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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Weavers, by Gilbert Parker, v4
+#91 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+
+Title: The Weavers, Volume 4.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6264]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 14, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEAVERS, BY PARKER, V4 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+XXVIII.   NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
+XXIX.     THE RECOIL
+XXX.      LACEY MOVES
+XXXI.     THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
+XXXII.    FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
+XXXIII.   THE DARK INDENTURE
+XXXIV.    NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
+
+Laughing to himself, Higli Pasha sat with the stem of a narghileh in his
+mouth.  His big shoulders kept time to the quivering of his fat stomach.
+He was sitting in a small court-yard of Nahoum Pasha's palace, waiting
+for its owner to appear.  Meanwhile he exercised a hilarious patience.
+The years had changed him little since he had been sent on that
+expedition against the southern tribes which followed hard on David's
+appointment to office.  As David had expected, few of the traitorous
+officers returned.  Diaz had ignominiously died of the bite of a
+tarantula before a blow had been struck, but Higli had gratefully
+received a slight wound in the first encounter, which enabled him to beat
+a safe retreat to Cairo.  He alone of the chief of the old conspirators
+was left.  Achmet was still at the Place of Lepers, and the old nest of
+traitors was scattered for ever.
+
+Only Nahoum and Higli were left, and between these two there had never
+been partnership or understanding.  Nahoum was not the man to trust to
+confederates, and Higli Pasha was too contemptible a coadjutor.  Nahoum
+had faith in no one save Mizraim the Chief Eunuch, but Mizraim alone was
+better than a thousand; and he was secret--and terrible.  Yet Higli had a
+conviction that Nahoum's alliance with David was a sham, and that David
+would pay the price of misplaced confidence one day.  More than once when
+David's plans had had a set-back, Higli had contrived a meeting with
+Nahoum, to judge for himself the true position.
+
+For his visit to-day he had invented a reason--a matter of finance; but
+his real reason was concealed behind the malevolent merriment by which he
+was now seized.  So absorbed was he that he did not heed the approach of
+another visitor down an angle of the court-yard.  He was roused by a
+voice.
+
+"Well, what's tickling you so, pasha?"
+
+The voice was drawling, and quite gentle; but at the sound of it, Higli's
+laugh stopped short, and the muscles of his face contracted.  If there
+was one man of whom he had a wholesome fear--why, he could not tell--it
+was this round-faced, abrupt, imperturbable American, Claridge Pasha's
+right-hand man.  Legends of resourcefulness and bravery had gathered
+round his name.  "Who's been stroking your chin with a feather, pasha?"
+he continued, his eye piercing the other like a gimlet.
+
+"It was an amusing tale I heard at Assiout, effendi," was Higli's abashed
+and surly reply.
+
+"Oh, at Assiout!" rejoined Lacey.  "Yes, they tell funny stories at
+Assiout.  And when were you at Assiout, pasha?"
+
+"Two days ago, effendi."
+
+"And so you thought you'd tell the funny little story to Nahoum as quick
+as could be, eh?  He likes funny stories, same as you--damn, nice, funny
+little stories, eh?"
+
+There was something chilly in Lacey's voice now, which Higli did not
+like; something much too menacing and contemptuous for a mere man-of-all-
+work to the Inglesi.  Higli bridled up, his eyes glared sulkily.
+
+"It is but my own business if I laugh or if I curse, effendi," he
+replied, his hand shaking a little on the stem of the narghileh.
+
+"Precisely, my diaphanous polyandrist; but it isn't quite your own affair
+what you laugh at--not if I know it!"
+
+"Does the effendi think I was laughing at him?"
+
+"The effendi thinks not.  The effendi knows that the descendant of a
+hundred tigers was laughing at the funny little story, of how the two
+cotton-mills that Claridge Pasha built were burned down all in one night,
+and one of his steamers sent down the cataract at Assouan.  A knock-down
+blow for Claridge Pasha, eh?  That's all you thought of, wasn't it?  And
+it doesn't matter to you that the cotton-mills made thousands better off,
+and started new industries in Egypt.  No, it only matters to you that
+Claridge Pasha loses half his fortune, and that you think his feet are
+in the quicksands, and 'll be sucked in, to make an Egyptian holiday.
+Anything to discredit him here, eh?  I'm not sure what else you know; but
+I'll find out, my noble pasha, and if you've had your hand in it--but no,
+you ain't game-cock enough for that!  But if you were, if you had a hand
+in the making of your funny little story, there's a nutcracker that 'd
+break the shell of that joke--"
+
+He turned round quickly, seeing a shadow and hearing a movement.  Nahoum
+was but a few feet away.  There was a bland smile on his face, a look of
+innocence in his magnificent blue eye.  As he met Lacey's look, the smile
+left his lips, a grave sympathy appeared to possess them, and he spoke
+softly:
+
+"I know the thing that burns thy heart, effendi, to whom be the flowers
+of hope and the fruits of merit.  It is even so, a great blow has fallen.
+Two hours since I heard.  I went at once to see Claridge Pasha, but found
+him not.  Does he know, think you?" he added sadly.
+
+"May your heart never be harder than it is, pasha, and when I left the
+Saadat an hour ago, he did not know.  His messenger hadn't a steamer like
+Higli Pasha there.  But he was coming to see you; and that's why I'm
+here.  I've been brushing the flies off this sore on the hump of Egypt
+while waiting."  He glanced with disdain at Higli.
+
+A smile rose like liquid in the eye of Nahoum and subsided, then he
+turned to Higli inquiringly.
+
+"I have come on business, Excellency; the railway to Rosetta, and--"
+
+"To-morrow--or the next day," responded Nahoum irritably, and turned
+again to Lacey.
+
+As Higli's huge frame disappeared through a gateway, Nahoum motioned
+Lacey to a divan, and summoned a slave for cooling drinks.  Lacey's eyes
+now watched him with an innocence nearly as childlike as his own.  Lacey
+well knew that here was a foe worthy of the best steel.  That he was a
+foe, and a malignant foe, he had no doubt whatever; he had settled the
+point in his mind long ago; and two letters he had received from Lady
+Eglington, in which she had said in so many words, "Watch Nahoum!" had
+made him vigilant and intuitive.  He knew, meanwhile, that he was
+following the trail of a master-hunter who covered up his tracks.  Lacey
+was as certain as though he had the book of Nahoum's mind open in his
+hand, that David's work had been torn down again--and this time with dire
+effect--by this Armenian, whom David trusted like a brother.  But the
+black doors that closed on the truth on every side only made him more
+determined to unlock them; and, when he faltered as to his own powers,
+he trusted Mahommed Hassan, whose devotion to David had given him eyes
+that pierced dark places.
+
+"Surely the God of Israel has smitten Claridge Pasha sorely.  My heart
+will mourn to look upon his face.  The day is insulting in its
+brightness," continued Nahoum with a sigh, his eyes bent upon Lacey,
+dejection in his shoulders.
+
+Lacey started.  "The God of Israel!"  How blasphemous it sounded from the
+lips of Nahoum, Oriental of Orientals, Christian though he was also!
+
+"I think, perhaps, you'll get over it, pasha.  Man is born to trouble,
+and you've got a lot of courage.  I guess you could see other people bear
+a pile of suffering, and never flinch."
+
+Nahoum appeared not to notice the gibe.  "It is a land of suffering,
+effendi," he sighed, "and one sees what one sees."
+
+"Have you any idea, any real sensible idea, how those cotton-mills got
+afire?"  Lacey's eyes were fixed on Nahoum's face.
+
+The other met his gaze calmly.  "Who can tell!  An accident, perhaps,
+or--"
+
+"Or some one set the mills on fire in several places at once--they say
+the buildings flamed out in every corner; and it was the only time in a
+month they hadn't been running night and day.  Funny, isn't it?"
+
+"It looks like the work of an enemy, effendi."  Nahoum shook his head
+gravely.  "A fortune destroyed in an hour, as it were.  But we shall get
+the dog.  We shall find him.  There is no hole deep enough to hide him
+from us."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't go looking in holes for him, pasha.
+
+"He isn't any cave-dweller, that incendiary; he's an artist--no palace is
+too unlikely for him.  No, I wouldn't go poking in mud-huts to find him."
+
+"Thou dost not think that Higli Pasha--" Nahoum seemed startled out of
+equanimity by the thought.  Lacey eyed him meditatively, and said
+reflectively: "Say, you're an artist, pasha.  You are a guesser of the
+first rank.  But I'd guess again.  Higli Pasha would have done it, if it
+had ever occurred to him; and he'd had the pluck.  But it didn't, and he
+hadn't.  What I can't understand is that the artist that did it should
+have done it before Claridge Pasha left for the Soudan.  Here we were
+just about to start; and if we'd got away south, the job would have done
+more harm, and the Saadat would have been out of the way.  No, I can't
+understand why the firebug didn't let us get clean away; for if the
+Saadat stays here, he'll be where he can stop the underground mining."
