In three days' time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the court-martial.
Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried out, and that at the cost of her life.
She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.
With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of Africa, had arrived. The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her with the cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of Africa he loved and admired her.
Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the corporal's heroism. And the marshal promised the sentence should be deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.
With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night--for at sunrise on the morrow will the sentence be executed.
And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has been brought out to the slope of earth out of sight of the camp.
At the last the Seraph appeared, and found in the condemned man the friend of his youth. It was only with great difficulty that Rockingham was overpowered, for he swore Cecil should not be killed, and a dozen soldiers were required to get him away.
Then Cecil raised his hand, and gave the signal for his own death-shot.
The levelled carbines covered him; ere they could fire a shrill cry pierced the air: "Wait! In the name of France!"