the officer enquired, thoughtfully, twirling his pointed moustache.

Our Sheikh nodded, his keen eyes watching the face of the infidel. The latter’s countenance grew grave, whereat we, standing around leaning on our spears, laughed in derision.

“Thou art of the great army of the infidels,” Tamahu said. “Yet thy face palest when we speak of conflict!”

The officer started, and knit his grey brows.

“I fear not thine host of Veiled Men, fierce and relentless though ye be. True, I am a soldier, but one thing alone I dread.”

“Thou fearest to lose thy life,” observed our Sheikh, knowing that the garrison at that little desert town was but small and weak.

“For myself I care nothing,” the Colonel answered. “It is the fate of my daughter that I fear.”

“Thy daughter! Why is she here, in the desert, so far from Algiers?”

“Not having seen me for four years she travelled from Paris a moon ago to visit me. Both my captain and my lieutenant have died of fever, and we two are now the only Europeans in Metlili. The rising of thy tribesmen hath occurred so unexpectedly, or I would have sent her under escort back to the coast.”

“Is thy daughter a child?” asked Tamahu.

“She is nineteen,” answered the officer, whose name he informed us was Colonel Bonnemain. We at once knew him by repute as a distinguished travel