+
+Nahoum's self-control did not desert him, though he fully realised that
+this man suspected him.  On the surface Lacey was right.  It would have
+seemed better to let David go, and destroy his work afterwards, but he
+had been moved by other considerations, and his design was deep.  His
+own emissaries were in the Soudan, announcing David's determination to
+abolish slavery, secretly stirring up feeling against him, preparing for
+the final blow to be delivered, when he went again among the southern
+tribes.  He had waited and waited, and now the time was come.  Had he,
+Nahoum, not agreed with David that the time had come for the slave-trade
+to go?  Had he not encouraged him to take this bold step, in the sure
+belief that it would overwhelm him, and bring him an ignominious death,
+embittered by total failure of all he had tried to do?
+
+For years he had secretly loosened the foundations of David's work, and
+the triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation and integrity
+was sweet in his mouth.  And now there was reason to believe that, at
+last, Kaid was turning against the Inglesi.  Everything would come at
+once.  If all that he had planned was successful, even this man before
+him should aid in his master's destruction.
+
+"If it was all done by an enemy," he said, in answer to Lacey, at last,
+"would it all be reasoned out like that?  Is hatred so logical?  Dost
+thou think Claridge Pasha will not go now?  The troops are ready at Wady-
+Halfa, everything is in order; the last load of equipment has gone.  Will
+not Claridge Pasha find the money somehow?  I will do what I can.  My
+heart is moved to aid him."
+
+"Yes, you'd do what you could, pasha," Lacey rejoined enigmatically, "but
+whether it would set the Saadat on his expedition or not is a question.
+But I guess, after all, he's got to go.  He willed it so.  People may try
+to stop him, and they may tear down what he does, but he does at last
+what he starts to do, and no one can prevent him--not any one.  Yes, he's
+going on this expedition; and he'll have the money, too."  There was a
+strange, abstracted look in his face, as though he saw something which
+held him fascinated.
+
+Presently, as if with an effort, he rose to his feet, took the red fez
+from his head, and fanned himself with it for a moment.  "Don't you
+forget it, pasha; the Saadat will win.  He can't be beaten, not in a
+thousand years.  Here he comes."
+
+Nahoum got to his feet, as David came quickly through the small gateway
+of the court-yard, his head erect, his lips smiling, his eyes sweeping
+the place.  He came forward briskly to them.  It was plain he had not
+heard the evil news.
+
+"Peace be to thee, Saadat, and may thy life be fenced about with safety!"
+said Nahoum.
+
+David laid a hand on Lacey's arm and squeezed it, smiling at him with
+such friendship that Lacey's eyes moistened, and he turned his head away.
+
+There was a quiet elation in David's look.  "We are ready at last," he
+said, looking from one to the other.  "Well, well," he added, almost
+boyishly, "has thee nothing to say, Nahoum?"
+
+Nahoum turned his head away as though overcome.  David's face grew
+instantly grave.  He turned to Lacey.  Never before had he seen Lacey's
+face with a look like this.  He grasped Lacey's arm.  "What is it?" he
+asked quietly.  "What does thee want to say to me?"
+
+But Lacey could not speak, and David turned again to Nahoum.  "What is
+there to say to me?" he asked.  "Something has happened--what is it?
+.  .  .  Come, many things have happened before.  This can be no worse.
+Do thee speak," he urged gently.
+
+"Saadat," said Nahoum, as though under the stress of feeling, "the
+cotton-mills at Tashah and Mini are gone--burned to the ground."
+
+For a moment David looked at him without sight in his eyes, and his face
+grew very pale.  "Excellency, all in one night, the besom of destruction
+was abroad," he heard Nahoum say, as though from great depths below him.
+He slowly turned his head to look at Lacey.  "Is this true?" he asked at
+last in an unsteady voice.  Lacey could not speak, but inclined his head.
+
+David's figure seemed to shrink for a moment, his face had a withered
+look, and his head fell forward in a mood of terrible dejection.
+
+"Saadat!  Oh, my God, Saadat, don't take it so!" said Lacey brokenly,
+and stepped between David and Nahoum.  He could not bear that the
+stricken face and figure should be seen by Nahoum, whom he believed to be
+secretly gloating.  "Saadat," he said brokenly, "God has always been with
+you; He hasn't forgotten you now.
+
+"The work of years," David murmured, and seemed not to hear.
+
+"When God permits, shall man despair?" interposed Nahoum, in a voice
+that lingered on the words.  Nahoum accomplished what Lacey had failed to
+do.  His voice had pierced to some remote corner in David's nature, and
+roused him.  Was it that doubt, suspicion, had been wakened at last?  Was
+some sensitive nerve touched, that this Oriental should offer Christian
+comfort to him in his need--to him who had seen the greater light?  Or
+was it that some unreality in the words struck a note which excited a new
+and subconscious understanding?  Perhaps it was a little of all three.
+He did not stop to inquire.  In crises such as that through which he was
+passing, the mind and body act without reason, rather by the primal
+instinct, the certain call of the things that were before reason was.
+
+"God is with the patient," continued Nahoum; and Lacey set his teeth to
+bear this insult to all things.  But Nahoum accomplished what he had not
+anticipated.  David straightened himself up, and clasped his hands behind
+him.  By a supreme effort of the will he controlled himself, and the
+colour came back faintly to his face.  "God's will be done," he said,
+and looked Nahoum calmly in the eyes.  "It was no accident," he added
+with conviction.  "It was an enemy of Egypt."  Suddenly the thing rushed
+over him again, going through his veins like a poisonous ether, and
+clamping his heart as with iron.  "All to do over again!" he said
+brokenly, and again he caught Lacey's arm.
+
+With an uncontrollable impulse Lacey took David's hand in his own warm,
+human grasp.
+
+"Once I thought I lost everything in Mexico, Saadat, and I understand
+what you feel.  But all wasn't lost in Mexico, as I found at last, and I
+got something, too, that I didn't put in.  Say, let us go from here.  God
+is backing you, Saadat.  Isn't it all right--same as ever?"
+
+David was himself again.  "Thee is a good man," he said, and through the
+sadness of his eyes there stole a smile.  "Let us go," he said.  Then he
+added in a businesslike way: "To-morrow at seven, Nahoum.  There is much
+to do."
+
+He turned towards the gate with Lacey, where the horses waited.  Mahommed
+Hassan met them as they prepared to mount.  He handed David a letter.
+It was from Faith, and contained the news of Luke Claridge's death.
+Everything had come at once.  He stumbled into the saddle with a moan.
+
+"At last I have drawn blood," said Nahoum to himself with grim
+satisfaction, as they disappeared.  "It is the beginning of the end.
+It will crush him-I saw it in his eyes.  God of Israel, I shall rule
+again in Egypt!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RECOIL
+
+It was a great day in the Muslim year.  The Mahmal, or Sacred Carpet,
+was leaving Cairo on its long pilgrimage of thirty-seven days to Mecca
+and Mahomet's tomb.  Great guns boomed from the Citadel, as the gorgeous
+procession, forming itself beneath the Mokattam Hills, began its slow
+march to where, seated in the shade of an ornate pavilion, Prince Kaid
+awaited its approach to pay devout homage.  Thousands looked down at the
+scene from the ramparts of the Citadel, from the overhanging cliffs, and
+from the tops of the houses that hung on the ledges of rock rising
+abruptly from the level ground, to which the last of the famed Mamelukes
+leaped to their destruction.
+
+Now to Prince Kaid's ears there came from hundreds of hoarse throats the
+cry: "Allah!  Allah!  May thy journey be with safety to Arafat!"
+mingling with the harsh music of the fifes and drums.
+
+Kaid looked upon the scene with drawn face and lowering brows.  His
+retinue watched him with alarm.  A whisper had passed that, two nights
+before, the Effendina had sent in haste for a famous Italian physician
+lately come to Cairo, and that since his visit Kaid had been sullen and
+depressed.  It was also the gossip of the bazaars that he had suddenly
+shown favour to those of the Royal House and to other reactionaries,
+who had been enemies to the influence of Claridge Pasha.
+
+This rumour had been followed by an official proclamation that no
+Europeans or Christians would be admitted to the ceremony of the Sacred
+Carpet.
+
+Thus it was that Kaid looked out on a vast multitude of Muslims, in which
+not one European face showed, and from lip to lip there passed the word,
+"Harrik--Harrik--remember Harrik!  Kaid turns from the infidel!"
