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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Weavers, by Gilbert Parker, v6
+#93 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Weavers, Volume 6.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6266]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 14, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEAVERS, BY PARKER, V6 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+
+XL.       HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
+XLI.      IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
+XLII.     THE LOOM OF DESTINY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
+
+It was as though she had gone to sleep the night before, and waked
+again upon this scene unchanged, brilliant, full of colour, a chaos of
+decoration--confluences of noisy, garish streams of life, eddies of petty
+labour.  Craftsmen crowded one upon the other in dark bazaars; merchants
+chattered and haggled on their benches; hawkers clattered and cried their
+wares.  It was a people that lived upon the streets, for all the houses
+seemed empty and forsaken.  The sais ran before the Pasha's carriage, the
+donkey-boys shrieked for their right of way, a train of camels calmly
+forced its passage through the swirling crowds, supercilious and heavy-
+laden.
+
+It seemed but yesterday since she had watched with amused eyes the
+sherbet-sellers clanking their brass saucers, the carriers streaming the
+water from the bulging goatskins into the earthen bottles, crying, "Allah
+be praised, here is coolness for thy throat for ever!" the idle singer
+chanting to the soft kanoon, the chess-players in the shade of a high
+wall, lost to the world, the dancing-girls with unveiled, shameless
+faces, posturing for evil eyes.  Nothing had changed these past six
+years.  Yet everything had changed.
+
+She saw it all as in a dream, for her mind had no time for reverie or
+retrospect; it was set on one thing only.
+
+Yet behind the one idea possessing her there was a subconscious self
+taking note of all these sights and sounds, and bringing moisture to her
+eyes.  Passing the house which David had occupied on that night when he
+and she and Nahoum and Mizraim had met, the mist of feeling almost
+blinded her; for there at the gate sat the bowab who had admitted her
+then, and with apathetic eyes had watched her go, in the hour when it
+seemed that she and David Claridge had bidden farewell for ever, two
+driftwood spars that touched and parted in the everlasting sea.  Here
+again in the Palace square were Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour
+as of silver and gold, drawn up as she had seen them drawn then, to be
+reviewed by their overlord.
+
+She swept swiftly through the streets and bazaars on her mission to
+Nahoum.  "Lady Eglington" had asked for an interview, and Nahoum had
+granted it without delay.  He did not associate her with the girl for
+whom David Claridge had killed Foorgat Pey, and he sent his own carriage
+to bring her to the Palace.  No time had been lost, for it was less than
+twenty-four hours since she had arrived in Cairo, and very soon she would
+know the worst or the best.  She had put her past away for the moment,
+and the Duchess of Snowdon had found at Marseilles a silent, determined,
+yet gentle-tongued woman, who refused to look back, or to discuss
+anything vital to herself and Eglington, until what she had come to Egypt
+to do was accomplished.  Nor would she speak of the future, until the
+present had been fully declared and she knew the fate of David Claridge.
+In Cairo there were only varying rumours: that he was still holding out;
+that he was lost; that he had broken through; that he was a prisoner--all
+without foundation upon which she could rely.
+
+As she neared the Palace entrance, a female fortune-teller ran forward,
+thrusting towards her a gazelle's skin, filled with the instruments of
+her mystic craft, and crying out: "I divine-I reveal!  What is present I
+manifest!  What is absent I declare!  What is future I show!  Beautiful
+one, hear me.  It is all written.  To thee is greatness, and thy heart's
+desire.  Hear all!  See!  Wait for the revealing.  Thou comest from afar,
+but thy fortune is near.  Hear and see.  I divine--I reveal.  Beautiful
+one, what is future I show."
+
+Hylda's eyes looked at the poor creature eagerly, pathetically.  If it
+could only be, if she could but see one step ahead!  If the veil could
+but be lifted!  She dropped some silver into the folds of the gazelle-
+skin and waved the Gipsy away.  "There is darkness, it is all dark,
+beautiful one," cried the woman after her, "but it shall be light.  I
+show--I reveal!"
+
+Inside these Palace walls there was a revealer of more merit, as she so
+well and bitterly knew.  He could raise the veil--a dark and dangerous
+necromancer, with a flinty heart and a hand that had waited long to
+strike.  Had it struck its last blow?
+
+Outside Nahoum's door she had a moment of utter weakness, when her knees
+smote together, and her throat became parched; but before the door had
+swung wide and her eyes swept the cool and shadowed room, she was as
+composed as on that night long ago when she had faced the man who knew.
+
+Nahoum was standing in a waiting and respectful attitude as she entered.
+He advanced towards her and bowed low, but stopped dumfounded, as he saw
+who she was.  Presently he recovered himself; but he offered no further
+greeting than to place a chair for her where her face was in the shadow
+and his in the light--time of crisis as it was, she noticed this and
+marvelled at him.  His face was as she had seen it those years ago.  It
+showed no change whatever.  The eyes looked at her calmly, openly, with
+no ulterior thought behind, as it might seem.  The high, smooth forehead,
+the full but firm lips, the brown, well-groomed beard, were all
+indicative of a nature benevolent and refined.  Where did the duplicity
+lie?  Her mind answered its own question on the instant; it lay in the
+brain and the tongue.  Both were masterly weapons, an armament so
+complete that it controlled the face and eyes and outward man into a
+fair semblance of honesty.  The tongue--she remembered its insinuating
+and adroit power, and how it had deceived the man she had come to try and
+save.  She must not be misled by it.  She felt it was to be a struggle
+between them, and she must be alert and persuasive, and match him word
+for word, move for move.
+
+"I am happy to welcome you here, madame," he said in English.  "It is
+years since we met; yet time has passed you by."
+
+She flushed ever so slightly--compliment from Nahoum Pasha!  Yet she must
+not resent anything to-day; she must get what she came for, if it was
+possible.  What had Lacey said?  "A few thousand men by parcel-post, and
+some red seals-British officers."
+
+"We meet under different circumstances," she replied meaningly.  "You
+were asking a great favour then."
+
+"Ah, but of you, madame?"
+
+"I think you appealed to me when you were doubtful of the result."
+
+"Well, madame, it may be so--but, yes, you are right; I thought you were
+Claridge Pasha's kinswoman, I remember."
+
+"Excellency, you said you thought I was Claridge Pasha's kinswoman."
+
+"And you are not?" he asked reflectively.
+
+He did not understand the slight change that passed over her face.  His
+kinswoman--Claridge Pasha's kinswoman!
+
+"I was not his kinswoman," she answered calmly.  "You came to ask a
+favour then of Claridge Pasha; your life-work to do under him.  I
+remember your words: 'I can aid thee in thy great task.  Thou wouldst
+remake our Egypt, and my heart is with you.  I would rescue, not destroy.
+.  .  .  I would labour, but my master has taken away from me the anvil,
+the fire, and the hammer, and I sit without the door like an armless
+beggar.'  Those were your words, and Claridge Pasha listened and
+believed, and saved your life and gave you work; and now again you
+have power greater than all others in Egypt."
+
+"Madame, I congratulate you on a useful memory.  May it serve you as the
+hill-fountain the garden in the city!  Those indeed were my words.  I
+hear myself from your lips, and yet recognise myself, if that be not
+vanity.  But, madame, why have you sought me?  What is it you wish to
+know--to hear?"
+
+He looked at her innocently, as though he did not know her errand; as
+though beyond, in the desert, there was no tragedy approaching--or come.
+
+"Excellency, you are aware that I have come to ask for news of Claridge
+Pasha."  She leaned forward slightly, but, apart from her tightly
+interlaced fingers, it would not have been possible to know that she was
+under any strain.
+
+"You come to me instead of to the Effendina.  May I ask why, madame?
+Your husband's position--I did not know you were Lord Eglington's wife--
+would entitle you to the highest consideration."
+
+"I knew that Nahoum Pasha would have the whole knowledge, while the
+Effendina would have part only.  Excellency, will you not tell me what
+news You have?  Is Claridge Pasha alive?"
+
+"Madame, I do not know.  He is in the desert.  He was surrounded.  For
+over a month there has been no word-none.  He is in danger.  His way by
+the river was blocked.  He stayed too long.  He might have escaped, but
+he would insist on saving the loyal natives, on remaining with them,
+since he could not bring them across the desert; and the river and the
+desert are silent.  Nothing comes out of that furnace yonder.  Nothing
+comes."
+
+He bent his eyes upon her complacently.  Her own dropped.  She could not
+bear that he should see the misery in them.
+
+"You have come to try and save him, madame.  What did you expect to do?
+Your Government did not strengthen my hands; your husband did nothing--
+nothing that could make it possible for me to act.  There are many
+nations here, alas!  Your husband does not take so great an interest in
+the fate of Claridge Pasha as yourself, madame."
+
+She ignored the insult.  She had determined to endure everything, if she
+might but induce this man to do the thing that could be done--if it was
+not too late.  Before she could frame a reply, he said urbanely:
+
+"But that is not to be expected.  There was that between Claridge Pasha
+and yourself which would induce you to do all you might do for him, to be
+anxious for his welfare.  Gratitude is a rare thing--as rare as the
+flower of the century--aloe; but you have it, madame."
+
+There was no chance to misunderstand him.  Foorgat Bey--he knew the
+truth, and had known it all these years.
+
+"Excellency," she said, "if through me, Claridge Pasha--"
+
+"One moment, madame," he interrupted, and, opening a drawer, took out a
+letter.  "I think that what you would say may be found here, with much
+else that you will care to know.  It is the last news of Claridge Pasha--
+a letter from him.  I understand all you would say to me; but he who has
+most at stake has said it, and, if he failed, do you think, madame, that
+you could succeed?"
+
+He handed her the letter with a respectful salutation.
+
+"In the hour he left, madame, he came to know that the name of Foorgat
+Bey was not blotted from the book of Time, nor from Fate's reckoning."
+
+After all these years!  Her instinct had been true, then, that night so
+long ago.  The hand that took the letter trembled slightly in spite of
+her will, but it was not the disclosure Nahoum had made which caused her
+agitation.  This letter she held was in David Claridge's hand, the first
+she had ever seen, and, maybe, the last that he had ever written, or that
+any one would ever see, a document of tears.  But no, there were no tears
+in this letter!  As Hylda read it the trembling passed from her fingers,
+and a great thrilling pride possessed her.  If tragedy had come, then it
+had fallen like a fire from heaven, not like a pestilence rising from the
+earth.  Here indeed was that which justified all she had done, what she
+was doing now, what she meant to do when she had read the last word of it
+and the firm, clear signature beneath.
+
+     "Excellency [the letter began in English], I came into the desert
+     and into the perils I find here, with your last words in my ear,
+     'There is the matter of Foorgat Bey.'  The time you chose to speak
+     was chosen well for your purpose, but ill for me.  I could not turn
+     back, I must go on.  Had I returned, of what avail?  What could I do
+     but say what I say here, that my hand killed Foorgat Bey; that I had
+     not meant to kill him, though at the moment I struck I took no heed
+     whether he lived or died.  Since you know of my sorrowful deed, you
+     also know why Foorgat Bey was struck down.  When, as I left the bank
+     of the Nile, your words blinded my eyes, my mind said in its misery:
+     'Now, I see!'  The curtains fell away from between you and me, and I
+     saw all that you had done for vengeance and revenge.  You knew all
+     on that night when you sought your life of me and the way back to
+     Kaid's forgiveness.  I see all as though you spoke it in my ear.
+     You had reason to hurt me, but you had no reason for hurting Egypt,
+     as you have done.  I did not value my life, as you know well, for it
+     has been flung into the midst of dangers for Egypt's sake, how
+     often!  It was not cowardice which made me hide from you and all the
+     world the killing of Foorgat Bey.  I desired to face the penalty,
+     for did not my act deny all that I had held fast from my youth up?
+     But there was another concerned--a girl, but a child in years, as
+     innocent and true a being as God has ever set among the dangers of
+     this life, and, by her very innocence and unsuspecting nature, so
+     much more in peril before such unscrupulous wiles as were used by
+     Foorgat Bey.
