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"Where am I?" asked the young man, vaguely endeavoring to recall the events of the past night. "In my house," replied Decurio. "And who are you?" "I am Numa, Decurio of the Roumin* Legion, your foe in battle, but now your host and protector." * The Wallachians were, in the days of Trajan, subdued by the Romans, with whom they became intermixed, and are also called Roumi.
Their leader was a Roumi, a Christian dog, and all such were fools in the eyes of God's children who knew that the lesson of life was patience. Sanda DeLisle's short life had not been brilliantly happy.
Adieu, our spahi guides, like figures from Lalla Rookh! Adieu, our dream of an African Switzerland! The Roumi, outside of Kabylia, quickly fades into the light of common day, and becomes plain Tom or Harry. "And you traveled alone?" "There were two of us Annie Foster and I." "You found no difficulty?" "Not a bit," she replied laughing. "But you had adventures: I see it in your face."
The descent from the rock-perched city of Kalaa having been made in safety, and the animals being remounted at the first plateau, our Roumi traveler and his guides arrive in a few hours at the modern, fortified, but altogether Kabylian stronghold of Akbou. Here a letter from a French personage of importance gives us the acquaintance of a Kabyle family of the highest rank.
Then, glancing quickly at the group, he saw that the head man sent by the marabout was talking emphatically to the guide from Oued Tolga, the city. Again, their eyes flashed to the Roumi, before he had time to turn away, and without hesitation the head man from the Zaouïa came a few steps towards him. "Sidi, we see horses," he said, in broken French.
The Christian guests are furnished with veritable arquebuses of the Middle Ages; that is to say, with Kabyle guns, the stock of which, flattened and surmounted with a hammer of flints, is ignited by a wheel-shaped lock, easier to be managed by a Burgundian under Charles the Bold than by an unpretending modern Roumi. The usual features of an Algerian hunt succeed.
La Princesse were visible. The negro returned cautiously that she was at home, but doubted her being accessible. "You come from M. le Marquis?" he inquired. "No; on my own errand." "You!" Not all the native African awe of a Roumi could restrain the contemptuous amaze in the word. "I. Ask if Corporal Victor, of the Chasseurs, can be permitted a moment's interview with your mistress.
It broke further the ice of distance that severed the grande dame from the cavalry soldier. Insensibly to himself, the knowledge that he had, in fact, the right to stand before her as an equal gave him the bearing of one who exercised that right, and her rapid perception had felt before now that this Roumi of Africa was as true a gentleman as any that had ever thronged about her in palaces.
It was known that he had made himself the terror of Kabyle and Bedouin, yet here in the city he thanked the negro boy who took him a glass of lemonade at an estaminet, and sharply rebuked one of his men for knocking down an old colon with a burden of gourds and of melons; such a Roumi as this the good people of the Franco-African capital held as a perfect gift of the gods, and not understanding one whit, nevertheless fully appreciated.
She gave a startled little squeal and started to retreat; but the old man grunted "Roumi," so she stopped. "Roumi," being translated, means "Infidel." It was as though he had said, "Don't get excited; it is only a dog." If I had been a Mussulman, she would have run screaming to the woods, and would have had to do I don't know what penance because I had seen her face unveiled.
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