+
+They crowded near the great pavilion--as near as the mounted Nubians
+would permit--to see Kaid's face; while he, with eyes wandering over the
+vast assemblage, was lost in dark reflections.  For a year he had
+struggled against a growing conviction that some obscure disease was
+sapping his strength.  He had hid it from every one, until, at last,
+distress and pain had overcome him.  The verdict of the Italian expert
+was that possible, but by no means certain, cure might come from an
+operation which must be delayed for a month or more.
+
+Suddenly, the world had grown unfamiliar to him; he saw it from afar; but
+his subconscious self involuntarily registered impressions, and he moved
+mechanically through the ceremonies and duties of the immediate present.
+Thrown back upon himself, to fight his own fight, with the instinct of
+primary life his mind involuntarily drew for refuge to the habits and
+predispositions of youth; and for two days he had shut himself away from
+the activities with which David and Nahoum were associated.  Being deeply
+engaged with the details of the expedition to the Soudan, David had not
+gone to the Palace; and he was unaware of the turn which things had
+taken.
+
+Three times, with slow and stately steps, the procession wound in a
+circle in the great square, before it approached the pavilion where the
+Effendina sat, the splendid camels carrying the embroidered tent wherein
+the Carpet rested, and that which bore the Emir of the pilgrims, moving
+gracefully like ships at sea.  Naked swordsmen, with upright and shining
+blades, were followed by men on camels bearing kettle-drums.  After them
+came Arab riders with fresh green branches fastened to the saddles like
+plumes, while others carried flags and banners emblazoned with texts and
+symbols.  Troops of horsemen in white woollen cloaks, sheikhs and
+Bedouins with flowing robes and huge turbans, religious chiefs of the
+great sects, imperturbable and statuesque, were in strange contrast to
+the shouting dervishes and camel-drivers and eager pilgrims.
+
+At last the great camel with its sacred burden stopped in front of Kaid
+for his prayer and blessing.  As he held the tassels, lifted the gold-
+fringed curtain, and invoked Allah's blessing, a half-naked sheikh ran
+forward, and, raising his hand high above his head, cried shrilly:
+"Kaid, Kaid, hearken!"
+
+Rough hands caught him away, but Kaid commanded them to desist; and the
+man called a blessing on him; and cried aloud:
+
+"Listen, O Kaid, son of the stars and the light of day.  God hath exalted
+thee.  Thou art the Egyptian of all the Egyptians.  In thy hand is power.
+But thou art mortal even as I.  Behold, O Kaid, in the hour that I was
+born thou wast born, I in the dust without thy Palace wall, thou amid the
+splendid things.  But thy star is my star.  Behold, as God ordains, the
+Tree of Life was shaken on the night when all men pray and cry aloud to
+God--even the Night of the Falling Leaves.  And I watched the falling
+leaves; and I saw my leaf, and it was withered, but only a little
+withered, and so I live yet a little.  But I looked for thy leaf, thou
+who wert born in that moment when I waked to the world.  I looked long,
+but I found no leaf, neither green nor withered.  But I looked again upon
+my leaf, and then I saw that thy name now was also upon my leaf, and that
+it was neither green nor withered; but was a leaf that drooped as when an
+evil wind has passed and drunk its life.  Listen, O Kaid!  Upon the tomb
+of Mahomet I will set my lips, and it may be that the leaf of my life
+will come fresh and green again.  But thou--wilt thou not come also to
+the lord Mahomet's tomb?  Or"--he paused and raised his voice--"or wilt
+thou stay and lay thy lips upon the cross of the infidel?  Wilt thou--"
+
+He could say no more, for Kaid's face now darkened with anger.  He made a
+gesture, and, in an instant, the man was gagged and bound, while a sullen
+silence fell upon the crowd.  Kaid suddenly became aware of this change
+of feeling, and looked round him.  Presently his old prudence and
+subtlety came back, his face cleared a little, and he called aloud,
+"Unloose the man, and let him come to me."  An instant after, the man
+was on his knees, silent before him.
+
+"What is thy name?" Kaid asked.
+
+"Kaid Ibrahim, Effendina," was the reply.
+
+"Thou hast misinterpreted thy dream, Kaid Ibrahim," answered the
+Effendina.  "The drooping leaf was token of the danger in which thy life
+should be, and my name upon thy leaf was token that I should save thee
+from death.  Behold, I save thee.  Inshallah, go in peace!  There is no
+God but God, and the Cross is the sign of a false prophet.  Thou art mad.
+God give thee a new mind.  Go."
+
+The man was presently lost in the sweltering, half-frenzied crowd; but he
+had done his work, and his words rang in the ears of Kaid as he rode
+away.
+
+A few hours afterwards, bitter and rebellious, murmuring to himself, Kaid
+sat in a darkened room of his Nile Palace beyond the city.  So few years
+on the throne, so young, so much on which to lay the hand of pleasure, so
+many millions to command; and yet the slave at his door had a surer hold
+on life and all its joys and lures than he, Prince Kaid, ruler of Egypt!
+There was on him that barbaric despair which has taken dreadful toll of
+life for the decree of destiny.  Across the record of this day, as across
+the history of many an Eastern and pagan tyrant, was written: "He would
+not die alone."  That the world should go on when he was gone, that men
+should buy and sell and laugh and drink, and flaunt it in the sun, while
+he, Prince Kaid, would be done with it all.
+
+He was roused by the rustling of a robe.  Before him stood the Arab
+physician, Sharif Bey, who had been in his father's house and his own
+for a lifetime.  It was many a year since his ministrations to Kaid had
+ceased; but he had remained on in the Palace, doing service to those who
+received him, and--it was said by the evil-tongued--granting certificates
+of death out of harmony with dark facts, a sinister and useful figure.
+His beard was white, his face was friendly, almost benevolent, but his
+eyes had a light caught from no celestial flame.
+
+His look was confident now, as his eyes bent on Kaid.  He had lived long,
+he had seen much, he had heard of the peril that had been foreshadowed by
+the infidel physician; and, by a sure instinct, he knew that his own
+opportunity had come.  He knew that Kaid would snatch at any offered
+comfort, would cherish any alleviating lie, would steal back from
+science and civilisation and the modern palace to the superstition of the
+fellah's hut.  Were not all men alike when the neboot of Fate struck them
+down into the terrible loneliness of doom, numbing their minds?  Luck
+would be with him that offered first succour in that dark hour.  Sharif
+had come at the right moment for Sharif.
+
+Kaid looked at him with dull yet anxious eyes.  "Did I not command that
+none should enter?" he asked presently in a thick voice.
+
+"Am I not thy physician, Effendina, to whom be the undying years?  When
+the Effendina is sick, shall I not heal?  Have I not waited like a dog at
+thy door these many years, till that time would come when none could heal
+thee save Sharif?"
+
+"What canst thou give me?"
+
+"What the infidel physician gave thee not--I can give thee hope.  Hast
+thou done well, oh, Effendina, to turn from thine own people?  Did not
+thine own father, and did not Mehemet Ali, live to a good age?  Who were
+their physicians?  My father and I, and my father's father, and his
+father's father."
+
+"Thou canst cure me altogether?" asked Kaid hesitatingly.
+
+"Wilt thou not have faith in one of thine own race?  Will the infidel
+love thee as do we, who are thy children and thy brothers, who are to
+thee as a nail driven in the wall, not to be moved?  Thou shalt live--
+Inshallah, thou shalt have healing and length of days!"
+
+He paused at a gesture from Kaid, for a slave had entered and stood
+waiting.
+
+"What dost thou here?  Wert thou not commanded?" asked Kaid.
+
+"Effendina, Claridge Pasha is waiting," was the reply.
+
+Kaid frowned, hesitated; then, with a sudden resolve, made a gesture of
+dismissal to Sharif Bey, and nodded David's admittance to the slave.
+
+As David entered, he passed Sharif Bey, and something in the look on
+the Arab physician's face--a secret malignancy and triumph--struck him
+strangely.  And now a fresh anxiety and apprehension rose in his mind as
+he glanced at Kaid.  The eye was heavy and gloomy, the face was clouded,
+the lips once so ready to smile at him were sullen and smileless now.
+David stood still, waiting.
+
+"I did not expect thee till to-morrow, Saadat," said Kaid moodily at
+last.
+
+"The business is urgent?"  "Effendina," said David, with every nerve at
+tension, yet with outward self-control, "I have to report--" He paused,
+agitated; then, in a firm voice, he told of the disaster which had
+befallen the cotton-mills and the steamer.
+
+As David spoke, Kaid's face grew darker, his fingers fumbled vaguely with
+the linen of the loose white robe he wore.  When the tale was finished he
+sat for a moment apparently stunned by the news, then he burst out
+fiercely:
+
+"Bismillah, am I to hear only black words to-day?  Hast thou naught to
+say but this--the fortune of Egypt burned to ashes!"