+
+     "I have known you many years, Nahoum, and dark and cruel as your
+     acts have been against the work I gave my life to do, yet I think
+     that there was ever in you, too, the root of goodness.  Men would
+     call your acts treacherous if they knew what you had done; and so
+     indeed they were; but yet I have seen you do things to others--not
+     to me--which could rise only from the fountain of pure waters.  Was
+     it partly because I killed Foorgat and partly because I came to
+     place and influence and power, that you used me so, and all that I
+     did?  Or was it the East at war with the West, the immemorial feud
+     and foray?
+
+     "This last I will believe; for then it will seem to be something
+     beyond yourself--centuries of predisposition, the long stain of the
+     indelible--that drove you to those acts of matricide.  Ay, it is
+     that!  For, Armenian as you are, this land is your native land, and
+     in pulling down what I have built up--with you, Nahoum, with you--
+     you have plunged the knife into the bosom of your mother.  Did it
+     never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good
+     work--the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the
+     lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug,
+     the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for
+     the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow
+     blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet
+     growth of law and justice, the new industries started--did not all
+     these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great
+     genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things
+     that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake?  Giving with one hand
+     freely, did your soul not misgive you when you took away with the
+     other?
+
+     "When you tore down my work, you were tearing down your own; for,
+     more than the material help I thought you gave in planning and
+     shaping reforms, ay, far more than all, was the feeling in me which
+     helped me over many a dark place, that I had you with me, that I was
+     not alone.  I trusted you, Nahoum.  A life for a life you might have
+     had for the asking; but a long torture and a daily weaving of the
+     web of treachery--that has taken more than my life; it has taken
+     your own, for you have killed the best part of yourself, that which
+     you did with me; and here in an ever-narrowing circle of death I say
+     to you that you will die with me.  Power you have, but it will
+     wither in your grasp.  Kaid will turn against you; for with my
+     failure will come a dark reaction in his mind, which feels the cloud
+     of doom drawing over it.  Without me, with my work falling about his
+     ears, he will, as he did so short a time ago, turn to Sharif and
+     Higli and the rest; and the only comfort you will have will be that
+     you destroyed the life of him who killed your brother.  Did you love
+     your brother?  Nay, not more than did I, for I sent his soul into
+     the void, and I would gladly have gone after it to ask God for the
+     pardon of all his sins--and mine.  Think: I hid the truth, but why?
+     Because a woman would suffer an unmerited scandal and shame.
+     Nothing could recall Foorgat Bey; but for that silence I gave my
+     life, for the land which was his land.  Do you betray it, then?
+
+     "And now, Nahoum, the gulf in which you sought to plunge me when you
+     had ruined all I did is here before me.  The long deception has
+     nearly done its work.  I know from Ebn Ezra Bey what passed between
+     you.  They are out against me--the slave-dealers--from Senaar to
+     where I am.  The dominion of Egypt is over here.  Yet I could
+     restore it with a thousand men and a handful of European officers,
+     had I but a show of authority from Cairo, which they think has
+     deserted me.
+
+     "I am shut up here with a handful of men who can fight and thousands
+     who cannot fight, and food grows scarcer, and my garrison is worn
+     and famished; but each day I hearten them with the hope that you
+     will send me a thousand men from Cairo.  One steamer pounding here
+     from the north with men who bring commands from the Effendina, and
+     those thousands out yonder beyond my mines and moats and guns will
+     begin to melt away.  Nahoum, think not that you shall triumph over
+     David Claridge.  If it be God's will that I shall die here, my work
+     undone, then, smiling, I shall go with step that does not falter, to
+     live once more; and another day the work that I began will rise
+     again in spite of you or any man.
+
+     "Nahoum, the killing of Foorgat Bey has been like a cloud upon all
+     my past.  You know me, and you know I do not lie.  Yet I do not
+     grieve that I hid the thing--it was not mine only; and if ever you
+     knew a good woman, and in dark moments have turned to her, glad that
+     she was yours, think what you would have done for her, how you would
+     have sheltered her against aught that might injure her, against
+     those things women are not made to bear.  Then think that I hid the
+     deed for one who was a stranger to me, whose life must ever lay far
+     from mine, and see clearly that I did it for a woman's sake, and not
+     for this woman's sake; for I had never seen her till the moment I
+     struck Foorgat Bey into silence and the tomb.  Will you not
+     understand, Nahoum?
+
+     "Yonder, I see the tribes that harry me.  The great guns firing make
+     the day a burden, the nights are ever fretted by the dangers of
+     surprise, and there is scarce time to bury the dead whom sickness
+     and the sword destroy.  From the midst of it all my eyes turn to you
+     in Cairo, whose forgiveness I ask for the one injury I did you;
+     while I pray that you will seek pardon for all that you have done to
+     me and to those who will pass with me, if our circle is broken.
+     Friend, Achmet the Ropemaker is here fighting for Egypt.  Art thou
+     less, then, than Achmet?  So, God be with thee.
+
+                                        "DAVID CLARIDGE."
+
+
+Without a pause Hylda had read the letter from the first word to the
+last.  She was too proud to let this conspirator and traitor see what
+David's words could do to her.  When she read the lines concerning
+herself, she became cold from head to foot, but she knew that Nahoum
+never took his eyes from her face, and she gave no outward sign of what
+was passing within.  When she had finished it, she folded it up calmly,
+her eyes dwelt for a moment on the address upon the envelope, and then
+she handed it back to Nahoum without a word.  She looked him in the eyes
+and spoke.  "He saved your life, he gave you all you had lost.  It was
+not his fault that Prince Kaid chose him for his chief counsellor.  You
+would be lying where your brother lies, were it not for Claridge Pasha."
+
+"It may be; but the luck was with me; and I have my way."
+
+She drew herself together to say what was hard to say.  "Excellency, the
+man who was killed deserved to die.  Only by lies, only by subterfuge,
+only because I was curious to see the inside of the Palace, and because I
+had known him in London, did I, without a thought of indiscretion, give
+myself to his care to come here.  I was so young; I did not know life, or
+men--or Egyptians."  The last word was uttered with low scorn.
+
+He glanced up quickly, and for the first time she saw a gleam of malice
+in his eyes.  She could not feel sorry she had said it, yet she must
+remove the impression if possible.
+
+"What Claridge Pasha did, any man would have done, Excellency.  He
+struck, and death was an accident.  Foorgat's temple struck the corner of
+a pedestal.
+
+"His death was instant.  He would have killed Claridge Pasha if it had
+been possible--he tried to do so.  But, Excellency, if you have a
+daughter, if you ever had a child, what would you have done if any man
+had--"
+
+"In the East daughters are more discreet; they tempt men less," he
+answered quietly, and fingered the string of beads he carried.
+
+"Yet you would have done as Claridge Pasha did.  That it was your brother
+was an accident, and--"
+
+"It was an accident that the penalty must fall on Claridge Pasha, and on
+you, madame.  I did not choose the objects of penalty.  Destiny chose
+them, as Destiny chose Claridge Pasha as the man who should supplant me,
+who should attempt to do these mad things for Egypt against the judgment
+of the world--against the judgment of your husband.  Shall I have better
+judgment than the chancellories of Europe and England--and Lord
+Eglington?"
+
+"Excellency, you know what moves other nations; but it is for Egypt to
+act for herself.  You ask me why I did not go to the Effendina.  I come
+to you because I know that you could circumvent the Effendina, even
+if he sent ten thousand men.  It is the way in Egypt."
+
+"Madame, you have insight--will you not look farther still, and see that,
+however good Claridge Pasha's work might be some day in the far future,
+it is not good to-day.  It is too soon.  At the beginning of the
+twentieth century, perhaps.  Men pay the penalty of their mistakes.
+A man's life"--he watched her closely with his wide, benevolent eyes--"is
+neither here nor there, nor a few thousands, in the destiny of a nation.
+A man who ventures into a lion's den must not be surprised if he goes as
+Harrik went--ah, perhaps you do not know how Harrik went!  A man who
+tears at the foundations of a house must not be surprised if the timbers
+fall on him and on his workmen.  It is Destiny that Claridge Pasha should
+be the slayer of my brother, and a danger to Egypt, and one whose life is
+so dear to you, madame.  You would have it otherwise, and so would I, but
+we must take things as they are--and you see that letter.  It is seven
+weeks since then, and it may be that the circle has been broken.  Yet it
+may not be so.  The circle may be smaller, but not broken."
+
+She felt how he was tempting her from word to word with a merciless
+ingenuity; yet she kept to her purpose; and however hopeless it seemed,
+she would struggle on.
+
+"Excellency," she said in a low, pleading tone, "has he not suffered
+enough?  Has he not paid the price of that life which you would not bring
+back if you could?  No, in those places of your mind where no one can see
+lies the thought that you would not bring back Foorgat Bey.  It is not an
+eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth that has moved you; it has not
+been love of Foorgat Bey; it has been the hatred of the East for the
+West.  And yet you are a Christian!  Has Claridge Pasha not suffered
+enough, Excellency?  Have you not had your fill of revenge?  Have you
+not done enough to hurt a man whose only crime was that he killed a man
+to save a woman, and had not meant to kill?"
+
+"Yet he says in his letter that the thought of killing would not have
+stopped him."
+
+"Does one think at such a moment?  Did he think? There was no time.  It
+was the work of an instant.  Ah, Fate was not kind, Excellency!  If it
+had been, I should have been permitted to kill Foorgat Bey with my own
+hands."
+
+"I should have found it hard to exact the penalty from you, madame."
+
+The words were uttered in so neutral a way that they were enigmatical,
+and she could not take offence or be sure of his meaning.
+
+"Think, Excellency.  Have you ever known one so selfless, so good,
+so true?  For humanity's sake, would you not keep alive such a man?
+If there were a feud as old as Adam between your race and his, would you
+not before this life of sacrifice lay down the sword and the bitter
+challenge?  He gave you his hand in faith and trust, because your God was
+his God, your prophet and lord his prophet and lord.  Such faith should
+melt your heart.  Can you not see that he tried to make compensation for
+Foorgat's death, by giving you your life and setting you where you are
+now, with power to save or kill him?"
+
+"You call him great; yet I am here in safety, and he is--where he is.
+Have you not heard of the strife of minds and wills?  He represented the
+West, I the East.  He was a Christian, so was I; the ground of our battle
+was a fair one, and--and I have won."
+
+"The ground of battle fair!" she protested bitterly.  "He did not know
+that there was strife between you.  He did not fight you.  I think that
+he always loved you, Excellency.  He would have given his life for you,
+if it had been in danger.  Is there in that letter one word that any man
+could wish unwritten when the world was all ended for all men?  But no,
+there was no strife between you--there was only hatred on your part.  He
+was so much greater than you that you should feel no rivalry, no strife.
+The sword he carries cuts as wide as Time.  You are of a petty day in a
+petty land.  Your mouth will soon be filled with dust, and you will be
+forgotten.  He will live in the history of the world.  Excellency,
+I plead for him because I owe him so much: he killed a man and brought
+upon himself a lifelong misery for me.  It is all I can do, plead to you
+who know the truth about him--yes, you know the truth--to make an effort
+to save him.  It may be too late; but yet God may be waiting for you to
+lift your hand.  You said the circle may be smaller, but it may be
+unbroken still.  Will you not do a great thing once, and win a woman's
+gratitude, and the thanks of the world, by trying to save one who makes
+us think better of humanity?  Will you not have the name of Nahoum Pasha
+linked with his--with his who thought you were his friend?  Will you not
+save him?"
+
+He got slowly to his feet, a strange look in his eyes.  "Your words are
+useless.  I will not save him for your sake; I will not save him for the
+world's sake; I will not save him--"
+
+A cry of pain and grief broke from her, and she buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+"--I will not save him for any other sake than his own."
+
+He paused.  Slowly, as dazed as though she had received a blow, Hylda
+raised her face and her hands dropped in her lap.
+
+"For any other sake than his own!"  Her eyes gazed at him in a
+bewildered, piteous way.  What did he mean?  His voice seemed to come
+from afar off.
+
+"Did you think that you could save him?  That I would listen to you, if I
+did not listen to him?  No, no, madame.  Not even did he conquer me; but
+something greater than himself within himself, it conquered me."
