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His uniform, creased and stained, and now silvery with dew, flapped about a gaunt ironlike frame; and from under the leather peak of his kepi, even in his fever, his eyes burned steady and compelling. Scattered houses, seemingly as unsubstantial as shadows, gathered about him; they grew more frequent, joined shoulder to shoulder, and he was in a city street.
Small, swarthy, with angular features, and a brusque, military manner, in a showy uniform and jaunty képi of scarlet cloth, covered with gold lace, he created quite a sensation among us. His assumption of knowledge and experience was accepted as true.
His red képi in hand and with all the stalwart briskness of the flag-presentation's day and hour Hilary Kincaid stepped into the room and halted, as large-eyed as on that earlier occasion, and even more startled, before the small figure of Anna. Yet not the very same Hilary Kincaid. So said her heart the instant glance met glance.
Some were almost middle aged; some were youths hardly yet at the regulation enlistment age of eighteen; a few one might take for broken-down gentlemen; more who looked like workmen out of a job, and one or two unmistakably old soldiers, eager-eyed as lost dogs who had found their way home: a strange gathering of individuals to find stumbling out of a freight train at a country station of a French colony; but this was Sidi-bel-Abbés, headquarters of La Legion Etrangére: and as the tired, dirty men tumbled out on to the platform, everybody stared openly as a corporal with a high képi, a buttoned-back blue overcoat, and loose, red trousers tucked into military boots, formed the crew into lines of four.
The coatee issued in the early days of the war had already given place to a short-waisted and single-breasted jacket. The blue kepi held out longer. The soft felt hat which experience soon proved the most serviceable head-dress had not yet become universal. But the long boots had gone; and strong brogans, with broad soles and low heels, had been found more comfortable.
Above it might be the gold visor and scarlet band of a "Brass Hat," staff-officer, the fur kepi of a Serbian refugee, the steel helmet of a French soldier, the "bonnet" of a Highlander, the white cap of a navy officer, the tassel of an Evzone, a red fez, a turban of rags.
But they carried their point, and, watched and guarded by a hungry half-naked negro in a kepi and the remains of a sky-blue pair of trousers, they explored one of the most exemplary memorials of imperialism that humanity has ever made.
And now, while they were thus wondering, who should come in but a certain female in a very peculiar dress; for this female wore what looked like a military cloak, and she wore, also, an officer's "kepi," which was perched upon the top of her chignon; which female took a glance around, and then exclaimed, "Well, goodness gracious me! I never! Did I ever! No, never!"
Two men in the front went down, three or four of their fellows leaped over their prostrate forms, and then several of those who followed stumbled and fell, panic ensued, and once more the company was in full flight, followed slowly by a couple of despondent-looking officers, one of whom turned while the carbine bullets were flying around him to shake his sword at his enemies, his fellow taking his cue from this act to contemptuously raise his kepi in a mocking salute.
It was written that you should suffer without purpose and without hope. But I will not let all your sufferings be lost in the abyss. And so I record them thus at length. Lerondeau has been brought down into the garden. I find him there, stretched out on a cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over his eyes, to shade them from the first spring sunshine.
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