+
+David held back the quick retort that came to his tongue.
+
+"Half my fortune is in the ashes," he answered with dignity.  "The rest
+came from savings never made before by this Government.  Is the work less
+worthy in thy sight, Effendina, because it has been destroyed?  Would thy
+life be less great and useful because a blow took thee from behind?"
+
+Kaid's face turned black.  David had bruised an open wound.
+
+"What is my life to thee--what is thy work to me?"
+
+"Thy life is dear to Egypt, Effendina," urged David soothingly, "and my
+labour for Egypt has been pleasant in thine eyes till now."
+
+"Egypt cannot be saved against her will," was the moody response.  "What
+has come of the Western hand upon the Eastern plough?"  His face grew
+blacker; his heart was feeding on itself.
+
+"Thou, the friend of Egypt, hast come of it, Effendina."
+
+"Harrik was right, Harrik was right," Kaid answered, with stubborn gloom
+and anger.  "Better to die in our own way, if we must die, than live in
+the way of another.  Thou wouldst make of Egypt another England; thou
+wouldst civilise the Soudan--bismillah, it is folly!"
+
+"That is not the way Mehemet Ali thought, nor Ibrahim.  Nor dost thou
+think so, Effendina," David answered gravely.  "A dark spirit is on thee.
+Wouldst thou have me understand that what we have done together, thou and
+I, was ill done, that the old bad days were better?"
+
+"Go back to thine own land," was the surly answer.  "Nation after nation
+ravaged Egypt, sowed their legions here, but the Egyptian has lived them
+down.  The faces of the fellaheen are the faces of Thotmes and Seti.  Go
+back.  Egypt will travel her own path.  We are of the East; we are
+Muslim.  What is right to you is wrong to us.  Ye would make us over--
+give us cotton beds and wooden floors and fine flour of the mill, and
+cleanse the cholera-hut with disinfectants, but are these things all?
+How many of your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ?
+Yet all Egypt would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the
+mud-hut, and would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as Harrik
+knew, as Harrik knew!  Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the
+curtains of your beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds us
+--in the street, in the market-place, where the house is building, the
+horse being shod, or the money-changers are.  Ye hear the call of
+civilisation, but we heap the Muezzin--"
+
+He stopped, and searched mechanically for his watch.  "It is the hour the
+Muezzin calls," said David gently.  "It is almost sunset.  Shall I open
+the windows that the call may come to us?" he added.
+
+While Kaid stared at him, his breast heaving with passion, David went to
+a window and opened the shutters wide.
+
+The Palace faced the Nile, which showed like a tortuous band of blue and
+silver a mile or so away.  Nothing lay between but the brown sand, and
+here and there a handful of dark figures gliding towards the river, or a
+little train of camels making for the bare grey hills from the ghiassas
+which had given them their desert loads.  The course of the Nile was
+marked by a wide fringe of palms showing blue and purple, friendly and
+ancient and solitary.  Beyond the river and the palms lay the grey-brown
+desert, faintly touched with red.  So clear was the sweet evening air
+that the irregular surface of the desert showed for a score of miles as
+plainly as though it were but a step away.  Hummocks of sand--tombs and
+fallen monuments gave a feeling as of forgotten and buried peoples; and
+the two vast pyramids of Sakkarah stood up in the plaintive glow of the
+evening skies, majestic and solemn, faithful to the dissolved and
+absorbed races who had built them.  Curtains of mauve and saffron-red
+were hung behind them, and through a break of cloud fringing the horizon
+a yellow glow poured, to touch the tips of the pyramids with poignant
+splendour.  But farther over to the right, where Cairo lay, there hung a
+bluish mist, palpable and delicate, out of which emerged the vast
+pyramids of Cheops; and beside it the smiling inscrutable Sphinx faced
+the changeless centuries.  Beyond the pyramids the mist deepened into a
+vast deep cloud of blue and purple, which seemed the end to some mystic
+highway untravelled by the sons of men.
+
+Suddenly there swept over David a wave of feeling such as had passed over
+Kaid, though of a different nature.  Those who had built the pyramids
+were gone, Cheops and Thotmes and Amenhotep and Chefron and the rest.
+There had been reformers in those lost races; one age had sought to
+better the last, one man had toiled to save--yet there only remained
+offensive bundles of mummied flesh and bone and a handful of relics in
+tombs fifty centuries old.  Was it all, then, futile?  Did it matter,
+then, whether one man laboured or a race aspired?
+
+Only for a moment these thoughts passed through his mind; and then, as
+the glow through the broken cloud on the opposite horizon suddenly faded,
+and veils of melancholy fell over the desert and the river and the palms,
+there rose a call, sweetly shrill, undoubtingly insistent.  Sunset had
+come, and, with it, the Muezzin's call to prayer from the minaret of a
+mosque hard by.
+
+David was conscious of a movement behind him--that Kaid was praying with
+hands uplifted; and out on the sands between the window and the river he
+saw kneeling figures here and there, saw the camel-drivers halt their
+trains, and face the East with hands uplifted.  The call went on--"La
+ilaha illa-llah !"
+
+It called David, too.  The force and searching energy and fire in it
+stole through his veins, and drove from him the sense of futility and
+despondency which had so deeply added to his trouble.  There was
+something for him, too, in that which held infatuated the minds
+of so many millions.
+
+A moment later Kaid and he faced each other again.  "Effendina," he said,
+"thou wilt not desert our work now?"
+
+"Money--for this expedition?  Thou hast it?" Kaid asked ironically.
+
+"I have but little money, and it must go to rebuild the mills, Effendina.
+I must have it of thee."
+
+"Let them remain in their ashes."
+
+"But thousands will have no work."
+
+"They had work before they were built, they will have work now they are
+gone."
+
+"Effendina, I stayed in Egypt at thy request.  The work is thy work.
+Wilt thou desert it?"
+
+"The West lured me--by things that seemed.  Now I know things as they
+are."
+
+"They will lure thee again to-morrow," said David firmly, but with a
+weight on his spirit.  His eyes sought and held Kaid's.  "It is too late
+to go back; we must go forward or we shall lose the Soudan, and a Mahdi
+and his men will be in Cairo in ten years."
+
+For an instant Kaid was startled.  The old look of energy and purpose
+leaped up into his eye; but it faded quickly again.  If, as the Italian
+physician more than hinted, his life hung by a thread, did it matter
+whether the barbarian came to Cairo?  That was the business of those who
+came after.  If Sharif was right, and his life was saved, there would be
+time enough to set things right.
+
+"I will not pour water on the sands to make an ocean," he answered.
+"Will a ship sail on the Sahara?  Bismillah, it is all a dream!  Harrik
+was right.  But dost thou think to do with me as thou didst with Harrik?"
+he sneered.  "Is it in thy mind?"
+
+David's patience broke down under the long provocation.  "Know then,
+Effendina," he said angrily, "that I am not thy subject, nor one beholden
+to thee, nor thy slave.  Upon terms well understood, I have laboured
+here.  I have kept my obligations, and it is thy duty to keep thy
+obligations, though the hand of death were on thee.  I know not what has
+poisoned thy mind, and driven thee from reason and from justice.  I know
+that, Prince Pasha of Egypt as thou art, thou art as bound to me as any
+fellah that agrees to tend my door or row my boat.  Thy compact with me
+is a compact with England, and it shall be kept, if thou art an honest
+man.  Thou mayst find thousands in Egypt who will serve thee at any
+price, and bear thee in any mood.  I have but one price.  It is well
+known to thee.  I will not be the target for thy black temper.  This is
+not the middle ages; I am an Englishman, not a helot.  The bond must be
+kept; thou shalt not play fast and loose.  Money must be found; the
+expedition must go.  But if thy purpose is now Harrik's purpose, then
+Europe should know, and Egypt also should know.  I have been thy right
+hand, Effendina; I will not be thy old shoe, to be cast aside at thy
+will."
+
+In all the days of his life David had never flamed out as he did now.
+Passionate as his words were, his manner was strangely quiet, but his
+white and glistening face and his burning eyes showed how deep was his
+anger.
+
+As he spoke, Kaid sank upon the divan.  Never had he been challenged so.
+With his own people he had ever been used to cringing and abasement, and
+he had played the tyrant, and struck hard and cruelly, and he had been
+feared; but here, behind David's courteous attitude, there was a scathing
+arraignment of his conduct which took no count of consequence.  In other
+circumstances his vanity would have shrunk under this whip of words, but
+his native reason and his quick humour would have justified David.  In
+this black distemper possessing him, however, only outraged egotism
+prevailed.  His hands clenched and unclenched, his lips were drawn back
+on his teeth in rage.