+
+She got to her feet gasping, her hands stretched out.  "Oh, is it true--
+is it true?" she cried.
+
+"The West has conquered," he answered.
+
+"You will help him--you will try to save him?" "When, a month ago, I
+read the letter you have read, I tried to save him.  I sent secretly four
+thousand men who were at Wady Halfa to relieve him--if it could be done;
+five hundred to push forward on the quickest of the armed steamers, the
+rest to follow as fast as possible.  I did my best.  That was a month
+ago, and I am waiting--waiting and hoping, madame."
+
+Suddenly she broke down.  Tears streamed from her eyes.  She sank into
+the chair, and sobs shook her from head to foot.
+
+"Be patient, be composed, madame," Nahoum said gently.  "I have tried you
+greatly--forgive me.  Nay, do not weep.  I have hope.  We may hear from
+him at any moment now," he added softly, and there was a new look in his
+wide blue eyes as they were bent on her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
+
+     "Then I said to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear
+     the Ephah?
+
+     "And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar;
+     and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base."
+
+
+David raised his head from the paper he was studying.  He looked at Lacey
+sharply.  "And how many rounds of ammunition?" he asked.
+
+"Ten thousand, Saadat."
+
+"How many shells?" he continued, making notes upon the paper before him.
+
+"Three hundred, Saadat."
+
+"How many hundredweight of dourha?" "Eighty--about."
+
+"And how many mouths to feed?" "Five thousand."
+
+"How many fighters go with the mouths?"
+"Nine hundred and eighty-of a kind."
+
+"And of the best?'
+
+"Well, say, five hundred."
+
+"Thee said six hundred three days ago, Lacey."
+
+"Sixty were killed or wounded on Sunday, and forty I reckon in the
+others, Saadat."
+
+The dark eyes flashed, the lips set.  "The fire was sickening--they fell
+back?"
+
+"Well, Saadat, they reflected--at the wrong time."
+
+"They ran?"
+
+"Not back--they were slow in getting on."
+
+"But they fought it out?"
+
+"They had to--root hog, or die.  You see, Saadat, in that five hundred
+I'm only counting the invincibles, the up-and-at-'ems, the blind-goers
+that 'd open the lid of Hell and jump in after the enemy."
+
+The pale face lighted.  "So many!  I would not have put the estimate half
+so high.  Not bad for a dark race fighting for they know not what!"
+
+"They know that all right; they are fighting for you, Saadat."
+
+David seemed not to hear.  "Five hundred--so many, and the enemy so near,
+the temptation so great."
+
+"The deserters are all gone to Ali Wad Hei, Saadat.  For a month there
+have been only the deserted."
+
+A hardness crept into the dark eyes.  "Only the deserted!"  He looked out
+to where the Nile lost itself in the northern distance.  "I asked Nahoum
+for one thousand men, I asked England for the word which would send them.
+I asked for a thousand, but even two hundred would turn the scale--the
+sign that the Inglesi had behind him Cairo and London.  Twenty weeks, and
+nothing comes!"
+
+He got to his feet slowly and walked up and down the room for a moment,
+glancing out occasionally towards the clump of palms which marked the
+disappearance of the Nile into the desert beyond his vision.  At
+intervals a cannon-shot crashed upon the rarefied air, as scores of
+thousands had done for months past, torturing to ear and sense and nerve.
+The confused and dulled roar of voices came from the distance also; and,
+looking out to the landward side, David saw a series of movements of the
+besieging forces, under the Arab leader, Ali Wad Hei.  Here a loosely
+formed body of lancers and light cavalry cantered away towards the south,
+converging upon the Nile; there a troop of heavy cavalry in glistening
+mail moved nearer to the northern defences; and between, battalions of
+infantry took up new positions, while batteries of guns moved nearer to
+the river, curving upon the palace north and south.  Suddenly David's
+eyes flashed fire.  He turned to Lacey eagerly.  Lacey was watching with
+eyes screwed up shrewdly, his forehead shining with sweat.
+
+"Saadat," he said suddenly, "this isn't the usual set of quadrilles.
+It's the real thing.  They're watching the river--waiting."
+
+"But south!" was David's laconic response.  At the same moment he struck
+a gong.  An orderly entered.  Giving swift instructions, he turned to
+Lacey again.  "Not Cairo--Darfur," he added.
+
+"Ebn Ezra Bey coming!  Ali Wad Hei's got word from up the Nile, I guess."
+
+David nodded, and his face clouded.  "We should have had word also," he
+said sharply.
+
+There was a knock at the door, and Mahommed Hassan entered, supporting an
+Arab, down whose haggard face blood trickled from a wound in the head,
+while an arm hung limp at his side.
+
+"Behold, Saadat--from Ebn Ezra Bey," Mahommed said.  The man drooped
+beside him.
+
+David caught a tin cup from a shelf, poured some liquor into it, and held
+it to the lips of the fainting man.  "Drink," he said.  The Arab drank
+greedily, and, when he had finished, gave a long sigh of satisfaction.
+"Let him sit," David added.
+
+When the man was seated on a sheepskin, the huge Mahommed squatting
+behind like a sentinel, David questioned him.  "What is thy name--thy
+news?" he asked in Arabic.
+
+"I am called Feroog.  I come from Ebn Ezra Bey, to whom be peace!" he
+answered.  "Thy messenger, Saadat, behold he died of hunger and thirst,
+and his work became mine.  Ebn Ezra Bey came by the river.  .  .  ."
+"He is near?" asked David impatiently.
+
+"He is twenty miles away."
+
+"Thou camest by the desert?"
+
+"By the desert, Saadat, as Ebn Ezra effendi comes."
+
+"By the desert!  But thou saidst he came by the river."
+
+"Saadat, yonder, forty miles from where we are, the river makes a great
+curve.  There the effendi landed in the night with four hundred men to
+march hither.  But he commanded that the boats should come on slowly and
+receive the attack in the river, while he came in from the desert."
+
+David's eye flashed.  "A great device.  They will be here by midnight,
+then, perhaps?"
+
+"At midnight, Saadat, by the blessing of God."
+
+"How wert thou wounded?"
+
+"I came upon two of the enemy.  They were mounted.  I fought them.  Upon
+the horse of one I came here."
+
+"The other?"
+
+"God is merciful, Saadat.  He is in the bosom of God."
+
+"How many men come by the river?"
+
+"But fifty, Saadat," was the answer, "but they have sworn by the stone in
+the Kaabah not to surrender."
+
+"And those who come with the effendi, with Ebn Ezra Bey, are they as
+those who will not surrender?"
+
+"Half of them are so.  They were with thee, as was I, Saadat, when the
+great sickness fell upon us, and were healed by thee, and afterwards
+fought with thee."  David nodded abstractedly, and motioned to Mahommed
+to take the man away; then he said to Lacey: "How long do you think we
+can hold out?"
+
+"We shall have more men, but also more rifles to fire, and more mouths to
+fill, if Ebn Ezra gets in, Saadat."
+
+David raised his head.  "But with more rifles to fire away your ten
+thousand rounds"--he tapped the paper on the table--"and eat the eighty
+hundredweight of dourha, how long can we last?"
+
+"If they are to fight, and with full stomachs, and to stake everything on
+that one fight, then we can last two days.  No more, I reckon."
+
+"I make it one day," answered David.  "In three days we shall have no
+food, and unless help comes from Cairo, we must die or surrender.  It is
+not well to starve on the chance of help coming, and then die fighting
+with weak arms and broken spirit.  Therefore, we must fight to morrow,
+if Ebn Ezra gets in to-night.  I think we shall fight well," he added.
+"You think so?"
+
+"You are a born fighter, Saadat."
+
+A shadow fell on David's face, and his lips tightened.  "I was not born a
+fighter, Lacey.  The day we met first no man had ever died by my hand or
+by my will."
+
+"There are three who must die at sunset--an hour from now-by thy will,
+Saadat."
+
+A startled look came into David's face.  "Who?" he asked.
+
+"The Three Pashas, Saadat.  They have been recaptured."
+
+"Recaptured!" rejoined David mechanically.
+
+"Achmet Pasha got them from under the very noses of the sheikhs before
+sunrise this morning."
+
+"Achmet--Achmet Pasha!"  A light came into David's face again.
+
+"You will keep faith with Achmet, Saadat.  He risked his life to get
+them.  They betrayed you, and betrayed three hundred good men to death.
+If they do not die, those who fight for you will say that it doesn't
+matter whether men fight for you or betray you, they get the same stuff
+off the same plate.  If we are going to fight to-morrow, it ought to be
+with a clean bill of health."
+
+"They served me well so long--ate at my table, fought with me.  But--but
+traitors must die, even as Harrik died."  A stern look came into his
+face.  He looked round the great room slowly.  "We have done our best,"
+he said.  "I need not have failed, if there had been no treachery. . . ."
+
+"If it hadn't been for Nahoum!"
+
+David raised his head.  Supreme purpose came into his bearing.  A grave
+smile played at his lips, as he gave that quick toss of the head which
+had been a characteristic of both Eglington and himself.  His eyes shone-
+a steady, indomitable light.  "I will not give in.  I still have hope.
+We are few and they are many, but the end of a battle has never been
+sure.  We may not fail even now.  Help may come from Cairo even to-
+morrow."
+
+"Say, somehow you've always pulled through before, Saadat.
+When I've been most frightened I've perked up and stiffened my backbone,
+remembering your luck.  I've seen a blue funk evaporate by thinking of
+how things always come your way just when the worst seems at the worst."
+
+David smiled as he caught up a small cane and prepared to go.  Looking
+out of a window, he stroked his thin, clean-shaven face with a lean
+finger.  Presently a movement in the desert arrested his attention.  He
+put a field-glass to his eyes, and scanned the field of operations
+closely once more.
+
+"Good-good!" he burst out cheerfully.  "Achmet has done the one thing
+possible.  The way to the north will be still open.  He has flung his men
+between the Nile and the enemy, and now the batteries are at work."
+Opening the door, they passed out.  "He has anticipated my orders," he
+added.  "Come, Lacey, it will be an anxious night.  The moon is full, and
+Ebn Ezra Bey has his work cut out--sharp work for all of us, and .  .  ."
+
+Lacey could not hear the rest of his words in the roar of the artillery.
+David's steamers in the river were pouring shot into the desert where the
+enemy lay, and Achmet's "friendlies" and the Egyptians were making good
+their new position.  As David and Lacey, fearlessly exposing themselves
+to rifle fire, and taking the shortest and most dangerous route to where
+Achmet fought, rode swiftly from the palace, Ebn Ezra's three steamers
+appeared up the river, and came slowly down to where David's gunboats
+lay.  Their appearance was greeted by desperate discharges of artillery
+from the forces under Ali Wad Hei, who had received word of their coming
+two hours before, and had accordingly redisposed his attacking forces.
+But for Achmet's sharp initiative, the boldness of the attempt to cut off
+the way north and south would have succeeded, and the circle of fire and
+sword would have been complete.  Achmet's new position had not been
+occupied before, for men were too few, and the position he had just left
+was now exposed to attack.
+
+Never since the siege began had the foe shown such initiative and
+audacity.  They had relied on the pressure of famine and decimation by
+sickness, the steady effects of sorties, with consequent fatalities and
+desertions, to bring the Liberator of the Slaves to his knees.  Ebn Ezra
+Bey had sought to keep quiet the sheikhs far south, but he had been shut
+up in Darffur for months, and had been in as bad a plight as David.  He
+had, however, broken through at last.  His ruse in leaving the steamers
+in the night and marching across the desert was as courageous as it was
+perilous, for, if discovered before he reached the beleaguered place,
+nothing could save his little force from destruction.  There was one way
+in from the desert to the walled town, and it was through that space
+which Achmet and his men had occupied, and on which Ali Wad Hei might
+now, at any moment, throw his troops.
+
+David's heart sank as he saw the danger.  From the palace he had sent an
+orderly with a command to an officer to move forward and secure the
+position, but still the gap was open, and the men he had ordered to
+advance remained where they were.  Every minute had its crisis.
+
+As Lacey and himself left the town the misery of the place smote him in
+the eyes.  Filth, refuse, debris filled the streets.  Sick and dying men
+called to him from dark doorways, children and women begged for bread,
+carcasses lay unburied, vultures hovering above them--his tireless
+efforts had not been sufficient to cope with the daily horrors of the
+siege.  But there was no sign of hostility to him.  Voices called
+blessings on him from dark doorways, lips blanching in death commended
+him to Allah, and now and then a shrill call told of a fighter who had
+been laid low, but who had a spirit still unbeaten.  Old men and women
+stood over their cooking-pots waiting for the moment of sunset; for it
+was Ramadan, and the faithful fasted during the day--as though every day
+was not a fast.
+
+Sunset was almost come, as David left the city and galloped away
+to send forces to stop the gap of danger before it was filled by the foe.
+Sunset--the Three Pashas were to die at sunset!  They were with Achmet,
+and in a few moments they would be dead.  As David and Lacey rode hard,
+they suddenly saw a movement of men on foot at a distant point of the
+field, and then a small mounted troop, fifty at most, detach themselves
+from the larger force and, in close formation, gallop fiercely down on
+the position which Achmet had left.  David felt a shiver of anxiety and
+apprehension as he saw this sharp, sweeping advance.  Even fifty men,
+well intrenched, could hold the position until the main body of Ali Wad
+Hei's infantry came on.
+
+They rode hard, but harder still rode Ali Wad Hei's troop of daring
+Arabs.  Nearer and nearer they came.  Suddenly from the trenches, which
+they had thought deserted, David saw jets of smoke rise, and a half-dozen
+of the advancing troop fell from their saddles, their riderless horses
+galloping on.
+
+David's heart leaped: Achmet had, then, left men behind, hidden from
+view; and these were now defending the position.  Again came the jets of
+smoke, and again more Arabs dropped from their saddles.  But the others
+still came on.  A thousand feet away others fell.  Twenty-two of the
+fifty had already gone.  The rest fired their rifles as they galloped.
+But now, to David's relief, his own forces, which should have moved half
+an hour before, were coming swiftly down to cut off the approach of Ali
+Wad Hei's infantry, and he turned his horse upon the position where a
+handful of men were still emptying the saddles of the impetuous enemy.
+But now all that were left of the fifty were upon the trenches.  Then
+came the flash of swords, puffs of smoke, the thrust of lances, and
+figures falling from the screaming, rearing horses.
+
+Lacey's pistol was in his hand, David's sword was gripped tight, as they
+rushed upon the melee.  Lacey's pistol snapped, and an Arab fell; again,
+and another swayed in his saddle.  David's sword swept down, and a
+turbaned head was gashed by a mortal stroke.  As he swung towards another
+horseman, who had struck down a defender of the trenches, an Arab raised
+himself in his saddle and flung a lance with a cry of terrible malice;
+but, even as he did so, a bullet from Lacey's pistol pierced his
+shoulder.  The shot had been too late to stop the lance, but sufficient
+to divert its course.  It caught David in the flesh of the body under the
+arm--a slight wound only.  A few inches to the right, however, and his
+day would have been done.
+
+The remaining Arabs turned and fled.  The fight was over.  As David,
+dismounting, stood with dripping sword in his hand, in imagination, he
+heard the voice of Kaid say to him, as it said that night when he killed
+Foorgat Bey: "Hast thou never killed a man?"
+
+For an instant it blinded him, then he was conscious that, on the ground
+at his feet, lay one of the Three Pashas who were to die at sunset.  It
+was sunset now, and the man was dead.  Another of the Three sat upon the
+ground winding his thigh with the folds of a dead Arab's turban, blood
+streaming from his gashed face.  The last of the trio stood before David,
+stoical and attentive.  For a moment David looked at the Three, the dead
+man and the two living men, and then suddenly turned to where the
+opposing forces were advancing.  His own men were now between the
+position and Ali Wad Hei's shouting fanatics.  They would be able to
+reach and defend the post in time.  He turned and gave orders.  There
+were only twenty men besides the two pashas, whom his commands also
+comprised.  Two small guns were in place.  He had them trained on that
+portion of the advancing infantry of Ali Wad Hei not yet covered by his
+own forces.  Years of work and responsibility had made him master of many
+things, and long ago he had learned the work of an artilleryman.  In a
+moment a shot, well directed, made a gap in the ranks of the advancing
+foe.  An instant afterwards a shot from the other gun fired by the
+unwounded pasha, who, in his youth, had been an officer of artillery,
+added to the confusion in the swerving ranks, and the force hesitated;
+and now from Ebn Ezra Bey's river steamers, which had just arrived, there
+came a flank fire.  The force wavered.  From David's gun another shot
+made havoc.  They turned and fell back quickly.  The situation was saved.
+
+As if by magic the attack of the enemy all over the field ceased.  By
+sunset they had meant to finish this enterprise, which was to put the
+besieged wholly in their hands, and then to feast after the day's
+fasting.  Sunset had come, and they had been foiled; but hunger demanded
+the feast.  The order to cease firing and retreat sounded, and three
+thousand men hurried back to the cooking-pot, the sack of dourha, and the
+prayer mat.  Malaish, if the infidel Inglesi was not conquered to-day,
+he should be beaten and captured and should die to-morrow!  And yet there
+were those among them who had a well-grounded apprehension that the
+"Inglesi" would win in the end.
+
+By the trenches, where five men had died so bravely, and a traitorous
+pasha had paid the full penalty of a crime and won a soldier's death,
+David spoke to his living comrades.  As he prepared to return to the
+city, he said to the unwounded pasha: "Thou wert to die at sunset; it was
+thy sentence."
+
+And the pasha answered: "Saadat, as for death--I am ready to die, but
+have I not fought for thee?" David turned to the wounded pasha.
+
+"Why did Achmet Pasha spare thee?"
+
+"He did not spare us, Saadat.  Those who fought with us but now were to
+shoot us at sunset, and remain here till other troops came.  Before
+sunset we saw the danger, since no help came.  Therefore we fought to
+save this place for thee."
+
+David looked them in the eyes.  "Ye were traitors," he said, "and for an
+example it was meet that ye should die.  But this that ye have done shall
+be told to all who fight to-morrow, and men will know why it is I pardon
+treachery.  Ye shall fight again, if need be, betwixt this hour and
+morning, and ye shall die, if need be.  Ye are willing?"
+
+Both men touched their foreheads, their lips, and their breasts.
+"Whether it be death or it be life, Inshallah, we are true to thee,
+Saadat!" one said, and the other repeated the words after him.  As they
+salaamed David left them, and rode forward to the advancing forces.
+
+Upon the roof of the palace Mahommed Hassan watched and waited, his eyes
+scanning sharply the desert to the south, his ears strained to catch that
+stir of life which his accustomed ears had so often detected in the
+desert, when no footsteps, marching, or noises could be heard.  Below,
+now in the palace, now in the defences, his master, the Saadat, planned
+for the last day's effort on the morrow, gave directions to the officers,
+sent commands to Achmet Pasha, arranged for the disposition of his
+forces, with as strange a band of adherents and subordinates as ever men
+had--adventurers, to whom adventure in their own land had brought no
+profit; members of that legion of the non-reputable, to whom Cairo
+offered no home; Levantines, who had fled from that underground world
+where every coin of reputation is falsely minted, refugees from the storm
+of the world's disapproval.  There were Greeks with Austrian names;
+Armenians, speaking Italian as their native tongue; Italians of
+astonishing military skill, whose services were no longer required by
+their offended country; French Pizarros with a romantic outlook, even in
+misery, intent to find new El Dorados; Englishmen, who had cheated at
+cards and had left the Horse Guards for ever behind; Egyptian intriguers,
+who had been banished for being less successful than greater intriguers;
+but also a band of good gallant men of every nation.
+
+Upon all these, during the siege, Mahommed Hassan had been a self-
+appointed spy, and had indirectly added to that knowledge which made
+David's decisive actions to circumvent intrigue and its consequences seem
+almost supernatural.  In his way Mahommed was a great man.  He knew that
+David would endure no spying, and it was creditable to his subtlety and
+skill that he was able to warn his master, without being himself
+suspected of getting information by dark means.  On the palace roof
+Mahommed was happy to-night.  Tomorrow would be a great day, and, since
+the Saadat was to control its destiny, what other end could there be but
+happiness?  Had not the Saadat always ridden over all that had been in
+his way?  Had not he, Mahommed, ever had plenty to eat and drink, and
+money to send to Manfaloot to his father there, and to bribe when bribing
+was needed?  Truly, life was a boon!  With a neboot of dom-wood across
+his knees he sat in the still, moonlit night, peering into that distance
+whence Ebn Ezra Bey and his men must come, the moon above tranquil and
+pleasant and alluring, and the desert beneath, covered as it was with the
+outrages and terrors of war, breathing softly its ancient music, that
+delicate vibrant humming of the latent activities.  In his uncivilised
+soul Mahommed Hassan felt this murmur, and even as he sat waiting to know
+whether a little army would steal out of the south like phantoms into
+this circle the Saadat had drawn round him, he kept humming to himself--
+had he not been, was he not now, an Apollo to numberless houris who had
+looked down at him from behind mooshrabieh screens, or waited for him in
+the palm-grove or the cane-field?  The words of his song were not uttered
+aloud, but yet he sang them silently--
+
+    "Every night long and all night my spirit is moaning and crying
+     O dear gazelle, that has taken away my peace!
+     Ah! if my beloved come not, my eyes will be blinded with weeping
+     Moon of my joy, come to me, hark to the call of my soul!"
+
+Over and over he kept chanting the song.  Suddenly, however, he leaned
+farther forward and strained his ears.  Yes, at last, away to the south-
+east, there was life stirring, men moving--moving quickly.  He got to his
+feet slowly, still listening, stood for a moment motionless, then, with a
+cry of satisfaction, dimly saw a moving mass in the white moonlight far
+over by the river.  Ebn Ezra Bey and his men were coming.  He started
+below, and met David on the way up.  He waited till David had mounted the
+roof, then he pointed.  "Now, Saadat!" he said.
+
+"They have stolen in?" David peered into the misty whiteness.
+
+They are almost in, Saadat.  Nothing can stop them now."
+
+"It is well done.  Go and ask Ebn Ezra effendi to come hither," he said.
+
+Suddenly a shot was fired, then a hoarse shout came over the desert, then
+there was silence again.
+
+"They are in, Saadat," said Mahommed Hassan.
+
+                    .......................
+
+Day broke over a hazy plain.  On both sides of the Nile the river mist
+spread wide, and the army of Ali Wad Hei and the defending forces were
+alike veiled from each other and from the desert world beyond.  Down the
+river for scores of miles the mist was heavy, and those who moved within
+it and on the waters of the Nile could not see fifty feet ahead.  Yet
+through this heavy veil there broke gently a little fleet of phantom
+vessels, the noise of the paddle-wheels and their propellers muffled as
+they moved slowly on.  Never had vessels taken such risks on the Nile
+before, never had pilots trusted so to instinct, for there were sand-
+banks and ugly drifts of rock here and there.  A safe journey for phantom
+ships; but these armed vessels, filled by men with white, eager faces and
+others with dark Egyptian features, were no phantoms.  They bristled with
+weapons, and armed men crowded every corner of space.  For full two hours
+from the first streak of light they had travelled swiftly, taking chances
+not to be taken save in some desperate moment.  The moment was desperate
+enough, if not for them.  They were going to the relief of besieged men,
+with a message from Nahoum Pasha to Claridge Pasha, and with succour.
+They had looked for a struggle up this river as they neared the
+beleaguered city; but, as they came nearer and nearer, not a gun fired at
+them from the forts on the banks out of the mists.  If they were heard
+they still were safe from the guns, for they could not be seen, and those
+on shore could not know whether they were friend or foe.  Like ghostly
+vessels they passed on, until at last they could hear the stir and murmur
+of life along the banks of the stream.