+
+When David had finished, Kaid suddenly got to his feet and took a step
+forward with a malediction, but a faintness seized him and he staggered
+back.  When he raised his head again David was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+LACEY MOVES
+
+If there was one glistening bead of sweat on the bald pate of Lacey of
+Chicago there were a thousand; and the smile on his face was not less
+shining and unlimited.  He burst into the rooms of the palace where David
+had residence, calling: "Oyez!  Oyez!  Saadat!  Oh, Pasha of the Thousand
+Tails!  Oyez!  Oyez!"
+
+Getting no answer, he began to perform a dance round the room, which in
+modern days is known as the negro cake-walk.  It was not dignified, but
+it would have been less dignified still performed by any other living man
+of forty-five with a bald head and a waist-band ten inches too large.
+Round the room three times he went, and then he dropped on a divan.  He
+gasped, and mopped his face and forehead, leaving a little island of
+moisture on the top of his head untouched.  After a moment, he gained
+breath and settled down a little.  Then he burst out:
+
+         "Are you coming to my party, O effendi?
+          There'll be high jinks, there'll be welcome, there'll be room;
+          For to-morrow we are pulling stakes for Shendy.
+          Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?"
+
+"Say, I guess that's pretty good on the spur of the moment," he wheezed,
+and, taking his inseparable note book from his pocket, wrote the
+impromptu down.  "I guess She'll like that-it rings spontaneous.  She'll
+be tickled, tickled to death, when she knows what's behind it."  He
+repeated it with gusto.  "She'll dote on it," he added--the person to
+whom he referred being the sister of the American Consul, the little
+widow, "cute as she can be," of whom he had written to Hylda in the
+letter which had brought a crisis in her life.  As he returned the note-
+book to his pocket a door opened.  Mahommed Hassan slid forward into the
+room, and stood still, impassive and gloomy.  Lacey beckoned, and said
+grotesquely:
+
+        "'Come hither, come hither, my little daughter,
+          And do not tremble so!'"
+
+A sort of scornful patience was in Mahommed's look, but he came nearer
+and waited.
+
+"Squat on the ground, and smile a smile of mirth, Mahommed," Lacey said
+riotously.  "'For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o'
+the May!'"
+
+Mahommed's face grew resentful.  "O effendi, shall the camel-driver laugh
+when the camels are lost in the khamsin and the water-bottle is empty?"
+
+"Certainly not, O son of the spreading palm; but this is not a desert,
+nor a gaudy caravan.  This is a feast of all angels.  This is the day
+when Nahoum the Nefarious is to be buckled up like a belt, and ridden in
+a ring.  Where is the Saadat?"
+
+"He is gone, effendi!  Like a mist on the face of the running water, so
+was his face; like eyes that did not see, so was his look.  'Peace be to
+thee, Mahommed, thou art faithful as Zaida,' he said, and he mounted and
+rode into the desert.  I ran after till he was come to the edge of the
+desert; but he sent me back, saying that I must wait for thee; and this
+word I was to say, that Prince Kaid had turned his face darkly from him,
+and that the finger of Sharif--"
+
+"That fanatical old quack--Harrik's friend!"
+
+"--that the finger of Sharif was on his pulse; but the end of all was in
+the hands of God."
+
+"Oh yes, exactly, the finger of Sharif on his pulse!  The old story-the
+return to the mother's milk, throwing back to all the Pharaohs.  Well,
+what then?" he added cheerfully, his smile breaking out again.  "Where
+has he gone, our Saadat?"
+
+"To Ebn Ezra Bey at the Coptic Monastery by the Etl Tree, where your
+prophet Christ slept when a child."
+
+Lacey hummed to himself meditatively.  "A sort of last powwow--Rome
+before the fall.  Everything wrong, eh?  Kaid turned fanatic, Nahoum on
+the tiles watching for the Saadat to fall, things trembling for want of
+hard cash.  That's it, isn't it, Mahommed?"
+
+Mahommed nodded, but his look was now alert, and less sombre.  He had
+caught at something vital and confident in Lacey's tone.  He drew nearer,
+and listened closely.
+
+"Well, now, my gentle gazelle, listen unto me," continued Lacey.  He
+suddenly leaned forward, and spoke in subdued but rapid tones.  "Say,
+Mahommed, once upon a time there was an American man, with a shock of red
+hair, and a nature like a spring-lock.  He went down to Mexico, with a
+million or two of his own money got honestly by an undisputed will from
+an undisputed father--you don't understand that, but it doesn't matter--
+and with a few millions of other people's money, for to gamble in mines
+and railways and banks and steamship companies--all to do with Mexico
+what the Saadat has tried to do in Egypt with less money; but not for the
+love of Allah, same as him.  This American was going to conquer like
+Cortez, but his name was Thomas Tilman Lacey, and he had a lot of gall.
+After years of earnest effort, he lost his hair and the millions of the
+Infatuated Conquistadores.  And by-and-by he came to Cairo with a
+thimbleful of income, and began to live again.  There was a civil war
+going on in his own country, but he thought that one out of forty
+millions would not be strictly missed.  So he stayed in Egypt; and the
+tale of his days in Egypt, is it not written with a neboot of domwood in
+the book of Mahommed Hassan the scribe?"
+
+He paused and beamed upon the watchful Mahommed, who, if he did not
+understand all that had been said, was in no difficulty as to the drift
+and meaning of the story.
+
+"Aiwa, effendi," he urged impatiently.  "It is a long ride to the Etl
+Tree, and the day is far spent."
+
+"Inshallah, you shall hear, my turtle-dove!  One day there came to Cairo,
+in great haste, a man from Mexico, looking for the foolish one called T.
+T. Lacey, bearing glad news.  And the man from Mexico blew his trumpet,
+and straightway T. T. Lacey fell down dismayed.  The trumpet said that a
+million once lost in Mexico was returned, with a small flock of other
+millions; for a mine, in which it was sunk, had burst forth with a stony
+stream of silver.  And behold!  Thomas Tilman Lacey, the despised waster
+of his patrimony and of other people's treasure, is now, O son of the
+fig-flower, richer than Kaid Pasha and all his eunuchs."
+
+Suddenly Mahommed Hassan leaned forward, then backward, and, after the
+fashion of desert folk, gave a shrill, sweet ululation that seemed to
+fill the palace.
+
+"Say, that's A1," Lacey said, when Mahommed's voice sank to a whisper of
+wild harmony.  "Yes, you can lick my boots, my noble sheikh of
+Manfaloot," he added, as Mahommed caught his feet and bent his head upon
+them.  "I wanted to do something like that myself.  Kiss 'em, honey;
+it'll do you good."
+
+After a moment, Mahommed drew back and squatted before him in an attitude
+of peace and satisfaction.  "The Saadat--you will help him?  You will
+give him money?"
+
+"Let's put it in this way, Mahommed: I'll invest in an expedition out of
+which I expect to get something worth while--concessions for mines and
+railways, et cetera."  He winked a round, blue eye.  "Business is
+business, and the way to get at the Saadat is to talk business; but you
+can make up your mind that,
+
+        "'To-morrow, we are pulling stakes for Shendy!
+          Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?'"
+
+"By the prophet Abraham, but the news is great news," said Mahommed with
+a grin.  "But the Effendina?"
+
+"Well, I'll try and square the Effendina," answered Lacey.  "Perhaps the
+days of backsheesh aren't done in Egypt, after all."
+
+"And Nahoum Pasha?" asked Mahommed, with a sinister look.
+
+"Well, we'll try and square him, too, but in another way."
+
+"The money, it is in Egypt?" queried Mahommed, whose idea was that money
+to be real must be seen.  "Something that's as handy and as marketable,"
+answered Lacey.  "I can raise half a million to-morrow; and that will do
+a lot of what we want.  How long will it take to ride to the monastery?"
+
+Mahommed told him.
+
+Lacey was about to leave the room, when he heard a voice outside.
+"Nahoum!" he said, and sat down again on the divan.  "He has come to see
+the Saadat, I suppose; but it'll do him good to see me, perhaps.  Open
+the sluices, Mahommed."
+
+Yes, Nahoum would be glad to see the effendi, since Claridge Pasha was
+not in Cairo.  When would Claridge Pasha return?  If, then, the effendi
+expected to see the Saadat before his return to Cairo, perhaps he would
+convey a message.  He could not urge his presence on the Saadat, since he
+had not been honoured with any communication since yesterday.
+
+"Well, that's good-mannered, anyhow, pasha," said Lacey with cheerful
+nonchalance.  "People don't always know when they're wanted or not
+wanted."