+
+Boom!  boom!  boom!  Through the mist the guns of the city were pouring
+shot and shell out into Ali Wad Hei's camp, and Ali Wad Hei laughed
+contemptuously.  Surely now the Inglesi was altogether mad, and to-day,
+this day after prayers at noon, he should be shot like a mad dog, for
+yesterday's defeat had turned some of his own adherent sheikhs into angry
+critics.  He would not wait for starvation to compel the infidel to
+surrender.  He would win freedom to deal in human flesh and blood, and
+make slave-markets where he willed, and win glory for the Lord Mahomet,
+by putting this place to the sword; and, when it was over, he would have
+the Inglesi's head carried on a pole through the city for the faithful to
+mock at, a target for the filth of the streets.  So, by the will of
+Allah, it should be done!
+
+Boom!  boom!  boom!  The Inglesi was certainly mad, for never had there
+been so much firing in any long day in all the siege as in this brief
+hour this morning.  It was the act of a fool, to fire his shot and shell
+into the mist without aim, without a clear target.  Ali Wad Hei scorned
+to make any reply with his guns, but sat in desultory counsel with his
+sheikhs, planning what should be done when the mists had cleared away.
+But yesterday evening the Arab chief had offered to give the Inglesi life
+if he would surrender and become a Muslim, and swear by the Lord Mahomet;
+but late in the night he had received a reply which left only one choice,
+and that was to disembowel the infidel, and carry his head aloft on a
+spear.  The letter he had received ran thus in Arabic:
+
+     "To Ali Wad Hei and All with Him:
+
+     "We are here to live or to die as God wills, and not as ye will.  I
+     have set my feet on the rock, and not by threats of any man shall I
+     be moved.  But I say that for all the blood that ye have shed here
+     there will be punishment, and for the slaves which ye have slain or
+     sold there will be high price paid.  Ye have threatened the city and
+     me--take us if ye can.  Ye are seven to one.  Why falter all these
+     months?  If ye will not come to us, we shall come to you, rebellious
+     ones, who have drawn the sword against your lawful ruler, the
+     Effendina.
+                                   "CLARIDGE PASHA"
+
+It was a rhetorical document couched in the phraseology they best
+understood; and if it begat derision, it also begat anger; and the
+challenge David had delivered would be met when the mists had lifted from
+the river and the plain.  But when the first thinning of the mists began,
+when the sun began to dissipate the rolling haze, Ali Wad Hei and his
+rebel sheikhs were suddenly startled by rifle-fire at close quarters, by
+confused noises, and the jar and roar of battle.  Now the reason for the
+firing of the great guns was plain.  The noise was meant to cover the
+advance of David's men.  The little garrison, which had done no more than
+issue in sorties, was now throwing its full force on the enemy in a last
+desperate endeavour.  It was either success or absolute destruction.
+David was staking all, with the last of his food, the last of his
+ammunition, the last of his hopes.  All round the field the movement was
+forward, till the circle had widened to the enemy's lines; while at the
+old defences were only handfuls of men.  With scarce a cry David's men
+fell on the unprepared foe; and he himself, on a grey Arab, a mark for
+any lance or spear and rifle, rode upon that point where Ali Wad Hei's
+tent was set.
+
+But after the first onset, in which hundreds were killed, there began the
+real noise of battle--fierce shouting, the shrill cries of wounded and
+maddened horses as they struck with their feet, and bit as fiercely at
+the fighting foe as did their masters.  The mist cleared slowly, and,
+when it had wholly lifted, the fight was spread over every part of the
+field of siege.  Ali Wad Hei's men had gathered themselves together after
+the first deadly onslaught, and were fighting fiercely, shouting the
+Muslim battle-cry, "Allah hu achbar!"  Able to bring up reinforcements,
+the great losses at first sustained were soon made up, and the sheer
+weight of numbers gave them courage and advantage.  By rushes with lance
+and sword and rifle they were able, at last, to drive David's men back
+upon their old defences with loss.  Then charge upon charge ensued, and
+each charge, if it cost them much, cost the besieged more, by reason of
+their fewer numbers.  At one point, however, the besieged became again
+the attacking party.  This was where Achmet Pasha had command.  His men
+on one side of the circle, as Ebn Ezra Bey's men on the other, fought
+with a valour as desperate as the desert ever saw.  But David, galloping
+here and there to order, to encourage, to prevent retreat at one point,
+or to urge attack at another, saw that the doom of his gallant force was
+certain; for the enemy were still four to one, in spite of the carnage of
+the first attack.  Bullets hissed past him.  One carried away a button,
+one caught the tip of his ear, one pierced the fez he wore; but he felt
+nothing of this, saw nothing.  He was buried in the storm of battle
+preparing for the end, for the final grim defence, when his men would
+retreat upon the one last strong fort, and there await their fate.  From
+this absorption he was roused by Lacey, who came galloping towards him.
+
+"They've come, Saadat, they've come at last!  We're saved--oh, my God,
+you bet we're all right now!  See!  See, Saadat!"
+
+David saw.  Five steamers carrying the Egyptian flag were bearing around
+the point where the river curved below the town, and converging upon
+David's small fleet.  Presently the steamers opened fire, to encourage
+the besieged, who replied with frenzied shouts of joy, and soon there
+poured upon the sands hundreds of men in the uniform of the Effendina.
+These came forward at the double, and, with a courage which nothing could
+withstand, the whole circle spread out again upon the discomfited tribes
+of Ali Wad Hei.  Dismay, confusion, possessed the Arabs.  Their river-
+watchers had failed them, God had hidden His face from them; and when Ali
+Wad Hei and three of his emirs turned and rode into the desert, their
+forces broke and ran also, pursued by the relentless men who had suffered
+the tortures of siege so long.  The chase was short, however, for they
+were desert folk, and they returned to loot the camp which had menaced
+them so long.
+
+Only the new-comers, Nahoum's men, carried the hunt far; and they brought
+back with them a body which their leader commanded to be brought to a
+great room of the palace.  Towards sunset David and Ebn Ezra Bey and
+Lacey came together to this room.  The folds of loose linen were lifted
+from the face, and all three looked at it long in silence.  At last Lacey
+spoke:
+
+"He got what he wanted; the luck was with him.  It's better than
+Leperland."
+
+"In the bosom of Allah there is peace," said Ebn Ezra.  "It is well with
+Achmet."
+
+With misty eyes David stooped and took the dead man's hand in his for a
+moment.  Then he rose to his feet and turned away.
+
+"And Nahoum also--and Nahoum," he said presently.  "Read this," he added,
+and put a letter from Nahoum into Ebn Ezra's hand.
+
+Lacey reverently covered Achmet's face.  "Say, he got what he wanted," he
+said again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+THE LOOM OF DESTINY
+
+It was many a day since the Duchess of Snowdon had seen a sunrise, and
+the one on which she now gazed from the deck of the dahabieh Nefert,
+filled her with a strange new sense of discovery and revelation.  Her
+perceptions were arrested and a little confused, and yet the undercurrent
+of feeling was one of delight and rejuvenation.  Why did this sunrise
+bring back, all at once, the day when her one lost child was born, and
+she looked out of the windows of Snowdon Hall, as she lay still and
+nerveless, and thought how wonderful and sweet and green was the world
+she saw and the sky that walled it round?  Sunrise over the Greek Temple
+of Philae and the splendid ruins of a farther time towering beside it!
+In her sight were the wide, islanded Nile, where Cleopatra loitered with
+Antony, the foaming, crashing cataracts above, the great quarries from
+which ancient temples had been hewed, unfinished obelisks and vast blocks
+of stone left where bygone workmen had forsaken them, when the invader
+came and another dynasty disappeared into that partial oblivion from
+which the Egyptian still emerges triumphant over all his conquerors,
+unchanged in form and feature.  Something of its meaning got into her
+mind.
+
+"I wonder what Windlehurst would think of it.  He always had an eye for
+things like that," she murmured; and then caught her breath, as she
+added: "He always liked beauty."  She looked at her wrinkled, childish
+hands.  "But sunsets never grow old," she continued, with no apparent
+relevance.  "La, la, we were young once!"
+
+Her eyes were lost again in the pinkish glow spreading over the grey-
+brown sand of the desert, over the palm-covered island near.  "And now
+it's others' turn, or ought to be," she murmured.
+
+She looked to where, not far away, Hylda stood leaning over the railing
+of the dahabieh, her eyes fixed in reverie on the farthest horizon line
+of the unpeopled, untravelled plain of sand.
+
+"No, poor thing, it's not her turn," she added, as Hylda, with a long
+sigh, turned and went below.  Tears gathered in her pale blue eyes.  "Not
+yet--with Eglington alive.  And perhaps it would be best if the other
+never came back.  I could have made the world better worth living in if
+I had had the chance--and I wouldn't have been a duchess!  La!  La!"
+
+She relapsed into reverie, an uncommon experience for her; and her mind
+floated indefinitely from one thing to another, while she was half
+conscious of the smell of coffee permeating the air, and of the low
+resonant notes of the Nubian boys, as, with locked shoulders, they
+scrubbed the decks of a dahabieh near by with hempshod feet.
+
+Presently, however, she was conscious of another sound--the soft clip of
+oars, joined to the guttural, explosive song of native rowers; and,
+leaning over the rail, she saw a boat draw alongside the Nefert.  From it
+came the figure of Nahoum Pasha, who stepped briskly on deck, in his
+handsome face a light which flashed an instant meaning to her.
+
+"I know--I know!  Claridge Pasha--you have heard?" she said excitedly,
+as he came to her.
+
+He smiled and nodded.  "A messenger has arrived.  Within a few hours he
+should be here."
+
+"Then it was all false that he was wounded--ah, that horrible story of
+his death!"
+
+"Bismillah, it was not all false!  The night before the great battle he
+was slightly wounded in the side.  He neglected it, and fever came on;
+but he survived.  His first messengers to us were killed, and that is why
+the news of the relief came so late.  But all is well at last.  I have
+come to say so to Lady Eglington--even before I went to the Effendina."
+He made a gesture towards a huge and gaily-caparisoned dahabieh not far
+away.  "Kaid was right about coming here.  His health is better.  He
+never doubted Claridge Pasha's return; it was une idee fixe.  He believes
+a magic hand protects the Saadat, and that, adhering to him, he himself
+will carry high the flower of good fortune and live for ever.  Kismet!  I
+will not wait to see Lady Eglington.  I beg to offer to her my
+congratulations on the triumph of her countryman."
+
+His words had no ulterior note; but there was a shadow in his eyes which
+in one not an Oriental would have seemed sympathy.
+
+"Pasha, Pasha!" the Duchess called after him, as he turned to leave;
+"tell me, is there any news from England--from the Government?"
+
+"From Lord Eglington?  No," Nahoum answered meaningly.  "I wrote to him.
+Did the English Government desire to send a message to Claridge Pasha,
+if the relief was accomplished?  That is what I asked.  But there is no
+word.  Malaish, Egypt will welcome him!"
+
+She followed his eyes.  Two score of dahabiehs lay along the banks of the
+Nile, and on the shore were encampments of soldiers, while flags were
+flying everywhere.  Egypt had followed the lead of the Effendina.
+Claridge Pasha's star was in its zenith.
+
+As Nahoum's boat was rowed away, Hylda came on deck again, and the
+Duchess hastened to her.  Hylda caught the look in her face.  "What has
+happened?  Is there news?  Who has been here?" she asked.
+
+The Duchess took her hands.  "Nahoum has gone to tell Prince Kaid.  He
+came to you with the good news first," she said with a flutter.
+
+She felt Hylda's hands turn cold.  A kind of mist filled the dark eyes,
+and the slim, beautiful figure swayed slightly.  An instant only, and
+then the lips smiled, and Hylda said in a quavering voice: "They will be
+so glad in England."
+
+"Yes, yes, my darling, that is what Nahoum said."  She gave Nahoum's
+message to her.  "Now they'll make him a peer, I suppose, after having
+deserted him.  So English!"
+
+She did not understand why Hylda's hands trembled so, why so strange a
+look came into her face, but, in an instant, the rare and appealing eyes
+shone again with a light of agitated joy, and suddenly Hylda leaned over
+and kissed her cheek.
+
+"Smell the coffee," she said with assumed gaiety.  "Doesn't fair-and-
+sixty want her breakfast?  Sunrise is a splendid tonic."  She laughed
+feverishly.
+
+"My darling, I hadn't seen the sun rise in thirty years, not since the
+night I first met Windlehurst at a Foreign Office ball."
+
+"You have always been great friends?" Hylda stole a look at her.
+
+"That's the queer part of it; I was so stupid, and he so clever.  But
+Windlehurst has a way of letting himself down to your level.  He always
+called me Betty after my boy died, just as if I was his equal.  La, la,
+but I was proud when he first called me that--the Prime Minister of
+England.  I'm going to watch the sun rise again to-morrow, my darling.  I
+didn't know it was so beautiful, and gave one such an appetite."  She
+broke a piece of bread, and, not waiting to butter it, almost stuffed it
+into her mouth.
+
+Hylda leaned over and pressed her arm.  "What a good mother Betty it is!"
+she said tenderly.
+
+Presently they were startled by the shrill screaming of a steamer
+whistle, followed by the churning of the paddles, as she drove past and
+drew to the bank near them.
+
+"It is a steamer from Cairo, with letters, no doubt," said Hylda; and the
+Duchess nodded assent, and covertly noted her look, for she knew that no
+letters had arrived from Eglington since Hylda had left England.
+
+A half-hour later, as the Duchess sat on deck, a great straw hat tied
+under her chin with pale-blue ribbons, like a child of twelve, she was
+startled by seeing the figure of a farmer-looking person with a shock of
+grey-red hair, a red face, and with great blue eyes, appear before her in
+the charge of Hylda's dragoman.
+
+"This has come to speak with my lady," the dragoman said, "but my lady is
+riding into the desert there."  He pointed to the sands.
+
+The Duchess motioned the dragoman away, and scanned the face of the new-
+comer shrewdly.  Where had she seen this strange-looking English peasant,
+with the rolling walk of a sailor?
+
+"What is your name, and where do you come from?" she asked, not without
+anxiety, for there was something ominous and suggestive in the old man's
+face.
+
+"I come from Hamley, in England, and my name is Soolsby, your grace.  I
+come to see my Lady Eglington."
+
+Now she remembered him.  She had seen him in Hamley more than once.
+
+"You have come far; have you important news for her ladyship?  Is there
+anything wrong?" she asked with apparent composure, but with heavy
+premonition.
+
+"Ay, news that counts, I bring," answered Soolsby, "or I hadn't come this
+long way.  'Tis a long way at sixty-five."
+
+"Well, yes, at our age it is a long way," rejoined the Duchess in a
+friendly voice, suddenly waving away the intervening air of class, for
+she was half a peasant at heart.
+
+"Ay, and we both come for the same end, I suppose," Soolsby added; "and a
+costly business it is.  But what matters, so be that you help her
+ladyship and I help Our Man."
+
+"And who is 'Our Man'?" was the rejoinder.  "Him that's coming safe here
+from the South--David Claridge," he answered.  "Ay, 'twas the first thing
+I heard when I landed here, me that be come all these thousand miles to
+see him, if so be he was alive."  Just then he caught sight of Kate
+Heaver climbing the stair to the deck where they were.  His face flushed;
+he hurried forward and gripped her by the arm, as her feet touched the
+upper deck.  "Kate-ay, 'tis Kate!" he cried.  Then he let go her arm and
+caught a hand in both of his and fondled it.  "Ay, ay, 'tis Kate!"  "What
+is it brings you, Soolsby?" Kate asked anxiously.
+
+"'Tis not Jasper, and 'tis not the drink-ay, I've been sober since, ever
+since, Kate, lass," he answered stoutly.  "Quick, quick, tell me what it
+is!" she said, frowning.  "You've not come here for naught, Soolsby."
+
+Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear.  For an
+instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious muffled
+cry, broke away from him and turned to go below.
+
+"Keep your mouth shut, lass, till proper time," he called after her, as
+she descended the steps hastily again.  Then he came slowly back to the
+Duchess.
+
+He looked her in the face--he was so little like a peasant, so much more
+like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing.  "Your
+grace is a good friend to her ladyship," he said at last deliberately,
+"and 'tis well that you tell her ladyship.  As good a friend to her
+you've been, I doubt not, as that I've been to him that's coming from
+beyond and away."
+
+"Go on, man, go on.  I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you
+have come to say."
+
+"I beg pardon, your grace.  One doesn't keep good news waiting, and 'tis
+not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha,
+for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lordship that's
+gone."
+
+"Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted sharply.
+
+"Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign--he is dead," he
+said slowly.
+
+The Duchess fell back in her chair.  For an instant the desert, the
+temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle
+world, in which Soolsby's voice seemed coming muffled and deep across a
+dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not unlike
+that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly of
+relief.
+
+"Ay, he's dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard.  Miss
+Claridge would have it so.  And none in Hamley said nay, not one."
+
+The Duchess murmured to herself.  Eglington was dead--Eglington was dead
+--Eglington was dead!  And David Claridge was coming out of the desert,
+was coming to-day-now!
+
+"How did it happen?" she asked, faintly, at last.
+
+"Things went wrong wi' him--bad wrong in Parliament and everywhere, and
+he didn't take it well.  He stood the world off like-ay, he had no temper
+for black days.  He shut himself up at Hamley in his chemical place, like
+his father, like his father before him.  When the week-end came, there he
+was all day and night among his bottles and jars and wires.  He was after
+summat big in experiment for explosives, so the papers said, and so he
+said himself before he died, to Miss Claridge--ay, 'twas her he deceived
+and treated cruel, that come to him when he was shattered by his
+experimenting.  No patience, he had at last--and reckless in his chemical
+place, and didn't realise what his hands was doing.  'Twas so he told
+her, that forgave him all his deceit, and held him in her arms when he
+died.  Not many words he had to speak; but he did say that he had never
+done any good to any one--ay, I was standing near behind his bed and
+heard all, for I was thinking of her alone with him, and so I would be
+with her, and she would have it so.  Ay, and he said that he had misused
+cruel her that had loved him, her ladyship, that's here.  He said he
+had misused her because he had never loved her truly, only pride and
+vainglory being in his heart.  Then he spoke summat to her that was there
+to forgive him and help him over the stile 'twixt this field and it
+that's Beyond and Away, which made her cry out in pain and say that he
+must fix his thoughts on other things.  And she prayed out loud for him,
+for he would have no parson there.  She prayed and prayed as never priest
+or parson prayed, and at last he got quiet and still, and, when she
+stopped praying, he did not speak or open his eyes for a longish while.
+But when the old clock on the stable was striking twelve, he opened his
+eyes wide, and when it had stopped, he said: 'It is always twelve by the
+clock that stops at noon.  I've done no good.  I've earned my end.' He
+looked as though he was waiting for the clock to go on striking, half
+raising himself up in bed, with Miss Faith's arm under his head.  He
+whispered to her then--he couldn't speak by this time.  'It's twelve
+o'clock,' he said.  Then there came some words I've heard the priest say
+at Mass, 'Vanitas, Vanitatum,'--that was what he said.  And her he'd lied
+to, there with him, laying his head down on the pillow, as if he was her
+child going to sleep.  So, too, she had him buried by her father, in the
+Quaker burying-ground--ay, she is a saint on earth, I warrant."
+
+For a moment after he had stopped the Duchess did not speak, but kept
+untying and tying the blue ribbons under her chin, her faded eyes still
+fastened on him, burning with the flame of an emotion which made them
+dark and young again.
+
+"So, it's all over," she said, as though to herself.  "They were all
+alike, from old Broadbrim, the grandfather, down to this one, and back to
+William the Conqueror."
+
+"Like as peas in a pod," exclaimed Soolsby--"all but one, all but one,
+and never satisfied with what was in their own garden, but peeking,
+peeking beyond the hedge, and climbing and getting a fall.  That's what
+they've always been evermore."
+
+His words aroused the Duchess, and the air became a little colder about
+her-after all, the division between the classes and the masses must be
+kept, and the Eglingtons were no upstarts.  "You will say nothing about
+this till I give you leave to speak," she commanded.  "I must tell her
+ladyship."
+
+Soolsby drew himself up a little, nettled at her tone.  "It is your
+grace's place to tell her ladyship," he responded; "but I've taken ten
+years' savings to come to Egypt, and not to do any one harm, but good,
+if so be I might."
+
+The Duchess relented at once.  She got to her feet as quickly as she
+could, and held out her hand to him.  "You are a good man, and a friend
+worth having, I know, and I shall like you to be my friend, Mr. Soolsby,"
+she said impulsively.
+
+He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, his lips working.  "Your grace,
+I understand.  I've got naught to live for except my friends.  Money's
+naught, naught's naught, if there isn't a friend to feel a crunch at his
+heart when summat bad happens to you.  I'd take my affydavy that there's
+no better friend in the world than your grace."
+
+She smiled at him.  "And so we are friends, aren't we?  And I am to tell
+her ladyship, and you are to say 'naught.'
+
+"But to the Egyptian, to him, your grace, it is my place to speak--to
+Claridge Pasha, when he comes."  The Duchess looked at him quizzically.
+"How does Lord Eglington's death concern Claridge Pasha?" she asked
+rather anxiously.  Had there been gossip about Hylda?  Had the public got
+a hint of the true story of her flight, in spite of all Windlehurst had
+done?  Was Hylda's name smirched, now, when all would be set right?  Had
+everything come too late, as it were?
+
+"There's two ways that his lordship's death concerns Claridge Pasha,"
+answered Soolsby shrewdly, for though he guessed the truth concerning
+Hylda and David, his was not a leaking tongue.  "There's two ways it
+touches him.  There'll be a new man in the Foreign Office--Lord Eglington
+was always against Claridge Pasha; and there's matters of land betwixt
+the two estates--matters of land that's got to be settled now," he
+continued, with determined and successful evasion.
+
+The Duchess was deceived.  "But you will not tell Claridge Pasha until I
+have told her ladyship and I give you leave?  Promise that," she urged.
+
+"I will not tell him until then," he answered.  "Look, look, your grace,"
+he added, suddenly pointing towards the southern horizon, "there he
+comes!  Ay, 'tis Our Man, I doubt not--Our Man evermore!"
+
+Miles away there appeared on the horizon a dozen camels being ridden
+towards Assouan.
+
+"Our Man evermore," repeated the Duchess, with a trembling smile.  "Yes,
+it is surely he.  See, the soldiers are moving.  They're going to ride
+out to meet him."  She made a gesture towards the far shore where Kaid's
+men were saddling their horses, and to Nahoum's and Kaid's dahabiehs,
+where there was a great stir.
+
+"There's one from Hamley will meet them first," Soolsby said, and pointed
+to where Hylda, in the desert, was riding towards the camels coming out
+of the south.
+
+The Duchess threw up her hands.  "Dear me, dear me," she said in
+distress, "if she only knew!"
+
+"There's thousands of women that'd ride out mad to meet him," said
+Soolsby carefully; "women that likes to see an Englishman that's done his
+duty--ay, women and men, that'd ride hard to welcome him back from the
+grave.  Her ladyship's as good a patriot as any," he added, watching the
+Duchess out of the corners of his eyes, his face turned to the desert.
+
+The Duchess looked at him quizzically, and was satisfied with her
+scrutiny.  "You're a man of sense," she replied brusquely, and gathered
+up her skirts.  "Find me a horse or a donkey, and I'll go too," she added
+whimsically.  "Patriotism is such a nice sentiment."
+
+For David and Lacey the morning had broken upon a new earth.  Whatever of
+toil and tribulation the future held in store, this day marked a step
+forward in the work to which David had set his life.  A way had been
+cloven through the bloody palisades of barbarism, and though the dark
+races might seek to hold back the forces which drain the fens, and build
+the bridges, and make the desert blossom as the rose, which give liberty
+and preserve life, the good end was sure and near, whatever of rebellion
+and disorder and treachery intervened.  This was the larger, graver
+issue; but they felt a spring in the blood, and their hearts were
+leaping, because of the thought that soon they would clasp hands again
+with all from which they had been exiled.
+
+"Say, Saadat, think of it: a bed with four feet, and linen sheets, and
+sleeping till any time in the morning, and, If you please, sir,
+breakfast's on the table.' Say, it's great, and we're in it!"