+
+Nahoum looked at him guardedly, sighed and sat down.  "Things have grown
+worse since yesterday," he said.  "Prince Kaid received the news badly."
+He shook his head.  "He has not the gift of perfect friendship.  That is
+a Christian characteristic; the Muslim does not possess it.  It was too
+strong to last, maybe--my poor beloved friend, the Saadat."
+
+"Oh, it will last all right," rejoined Lacey coolly.  "Prince Kaid has
+got a touch of jaundice, I guess.  He knows a thing when he finds it,
+even if he hasn't the gift of 'perfect friendship,' same as Christians
+like you and me.  But even you and me don't push our perfections too far
+--I haven't noticed you going out of your way to do things for your 'poor
+beloved friend, the Saadat'."
+
+"I have given him time, energy, experience--money."
+
+Lacey nodded.  "True.  And I've often wondered why, when I've seen the
+things you didn't give and the things you took away."
+
+Nahoum's eyes half closed.  Lacey was getting to close quarters with
+suspicion and allusion; but it was not his cue to resent them yet.
+
+"I had come now to offer him help; to advance him enough to carry through
+his expedition."
+
+"Well, that sounds generous, but I guess he would get on without it,
+pasha.  He would not want to be under any more obligations to you."
+
+"He is without money.  He must be helped."
+
+"Just so."
+
+"He cannot go to the treasury, and Prince Kaid has refused.  Why should
+he decline help from his friend?"  Suddenly Lacey changed his tactics.
+He had caught a look in Nahoum's eyes which gave him a new thought.
+"Well, if you've any proposition, pasha, I'll take it to him.  I'll be
+seeing him to-night."
+
+"I can give him fifty thousand pounds."
+
+"It isn't enough to save the situation, pasha."
+
+"It will help him over the first zareba."
+
+"Are there any conditions?"  "There are no conditions, effendi."  "And
+interest?"
+
+"There would be no interest in money."
+
+"Other considerations?"
+
+"Yes, other considerations, effendi."
+
+"If they were granted, would there be enough still in the stocking to
+help him over a second zareba--or a third, perhaps?"
+
+"That would be possible, even likely, I think.  Of course we speak in
+confidence, effendi."
+
+"The confidence of the 'perfect friendship.'"
+
+"There may be difficulty, because the Saadat is sensitive; but it is the
+only way to help him.  I can get the money from but one source; and to
+get it involves an agreement."
+
+"You think his Excellency would not just jump at it--that it might hurt
+some of his prejudices, eh?"
+
+"So, effendi."
+
+"And me--where am I in it, pasha?"
+
+"Thou hast great influence with his Excellency."
+
+"I am his servant--I don't meddle with his prejudices, pasha."
+
+"But if it were for his own good, to save his work here."
+
+Lacey yawned almost ostentatiously.  "I guess if he can't save it himself
+it can't be saved, not even when you reach out the hand of perfect
+friendship.  You've been reaching out for a long time, pasha, and it
+didn't save the steamer or the cotton-mills; and it didn't save us when
+we were down by Sobat a while ago, and you sent Halim Bey to teach us to
+be patient.  We got out of that nasty corner by sleight of hand, but not
+your sleight of hand, pasha.  Your hand is a quick hand, but a sharp eye
+can see the trick, and then it's no good, not worth a button."
+
+There was something savage behind Nahoum's eyes, but they did not show
+it; they blinked with earnest kindness and interest.  The time would come
+when Lacey would go as his master should go, and the occasion was not far
+off now; but it must not be forced.  Besides, was this fat, amorous-
+looking factotum of Claridge Pasha's as Spartan-minded as his master?
+Would he be superior to the lure of gold?  He would see.  He spoke
+seriously, with apparent solicitude.
+
+"Thou dost not understand, effendi.  Claridge Pasha must have money.
+Prestige is everything in Egypt, it is everything with Kaid.  If Claridge
+Pasha rides on as though nothing has happened--and money is the only
+horse that can carry him--Kaid will not interfere, and his black mood
+may pass; but any halting now and the game is done."
+
+"And you want the game to go on right bad, don't you?  Well, I guess
+you're right.  Money is the only winner in this race.  He's got to have
+money, sure.  How much can you raise?  Oh, yes, you told me!  Well, I
+don't think it's enough; he's got to have three times that; and if he
+can't get it from the Government, or from Kaid, it's a bad lookout.
+What's the bargain you have in your mind?"
+
+"That the slave-trade continue, effendi."
+
+Lacey did not wink, but he had a shock of surprise.  On the instant he
+saw the trap--for the Saadat and for himself.
+
+"He would not do it--not for money, pasha."
+
+"He would not be doing it for money.  The time is not ripe for it, it is
+too dangerous.  There is a time for all things.  If he will but wait!"
+
+"I wouldn't like to be the man that'd name the thing to him.  As you say,
+he's got his prejudices.  They're stronger than in most men."
+
+"It need not be named to him.  Thou canst accept the money for him, and
+when thou art in the Soudan, and he is going to do it, thou canst prevent
+it."
+
+"Tell him that I've taken the money and that he's used it, and he
+oughtn't to go back on the bargain I made for him?  So that he'll be
+bound by what I did?"
+
+"It is the best way, effendi."
+
+"He'd be annoyed," said Lacey with a patient sigh.
+
+"He has a great soul; but sometimes he forgets that expediency is the
+true policy."
+
+"Yet he's done a lot of things without it.  He's never failed in what he
+set out to do.  What he's done has been kicked over, but he's done it all
+right, somehow, at last."
+
+"He will not be able to do this, effendi, except with my help--and
+thine."
+
+"He's had quite a lot of things almost finished, too," said Lacey
+reflectively, "and then a hand reached out in the dark and cut the wires
+--cut them when he was sleeping, and he didn't know; cut them when he was
+waking, and he wouldn't understand; cut them under his own eyes, and he
+wouldn't see; because the hand that cut them was the hand of the perfect
+friend."
+
+He got slowly to his feet, as a cloud of colour drew over the face of
+Nahoum and his eyes darkened with astonishment and anger.  Lacey put his
+hands in his pockets and waited till Nahoum also rose.  Then he gathered
+the other's eyes to his, and said with drawling scorn:
+
+"So, you thought I didn't understand!  You thought I'd got a brain like a
+peanut, and wouldn't drop onto your game or the trap you've set.  You'd
+advance money--got from the slave-dealers to prevent the slave-trade
+being stopped!  If Claridge Pasha took it and used it, he could never
+stop the slave-trade.  If I took it and used it for him on the same
+terms, he couldn't stop the slave-trade, though he might know no more
+about the bargain than a babe unborn.  And if he didn't stand by the
+bargain I made, and did prohibit slave-dealing, nothing'd stop the tribes
+till they marched into Cairo.  He's been safe so far, because they
+believed in him, and because he'd rather die a million deaths than go
+crooked.  Say, I've been among the Dagos before--down in Mexico--and I'm
+onto you.  I've been onto you for a good while; though there was nothing
+I could spot certain; but now I've got you, and I'll break the 'perfect
+friendship' or I'll eat my shirt.  I'll--"
+
+He paused, realising the crisis in which David was moving, and that
+perils were thick around their footsteps.  But, even as he thought of
+them, he remembered David's own frank, fearless audacity in danger and
+difficulty, and he threw discretion to the winds.  He flung his flag
+wide, and believed with a belief as daring as David's that all would be
+well.
+
+"Well, what wilt thou do?" asked Nahoum with cool and deadly menace.
+"Thou wilt need to do it quickly, because, if it is a challenge, within
+forty-eight hours Claridge Pasha and thyself will be gone from Egypt--or
+I shall be in the Nile."
+
+"I'll take my chances, pasha," answered Lacey, with equal coolness.  "You
+think you'll win.  It's not the first time I've had to tackle men like
+you--they've got the breed in Mexico.  They beat me there, but I learned
+the game, and I've learned a lot from you, too.  I never knew what your
+game was here.  I only know that the Saadat saved your life, and got you
+started again with Kaid.  I only know that you called yourself a
+Christian, and worked on him till he believed in you, and Hell might
+crackle round you, but he'd believe, till he saw your contract signed
+with the Devil--and then he'd think the signature forged.  But he's got
+to know now.  We are not going out of Egypt, though you may be going to
+the Nile; but we are going to the Soudan, and with Kaid's blessing, too.
+You've put up the bluff, and I take it.  Be sure you've got Kaid solid,
+for, if you haven't, he'll be glad to know where you keep the money you
+got from the slave-dealers."
+
+Nahoum shrugged his shoulders.  "Who has seen the money?  Where is the
+proof?  Kaid would know my reasons.  It is not the first time virtue has
+been tested in Egypt, or the first time that it has fallen."