+
+David smiled.  "Thee did very well, friend, without such luxuries.  Thee
+is not skin and bone."
+
+Lacey mopped his forehead.  "Well, I've put on a layer or two since the
+relief.  It's being scared that takes the flesh off me.  I never was
+intended for the 'stricken field.'  Poetry and the hearth-stone was my
+real vocation--and a bit of silver mining to blow off steam with," he
+added with a chuckle.
+
+David laughed and tapped his arm.  "That is an old story now, thy
+cowardice.  Thee should be more original.
+
+"It's worth not being original, Saadat, to hear you thee and thou me as
+you used to do.  It's like old times--the oldest, first times.  You've
+changed a lot, Saadat."
+
+"Not in anything that matters, I hope."
+
+"Not in anything that matters to any one that matters.  To me it's the
+same as it ever was, only more so.  It isn't that, for you are you.  But
+you've had disappointment, trouble, hard nuts to crack, and all you could
+do to escape the rocks being rolled down the Egyptian hill onto you; and
+it's left its mark."
+
+"Am I grown so different?"
+
+Lacey's face shone under the look that was turned towards him.  "Say,
+Saadat, you're the same old red sandstone; but I missed the thee and
+thou.  I sort of hankered after it; it gets me where I'm at home with
+myself."
+
+David laughed drily.  "Well, perhaps I've missed something in you.  Thee
+never says now--not since thee went south a year ago, 'Well, give my love
+to the girls.'  Something has left its mark, friend," he added teasingly;
+for his spirits were boyish to-day; he was living in the present.  There
+had gone from his eyes and from the lines of his figure the melancholy
+which Hylda had remarked when he was in England.
+
+"Well, now, I never noticed," rejoined Lacey.  "That's got me.  Looks as
+if I wasn't as friendly as I used to be, doesn't it?  But I am--I am,
+Saadat."
+
+"I thought that the widow in Cairo, perhaps--" Lacey chuckled.  "Say,
+perhaps it was--cute as she can be, maybe, wouldn't like it, might be
+prejudiced."
+
+Suddenly David turned sharply to Lacey.  "Thee spoke of silver mining
+just now.  I owe thee something like two hundred thousand pounds, I
+think--Egypt and I."
+
+Lacey winked whimsically at himself under the rim of his helmet.  "Are
+you drawing back from those concessions, Saadat?" he asked with apparent
+ruefulness.
+
+"Drawing back?  No!  But does thee think they are worth--"
+
+Lacey assumed an injured air.  "If a man that's made as much money as me
+can't be trusted to look after a business proposition--"
+
+"Oh, well, then!"
+
+"Say, Saadat, I don't want you to think I've taken a mean advantage of
+you; and if--"
+
+David hastened to put the matter right.  "No, no; thee must be the
+judge!"  He smiled sceptically.  "In any case, thee has done a good deed
+in a great way, and it will do thee no harm in the end.  In one way the
+investment will pay a long interest, as long as the history of Egypt
+runs.  Ah, see, the houses of Assouan, the palms, the river, the masts of
+the dahabiehs!"
+
+Lacey quickened his camel's steps, and stretched out a hand to the
+inviting distance.  "'My, it's great," he said, and his eyes were
+blinking with tears.  Presently he pointed.  "There's a woman riding to
+meet us, Saa dat.  Golly, can't she ride!  She means to be in it--to
+salute the returning brave."
+
+He did not glance at David.  If he had done so, he would have seen that
+David's face had taken on a strange look, just such a look as it wore
+that night in the monastery when he saw Hylda in a vision and heard her
+say: "Speak, speak to me!"
+
+There had shot into David's mind the conviction that the woman riding
+towards them was Hylda.  Hylda, the first to welcome him back, Hylda--
+Lady Eglington!  Suddenly his face appeared to tighten and grow thin.
+It was all joy and torture at once.  He had fought this fight out with
+himself--had he not done so?  Had he not closed his heart to all but duty
+and Egypt?  Yet there she was riding out of the old life, out of Hamley,
+and England, and all that had happened in Cairo, to meet him.  Nearer and
+nearer she came.  He could not see the face, but yet he knew.  He
+quickened his camel and drew ahead of Lacey.  Lacey did not understand,
+he did not recognise Hylda as yet; but he knew by instinct the Saadat's
+wishes, and he motioned the others to ride more slowly, while he and they
+watched horsemen coming out from Assouan towards them.
+
+David urged his camel on.  Presently he could distinguish the features of
+the woman riding towards him.  It was Hylda.  His presentiment, his
+instinct had been right.  His heart beat tumultuously, his hand trembled,
+he grew suddenly weak; but he summoned up his will, and ruled himself to
+something like composure.  This, then, was his home-coming from the far
+miseries and trials and battle-fields--to see her face before all others,
+to hear her voice first.  What miracle had brought this thing to pass,
+this beautiful, bitter, forbidden thing?  Forbidden!  Whatever the cause
+of her coming, she must not see what he felt for her.  He must deal
+fairly by her and by Eglington; he must be true to that real self which
+had emerged from the fiery trial in the monastery.  Bronzed as he was,
+his face showed no paleness; but, as he drew near her, it grew pinched
+and wan from the effort at self-control.  He set his lips and rode on,
+until he could see her eyes looking into his--eyes full of that which he
+had never seen in any eyes in all the world.
+
+What had been her feelings during that ride in the desert?  She had not
+meant to go out to meet him.  After she heard that he was coming, her
+desire was to get away from all the rest of the world, and be alone with
+her thoughts.  He was coming, he was safe, and her work was done.  What
+she had set out to do was accomplished--to bring him back, if it was
+God's will, out of the jaws of death, for England's sake, for the world's
+sake, for his sake, for her own sake.  For her own sake?  Yes, yes, in
+spite of all, for her own sake.  Whatever lay before, now, for this one
+hour, for this moment of meeting he should be hers.  But meet him, where?
+Before all the world, with a smile of conventional welcome on her lips,
+with the same hand-clasp that any friend and lover of humanity would give
+him?
+
+The desert air blew on her face, keen, sweet, vibrant, thrilling.  What
+he had heard that night at the monastery, the humming life of the land of
+white fire--the desert, the million looms of all the weavers of the world
+weaving, this she heard in the sunlight, with the sand rising like surf
+behind her horse's heels.  The misery and the tyranny and the unrequited
+love were all behind her, the disillusion and the loss and the undeserved
+insult to her womanhood--all, all were sunk away into the unredeemable
+past.  Here, in Egypt, where she had first felt the stir of life's
+passion and pain and penalty, here, now, she lost herself in a beautiful,
+buoyant dream.  She was riding out to meet the one man of all men, hero,
+crusader, rescuer--ah, that dreadful night in the Palace, and Foorgat's
+face!  But he was coming, who had made her live, to whom she had called,
+to whom her soul had spoken in its grief and misery.  Had she ever done
+aught to shame the best that was in herself--and had she not been sorely
+tempted?  Had she not striven to love Eglington even when the worst was
+come, not alone at her own soul's command, but because she knew that this
+man would have it so?  Broken by her own sorrow, she had left England,
+Eglington--all, to keep her pledge to help him in his hour of need, to
+try and save him to the world, if that might be.  So she had come to
+Nahoum, who was binding him down on the bed of torture and of death.  And
+yet, alas!  not herself had conquered Nahoum, but David, as Nahoum had
+said.  She herself had not done this one thing which would have
+compensated for all that she had suffered.  This had not been permitted;
+but it remained that she had come here to do it, and perhaps he would
+understand when he saw her.
+
+Yes, she knew he would understand!  She flung up her head to the sun and
+the pulse-stirring air, and, as she did so, she saw his cavalcade
+approaching.  She was sure it was he, even when he was far off, by the
+same sure instinct that convinced him.  For an instant she hesitated.
+She would turn back, and meet him with the crowd.  Then she looked
+around.  The desert was deserted by all save herself and himself and
+those who were with him.  No.  Her mind was made up.  She would ride
+forward.  She would be the first to welcome him back to life and the
+world.  He and she would meet alone in the desert.  For one minute they
+would be alone, they two, with the world afar, they two, to meet, to
+greet--and to part.  Out of all that Fate had to give of sorrow and loss,
+this one delectable moment, no matter what came after.
+
+"David!" she cried with beating heart, and rode on, harder and harder.
+
+Now she saw him ride ahead of the others.  Ah, he knew that it was she,
+though he could not see her face!  Nearer and nearer.  Now they looked
+into each other's eyes.
+
+She saw him stop his camel and make it kneel for the dismounting.  She
+stopped her horse also, and slid to the ground, and stood waiting, one
+hand upon the horse's neck.  He hastened forward, then stood still, a few
+feet away, his eyes on hers, his helmet off, his brown hair, brown as
+when she first saw it--peril and hardship had not thinned or greyed it.
+For a moment they stood so, for a moment of revealing and understanding,
+but speechless; and then, suddenly, and with a smile infinitely touching,
+she said, as he had heard her say in the monastery--the very words:
+
+"Speak--speak to me!"
+
+He took her hand in his.  "There is no need--I have said all," he
+answered, happiness and trouble at once in his eyes.  Then his face
+grew calmer.  "Thee has made it worth while living on," he added.
+
+She was gaining control of herself also.  "I said that I would come
+when I was needed," she answered less, tremblingly.
+
+"Thee came alone?" he asked gently.
+
+"From Assouan, yes," she said in a voice still unsteady.  "I was riding
+out to be by myself, and then I saw you coming, and I rode on.  I thought
+I should like to be the first to say: 'Well done,' and 'God bless you!'"
+
+He drew in a long breath, then looked at her keenly.  "Lord Eglington is
+in Egypt also?" he asked.
+
+Her face did not change.  She looked him in the eyes.
+
+"No, Eglington would not come to help you.  I came to Nahoum, as I said
+I would."
+
+"Thee has a good memory," he rejoined simply.  "I am a good friend," she
+answered, then suddenly her face flushed up, her breast panted, her eyes
+shone with a brightness almost intolerable to him, and he said in a low,
+shaking voice:
+
+"It is all fighting, all fighting.  We have done our best; and thee has
+made all possible."
+
+"David!" she said in a voice scarce above a whisper.
+
+"Thee and me have far to go," he said in a voice not louder than her own,
+"but our ways may not be the same."
+
+She understood, and a newer life leaped up in her.  She knew that he
+loved her--that was sufficient; the rest would be easier now.  Sacrifice,
+all, would be easier.  To part, yes, and for evermore; but to know that
+she had been truly loved--who could rob her of that?
+
+"See," she said lightly, "your people are waiting--and there, why, there
+is my cousin Lacey.  Tom, oh, Cousin Tom!" she called eagerly.
+
+Lacey rode down on them.  "I swan, but I'm glad," he said, as he dropped
+from his horse.  "Cousin Hylda, I'm blest if I don't feel as if I could
+sing like Aunt Melissa."
+
+"You may kiss me, Cousin Tom," she said, as she took his hands in hers.
+
+He flushed, was embarrassed, then snatched a kiss from her cheek.  "Say,
+I'm in it, ain't I?  And you were in it first, eh, Cousin Hylda?  The
+rest are nowhere--there they come from Assouan, Kaid, Nahoum, and the
+Nubians.  Look at 'em glisten!"
+
+A hundred of Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour made three sides
+of a quickly moving square, in the centre of which, and a little ahead,
+rode Kaid and Nahoum, while behind the square-in parade and gala dress-
+trooped hundreds of soldiers and Egyptians and natives.
+
+Swiftly the two cavalcades approached each other, the desert ringing with
+the cries of the Bedouins, the Nubians, and the fellaheen.  They met on
+an upland of sand, from which the wide valley of the Nile and its wild
+cataracts could be seen.  As men meet who parted yesterday, Kaid, Nahoum,
+and David met, but Kaid's first quiet words to David had behind them a
+world of meaning:
+
+"I also have come back, Saadat, to whom be the bread that never moulds
+and the water that never stales!" he said, with a look in his face which
+had not been there for many a day.  Superstition had set its mark on him
+--on Claridge Pasha's safety depended his own, that was his belief; and
+the look of this thin, bronzed face, with its living fire, gave him vital
+assurance of length of days.