+
+In spite of himself Lacey laughed.  "Say, that's worthy of a great
+Christian intellect.  You are a bright particular star, pasha.  I take it
+back--they'd learn a lot from you in Mexico.  But the only trouble with
+lying is, that the demand becomes so great you can't keep all the cards
+in your head, and then the one you forget does you.  The man that isn't
+lying has the pull in the long run.  You are out against us, pasha, and
+we'll see how we stand in forty-eight hours.  You have some cards up your
+sleeve, I suppose; but--well, I'm taking you on.  I'm taking you on with
+a lot of joy, and some sorrow, too, for we might have pulled off a big
+thing together, you and Claridge Pasha, with me to hold the stirrups.
+Now it's got to be war.  You've made it so.  It's a pity, for when we
+grip there'll be a heavy fall."
+
+"For a poor man thou hast a proud stomach."
+
+"Well, I'll admit the stomach, pasha.  It's proud; and it's strong, too;
+it's stood a lot in Egypt; it's standing a lot to-day."
+
+"We'll ease the strain, perhaps," sneered Nahoum.  He made a perfunctory
+salutation and walked briskly from the room.
+
+Mahommed Hassan crept in, a malicious grin on his face.  Danger and
+conflict were as meat and drink to him.
+
+"Effendi, God hath given thee a wasp's sting to thy tongue.  It is well.
+Nahoum Pasha hath Mizraim: the Saadat hath thee and me."
+
+"There's the Effendina," said Lacey reflectively.  "Thou saidst thou
+would 'square' him, effendi."
+
+"I say a lot," answered Lacey rather ruefully.  "Come, Mahommed, the
+Saadat first, and the sooner the better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
+
+     "And His mercy is on them that fear Him throughout all generations."
+
+On the clear, still evening air the words rang out over the desert,
+sonorous, imposing, peaceful.  As the notes of the verse died away the
+answer came from other voices in deep, appealing antiphonal:
+
+     "He hath showed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud
+     in the imagination of their hearts."
+
+Beyond the limits of the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither
+beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the perfect
+immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain to offer
+light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance of the
+descending sun.  But at the great door of the monastery there grew a
+stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone
+chapel there was a garden of struggling shrubs and green things, with one
+rose-tree which scattered its pink leaves from year to year upon the
+loam, since no man gathered bud or blossom.
+
+The triumphant call of the Magnificat, however beautiful, seemed
+strangely out of place in this lonely island in a sea of sand.  It was
+the song of a bannered army, marching over the battle-field with
+conquering voices, and swords as yet unsheathed and red, carrying the
+spoils of conquest behind the laurelled captain of the host.  The
+crumbling and ancient walls were surrounded by a moat which a stranger's
+foot crossed hardly from moon to moon, which the desert wayfarer sought
+rarely, since it was out of the track of caravans, and because food was
+scant in the refectory of this Coptic brotherhood.  It was scarce five
+hours' ride from the Palace of the Prince Pasha: but it might have been a
+thousand miles away, so profoundly separate was it from the world of
+vital things and deeds of men.
+
+As the chant rang out, confident, majestic, and serene, carried by voices
+of power and shrill sweetness, which only the desert can produce, it
+might have seemed to any listener that this monastery was all that
+remained of some ancient kingdom of brimming, active cities, now lying
+beneath the obliterating sand, itself the monument and memorial of a
+breath of mercy of the Destroyer, the last refuge of a few surviving
+captains of a departed greatness.  Hidden by the grey, massive walls,
+built as it were to resist the onset of a ravaging foe, the swelling
+voices might well have been those of some ancient order of valiant
+knights, whose banners hung above them, the 'riclame' of their deeds.
+But they were voices and voices only; for they who sang were as unkempt
+and forceless as the lonely wall which shut them in from the insistent
+soul of the desert.
+
+Desolation?  The desert was not desolate.  Its face was bare and burning,
+it slaked no man's thirst, gave no man food, save where scattered oases
+were like the breasts of a vast mother eluding the aching lips of her
+parched children; but the soul of the desert was living and inspiring,
+beating with vitality.  It was life that burned like flame.  If the
+water-skin was dry and the date-bag empty it smothered and destroyed; but
+it was life; and to those who ventured into its embrace, obeying the
+conditions of the sharp adventure, it gave what neither sea, nor green
+plain, nor high mountain, nor verdant valley could give--a consuming
+sense of power, which found its way to the deepest recesses of being.
+Out upon the vast sea of sand, where the descending sun was spreading a
+note of incandescent colour, there floated the grateful words:
+
+     "He remembering His mercy hath holpen His servant Israel; as He
+     promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed for ever."
+
+Then the antiphonal ceased; and together the voices of all within the
+place swelled out in the Gloria and the Amen, and seemed to pass away in
+ever-receding vibrations upon the desert, till it was lost in the
+comforting sunset.
+
+As the last note died away, a voice from beneath the palm-tree near the
+door, deeper than any that had come from within, said reverently: "Ameen-
+Ameen !"
+
+He who spoke was a man well over sixty years, with a grey beard, lofty
+benign forehead, and the eyes of a scholar and a dreamer.  As he uttered
+the words of spiritual assent, alike to the Muslim and the Christian
+religion, he rose to his feet, showing the figure of a man of action,
+alert, well-knit, authoritative.  Presently he turned towards the East
+and stretched a robe upon the ground, and with stately beauty of gesture
+he spread out his hands, standing for a moment in the attitude of
+aspiration.  Then, kneeling, he touched his turbaned head to the ground
+three times, and as the sun drew down behind the sharp, bright line of
+sand that marked the horizon, he prayed devoutly and long.  It was Ebn
+Ezra Bey.
+
+Muslim though he was, he had visited this monastery many times, to study
+the ancient Christian books which lay in disordered heaps in an ill-kept
+chamber, books which predated the Hegira, and were as near to the life of
+the Early Church as the Scriptures themselves--or were so reputed.
+Student and pious Muslim as he was, renowned at El Azhar and at every
+Muslim university in the Eastern world, he swore by the name of Christ as
+by that of Abraham, Isaac, and all the prophets, though to him Mahomet
+was the last expression of Heaven's will to mankind.  At first received
+at the monastery with unconcealed aversion, and not without danger to
+himself, he had at last won to him the fanatical monks, who, in spirit,
+kept this ancient foundation as rigid to their faith as though it were in
+mediaeval times.  And though their discipline was lax, and their daily
+duties orderless, this was Oriental rather than degenerate.  Here Ebn
+Ezra had stayed for weeks at a time in the past, not without some
+religious scandal, long since forgotten.
+
+His prayers ended, he rose up slowly, once more spread out his hands in
+ascription, and was about to enter the monastery, when, glancing towards
+the west, he saw a horseman approaching.  An instinct told him who it was
+before he could clearly distinguish the figure, and his face lighted with
+a gentle and expectant smile.  Then his look changed.
+
+"He is in trouble," he murmured.  "As it was with his uncle in Damascus,
+so will it be with him.  Malaish, we are in the will of God!"
+
+The hand that David laid in Ebn Ezra's was hot and nervous, the eyes that
+drank in the friendship of the face which had seen two Claridges emptying
+out their lives in the East were burning and famished by long fasting
+of the spirit, forced abstinence from the pleasures of success and
+fruition-haunting, desiring eyes, where flamed a spirit which consumed
+the body and the indomitable mind.  The lips, however, had their old
+trick of smiling, though the smile which greeted Ebn Ezra Bey had a
+melancholy which touched the desert-worn, life-spent old Arab as he had
+not been touched since a smile, just like this, flashed up at him from
+the weather-stained, dying face of quaint Benn Claridge in a street of
+Damascus.  The natural duplicity of the Oriental had been abashed and
+inactive before the simple and astounding honesty of these two Quaker
+folk.
+
+He saw crisis written on every feature of the face before him.  Yet the
+scanty meal they ate with the monks in the ancient room was enlivened by
+the eager yet quiet questioning of David, to whom the monks responded
+with more spirit than had been often seen in this arid retreat.  The
+single torch which spluttered from the wall as they drank their coffee
+lighted up faces as strange, withdrawn, and unconsciously secretive as
+ever gathered to greet a guest.  Dim tales had reached them of this
+Christian reformer and administrator, scraps of legend from stray camel-
+drivers, a letter from the Patriarch commanding them to pray blessings on
+his labours--who could tell what advantage might not come to the Coptic
+Church through him, a Christian!  On the dull, torpid faces, light seemed
+struggling to live for a moment, as David talked.  It was as though
+something in their meagre lives, which belonged to undeveloped feelings,
+was fighting for existence--a light struggling to break through murky
+veils of inexperience.