+
+And David answered: "May thy life be the nursling of Time, Effendina.
+I bring the tribute of the rebel lions once more to thy hand.  What was
+thine, and was lost, is thine once more.  Peace and salaam!"  Between
+Nahoum and David there were no words at first at all.  They shook hands
+like Englishmen, looking into each other's eyes, and with pride of what
+Nahoum, once, in his duplicity, had called "perfect friendship."
+
+Lacey thought of this now as he looked on; and not without a sense of
+irony, he said under his breath, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a
+Christian!"
+
+But in Hylda's look, as it met Nahoum's, there was no doubt--what woman
+doubts the convert whom she thinks she has helped to make?  Meanwhile,
+the Nubians smote their mailed breasts with their swords in honour of
+David and Kaid.
+
+Under the gleaming moon, the exquisite temple of Philae perched on its
+high rock above the river, the fires on the shore, the masts of the
+dahabiehs twinkling with lights, and the barbarous songs floating across
+the water, gave the feeling of past centuries to the scene.  From the
+splendid boat which Kaid had placed at his disposal David looked out upon
+it all, with emotions not yet wholly mastered by the true estimate of
+what this day had brought to him.  With a mind unsettled he listened to
+the natives in the forepart of the boat and on the shore, beating the
+darabukkeh and playing the kemengeh.  Yet it was moving in a mist and on
+a flood of greater happiness than he had ever known.
+
+He did not know as yet that Eglington was gone for ever.  He did not know
+that the winds of time had already swept away all traces of the house of
+ambition which Eglington had sought to build; and that his nimble tongue
+and untrustworthy mind would never more delude and charm, and wanton with
+truth.  He did not know, but within the past hour Hylda knew; and now out
+of the night Soolsby came to tell him.
+
+He was roused from his reverie by Soolsby's voice saying: "Hast nowt to
+say to me, Egyptian?"
+
+It startled him, sounded ghostly in the moonlight; for why should he hear
+Soolsby's voice on the confines of Egypt?  But Soolsby came nearer, and
+stood where the moonlight fell upon him, hat in hand, a rustic modern
+figure in this Oriental world.
+
+David sprang to his feet and grasped the old man by the shoulders.
+"Soolsby, Soolsby," he said, with a strange plaintive-note in his voice,
+yet gladly, too.  "Soolsby, thee is come here to welcome me!  But has
+she not come--Miss Claridge, Soolsby?"
+
+He longed for that true heart which had never failed him, the simple soul
+whose life had been filled by thought and care of him, and whose every
+act had for its background the love of sister for brother--for that was
+their relation in every usual meaning--who, too frail and broken to come
+to him now, waited for him by the old hearthstone.  And so Soolsby, in
+his own way, made him understand; for who knew them both better than this
+old man, who had shared in David's destiny since the fatal day when Lord
+Eglington had married Mercy Claridge in secret, had set in motion a long
+line of tragic happenings?
+
+"Ay, she would have come, she would have come," Soolsby answered, "but
+she was not fit for the journey, and there was little time, my lord."
+
+"Why did thee come, Soolsby?  Only to welcome me back?"
+
+"I come to bring you back to England, to your duty there, my lord."
+
+The first time Soolsby had used the words "my lord," David had scarcely
+noticed it, but its repetition struck him strangely.
+
+"Here, sometimes they call me Pasha and Saadat, but I am not 'my lord,'"
+he said.
+
+"Ay, but you are my lord, Egyptian, as sure as I've kept my word to you
+that I'd drink no more, ay, on my sacred honour.  So you are my lord; you
+are Lord Eglington, my lord."
+
+David stood rigid and almost unblinking as Soolsby told his tale,
+beginning with the story of Eglington's death, and going back all the
+years to the day of Mercy Claridge's marriage.
+
+"And him that never was Lord Eglington, your own father's son, is dead
+and gone, my lord; and you are come into your rights at last."  This was
+the end of the tale.
+
+For a long time David stood looking into the sparkling night before him,
+speechless and unmoving, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent
+forward, as though in a dream.
+
+How, all in an instant, had life changed for him!  How had Soolsby's tale
+of Eglington's death filled him with a pity deeper than he had ever felt-
+the futile, bitter, unaccomplished life, the audacious, brilliant genius
+quenched, a genius got from the same source as his own resistless energy
+and imagination, from the same wild spring.  Gone--all gone, with only
+pity to cover him, unloved, unloving, unbemoaned, save by the Quaker girl
+whose true spirit he had hurt, save by the wife whom he had cruelly
+wronged and tortured; and pity was the thing that moved them both,
+unfathomable and almost maternal, in that sense of motherhood which,
+in spite of love or passion, is behind both, behind all, in every true
+woman's life.
+
+At last David spoke.
+
+"Who knows of all this--of who I am, Soolsby?"
+
+"Lady Eglington and myself, my lord."
+
+"Only she and you?"
+
+"Only us two, Egyptian."
+
+"Then let it be so--for ever."
+
+Soolsby was startled, dumfounded.
+
+"But you will take your title and estates, my lord; you will take the
+place which is your own."
+
+"And prove my grandfather wrong?  Had he not enough sorrow?  And change
+my life, all to please thee, Soolsby?"
+
+He took the old man's shoulders in his hands again.  "Thee has done thy
+duty as few in this world, Soolsby, and given friendship such as few
+give.  But thee must be content.  I am David Claridge, and so shall
+remain ever."
+
+"Then, since he has no male kin, the title dies, and all that's his will
+go to her ladyship," Soolsby rejoined sourly.
+
+"Does thee grudge her ladyship what was his?"
+
+"I grudge her what is yours, my lord--"
+
+Suddenly Soolsby paused, as though a new thought had come to him, and he
+nodded to himself in satisfaction.  "Well, since you will have it so, it
+will be so, Egyptian; but it is a queer fuddle, all of it; and where's
+the way out, tell me that, my lord?"
+
+David spoke impatiently.  "Call me 'my lord' no more.  .  .  .  But I
+will go back to England to her that's waiting at the Red Mansion, and you
+will remember, Soolsby--"
+
+Slowly the great flotilla of dahabiehs floated with the strong current
+down towards Cairo, the great sails swelling to the breeze that blew from
+the Libyan Hills.  Along the bank of the Nile thousands of Arabs and
+fellaheen crowded to welcome "the Saadat," bringing gifts of dates and
+eggs and fowls and dourha and sweetmeats, and linen cloth; and even in
+the darkness and in the trouble that was on her, and the harrowing regret
+that she had not been with Eglington in his last hour--she little knew
+what Eglington had said to Faith in that last hour--Hylda's heart was
+soothed by the long, loud tribute paid to David.
+
+As she sat in the evening light, David and Lacey came, and were received
+by the Duchess of Snowdon, who could only say to David, as she held his
+hand, "Windlehurst sent his regards to you, his loving regards.  He was
+sure you would come home--come home.  He wished he were in power for your
+sake."
+
+So, for a few moments she talked vaguely, and said at last: "But Lady
+Eglington, she will be glad to see you, such old friends as you are,
+though not so old as Windlehurst and me--thirty years, over thirty la,
+la!"
+
+They turned to go to Hylda, and came face to face with Kate Heaver.
+
+Kate looked at David as one would look who saw a lost friend return from
+the dead.  His eyes lighted, he held out his hand to her.
+
+"It is good to see thee here," he said gently.  "And 'tis the cross-roads
+once again, sir," she rejoined.
+
+"Thee means thee will marry Jasper?"
+
+"Ay, I will marry Jasper now," she answered.  "It has been a long
+waiting."
+
+"It could not be till now," she responded.
+
+David looked at her reflectively, and said: "By devious ways the human
+heart comes home.  One can only stand in the door and wait.  He has been
+patient."
+
+"I have been patient, too," she answered.
+
+As the Duchess disappeared with David, a swift change came over Lacey.
+He spun round on one toe, and, like a boy of ten, careered around the
+deck to the tune of a negro song.
+
+"Say, things are all right in there with them two, and it's my turn now,"
+he said.  "Cute as she can be, and knows the game!  Twice a widow, and
+knows the game!  Waiting, she is down in Cairo, where the orange blossom
+blows.  I'm in it; we're all in it--every one of us.  Cousin Hylda's free
+now, and I've got no past worth speaking of; and, anyhow, she'll
+understand, down there in Cairo.  Cute as she can be--"
+
+Suddenly he swung himself down to the deck below.  "The desert's the
+place for me to-night," he said.  Stepping ashore, he turned to where the
+Duchess stood on the deck, gazing out into the night.  "Well, give my
+love to the girls," he called, waving a hand upwards, as it were to the
+wide world, and disappeared into the alluring whiteness.
+
+"I've got to get a key-thought," he muttered to himself, as he walked
+swiftly on, till only faint sounds came to him from the riverside.  In
+the letter he had written to Hylda, which was the turning-point of all
+for her, he had spoken of these "key-thoughts."  With all the
+childishness he showed at times, he had wisely felt his way into spheres
+where life had depth and meaning.  The desert had justified him to
+himself and before the spirits of departed peoples, who wandered over the
+sands, until at last they became sand also, and were blown hither and
+thither, to make beds for thousands of desert wayfarers, or paths for
+camels' feet, or a blinding storm to overwhelm the traveller and the
+caravan; Life giving and taking, and absorbing and destroying, and
+destroying and absorbing, till the circle of human existence wheel
+to the full, and the task of Time be accomplished.
+
+On the gorse-grown common above Hamley, David and Faith, and David's
+mother Mercy, had felt the same soul of things stirring--in the green
+things of green England, in the arid wastes of the Libyan desert, on the
+bosom of the Nile, where Mahommed Hassan now lay in a nugger singing a
+song of passion, Nature, with burning voice, murmuring down the unquiet
+world its message of the Final Peace through the innumerable years.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+Aiwa----Yes.
+Allah hu Achbar----God is most Great.
+Al'mah----Female professional singers, signifying "a learned female."
+Ardab----A measure equivalent to five English bushels.
+
+Backsheesh----Tip, douceur.
+Balass----Earthen vessel for carrying water.
+Bdsha----Pasha.
+Bersim----Clover.
+Bismillah----In the name of God.
+Bowdb----A doorkeeper.
+
+Dahabieh----A Nile houseboat with large lateen sails.
+Darabukkeh----A drum made of a skin stretched over an earthenware funnel.
+Dourha----Maize.
+
+Effendina----Most noble.
+El Azhar----The Arab University at Cairo.
+
+Fedddn----A measure of land representing about an acre.
+Fellah----The Egyptian peasant.
+
+Ghiassa----Small boat.
+
+Hakim----Doctor.
+Hasheesh----Leaves of hemp.
+
+Inshallah----God willing.
+
+Kdnoon----A musical instrument like a dulcimer.
+Kavass----An orderly.
+Kemengeh----A cocoanut fiddle.
+Khamsin----A hot wind of Egypt and the Soudan.
+
+Kourbash----A whip, often made of rhinoceros hide.
+
+La ilaha illa-llah----There is no deity but God.
+
+Malaish----No matter.
+Malboos----Demented.
+Mastaba----A bench.
+Medjidie----A Turkish Order.
+Mooshrabieh----Lattice window.
+Moufettish----High Steward.
+Mudir----The Governor of a
+Mudirieh, or province.
+Muezzin----The sheikh of the mosque who calls to prayer.
+
+Narghileh----A Persian pipe.
+Nebool----A quarter-staff.
+
+Ramadan----The Mahommedan season of fasting.
+
+Saadat-el-bdsha----Excellency Pasha.
+Sdis----Groom.
+Sakkia----The Persian water-wheel.
+Salaam----Eastern salutation.
+Sheikh-el-beled----Head of a village.
+
+Tarboosh----A Turkish turban.
+
+Ulema----Learned men.
+
+Wakf----Mahommedan Court dealing with succession, etc.
+Welee----A holy man or saint.
+
+Yashmak----A veil for the lower part of the face.
+Yelek----A long vest or smock.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEAVERS BY PARKER, V6 ***
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