+
+Later, in the still night, however--still, though air vibrated
+everywhere, as though the desert breathed an ether which was to fill
+men's veins with that which quieted the fret and fever of life's
+disillusions and forgeries and failures--David's speech with Ebn Ezra Bey
+was of a different sort.  If, as it seems ever in the desert, an
+invisible host of beings, once mortal, now immortal, but suspensive and
+understanding, listened to the tale he unfolded, some glow of pity must
+have possessed them; for it was an Iliad of herculean struggle against
+absolute disaster, ending with the bitter news of his grandfather's
+death.  It was the story of AEdipus overcome by events too strong for
+soul to bear.  In return, as the stars wheeled on, and the moon stole to
+the zenith, majestic and slow, Ebn Ezra offered to his troubled friend
+only the philosophy of the predestinarian, mingled with the calm of the
+stoic.  But something antagonistic to his own dejection, to the Muslim's
+fatalism, emerged from David's own altruism, to nerve him to hope and
+effort still.  His unconquerable optimism rose determinedly to the
+surface, even as he summed up and related the forces working against him.
+
+"They have all come at once," he said; "all the activities opposing me,
+just as though they had all been started long ago at different points,
+with a fixed course to run, and to meet and give me a fall in the hour
+when I could least resist.  You call it Fate.  I call it what it proves
+itself to be.  But here it is a hub of danger and trouble, and the spokes
+of disaster are flying to it from all over the compass, to make the wheel
+that will grind me; and all the old troop of Palace intriguers and
+despoilers are waiting to heat the tire and fasten it on the machine of
+torture.  Kaid has involved himself in loans which press, in foolish
+experiments in industry without due care; and now from ill-health and bad
+temper comes a reaction towards the old sinister rule, when the
+Prince shuts his eyes and his agents ruin and destroy.  Three nations who
+have intrigued against my work see their chance, and are at Kaid's elbow.
+The fate of the Soudan is in the balance.  It is all as the shake of a
+feather.  I can save it if I go; but, just as I am ready, my mills burn
+down, my treasury dries up, Kaid turns his back on me, and the toil of
+years is swept away in a night.  Thee sees it is terrible, friend?"
+
+Ebn Ezra looked at him seriously and sadly for a moment, and then said:
+"Is it given one man to do all?  If many men had done these things, then
+there had been one blow for each.  Now all falls on thee, Saadat.  Is it
+the will of God that one man should fling the lance, fire the cannon, dig
+the trenches, gather food for the army, drive the horses on to battle,
+and bury the dead?  Canst thou do all?"
+
+David's eyes brightened to the challenge.  "There was the work to do, and
+there were not the many to do it.  My hand was ready; the call came; I
+answered.  I plunged into the river of work alone."
+
+"Thou didst not know the strength of the currents, the eddies and the
+whirlpools, the hidden rocks--and the shore is far off, Saadat."
+
+"It is not so far but that, if I could get breath to gather strength,
+I should reach the land in time.  Money--ah, but enough for this
+expedition!  That over, order, quiet yonder, my own chosen men as
+governors, and I could"--he pointed towards the southern horizon--
+"I could plant my foot in Cairo, and from the centre control the great
+machinery--with Kaid's help; and God's help.  A sixth of a million, and
+Kaid's hand behind me, and the boat would lunge free of the sand-banks
+and churn on, and churn on.  .  .  .  Friend," he added, with the winning
+insistence that few found it possible to resist, "if all be well, and we
+go thither, wilt thou become the governor-general yonder?  With thee to
+rule justly where there is most need of justice, the end would be sure--
+if it be the will of God."
+
+Ebn Ezra Bey sat for a moment looking into the worn, eager face,
+indistinct in the moonlight, then answered slowly: "I am seventy, and the
+years smite hard as they pass, and there or here, it little matters when
+I go, as I must go; and whether it be to bend the lance, or bear the flag
+before thee, or rule a Mudirieh, what does it matter!  I will go with
+thee," he added hastily; "but it is better thou shouldst not go.  Within
+the last three days I have news from the South.  All that thou hast done
+there is in danger now.  The word for revolt has passed from tribe to
+tribe.  A tongue hath spoken, and a hand hath signalled "--his voice
+lowered--" and I think I know the tongue and the hand!"  He paused; then,
+as David did not speak, continued: "Thou who art wise in most things,
+dost decline to seek for thy foe in him who eateth from the same dish
+with thee.  Only when it is too late thou wilt defend thyself and all who
+keep faith with thee."
+
+David's face clouded.  "Nahoum, thou dost mean Nahoum?  But thou dost not
+understand, and there is no proof."
+
+"As a camel knows the coming storm while yet the sky is clear, by that
+which the eye does not see, so do I feel Nahoum.  The evils thou hast
+suffered, Saadat, are from his hand, if from any hand in Egypt--"
+
+Suddenly he leaned over and touched David's arm.  "Saadat, it is of no
+avail.  There is none in Egypt that desires good; thy task is too great.
+All men will deceive thee; if not now, yet in time.  If Kaid favours thee
+once more, and if it is made possible for thee to go to the Soudan, yet I
+pray thee to stay here.  Better be smitten here, where thou canst get
+help from thine own country, if need be, than yonder, where they but wait
+to spoil thy work and kill thee.  Thou art young; wilt thou throw thy
+life away?  Art thou not needed here as there?  For me it is nothing,
+whether it be now or in a few benumbing years; but for thee--is there no
+one whom thou lovest so well that thou wouldst not shelter thy life to
+spare that life sorrow?  Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will
+love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too
+soon?"
+
+As a warm wind suddenly sweeps across the cool air of a summer evening
+for an instant, suffocating and unnerving, so Ebn Ezra's last words swept
+across David's spirit.  His breath came quicker, his eyes half closed.
+"Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal
+sorrow, if--"
+
+As a hand secretly and swiftly slips the lever that opens the sluice-
+gates of a dike, while the watchman turns away for a moment to look at
+the fields which the waters enrich and the homes of poor folk whom the
+gates defend, so, in a moment, when off his guard, worn with watching and
+fending, as it were, Ebn Ezra had sprung the lever, and a flood of
+feeling swept over David, drowned him in its impulse and pent-up force.
+
+"Is there none that thou lovest so--"  Of what use had been all his
+struggle and his pain since that last day in Hamley--his dark fighting
+days in the desert with Lacey and Mahommed, and his handful of faithful
+followers, hemmed in by dangers, the sands swarming with Arabs who
+feathered now to his safety, now to his doom, and his heart had hungered
+for what he had denied it with a will that would not be conquered?
+Wasted by toil and fever and the tension of danger and the care of
+others dependent on him, he had also fought a foe which was ever at his
+elbow, ever whispered its comfort and seduction in his ear, the insidious
+and peace-giving, exalting opiate that had tided him over some black
+places, and then had sought for mastery of him when he was back again in
+the world of normal business and duty, where it appealed not as a
+medicine, but as a perilous luxury.  And fighting this foe, which had a
+voice so soothing, and words like the sound of murmuring waters, and a
+cool and comforting hand that sought to lead him into gardens of
+stillness and passive being, where he could no more hear the clangour and
+vexing noises of a world that angered and agonised, there had also been
+the lure of another passion of the heart, which was too perilously dear
+to contemplate.  Eyes that were beautiful, and their beauty was not for
+him; a spirit that was bright and glowing, but the brightness and the
+glow might not renew his days.  It was hard to fight alone.  Alone he
+was, for only to one may the doors within doors be opened-only to one so
+dear that all else is everlastingly distant may the true tale of the life
+beneath life be told.  And it was not for him--nothing of this; not even
+the thought of it; for to think of it was to desire it, and to desire it
+was to reach out towards it; and to reach out towards it was the end of
+all.  There had been moments of abandonment to the alluring dream, such
+as when he wrote the verses which Lacey had sent to Hylda from the
+desert; but they were few.  Oft-repeated, they would have filled him with
+an agitated melancholy impossible to be borne in the life which must be
+his.
+
+So it had been.  The deeper into life and its labours and experiences he
+had gone, the greater had been his temptations, born of two passions, one
+of the body and its craving, the other of the heart and its desires: and
+he had fought on--towards the morning.
+
+"Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal
+sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?"  The desert, the
+dark monastery, the acacia tree, the ancient palm, the ruinous garden,
+disappeared.  He only saw a face which smiled at him, as it had done 'by
+the brazier in the garden at Cairo, that night when she and Nahoum and
+himself and Mizraim had met in the room of his house by the Ezbekieh
+gardens, and she had gone out to her old life in England, and he had
+taken up the burden of the East--that long six years ago.  His head
+dropped in his hands, and all that was beneath the Quaker life he had led
+so many years, packed under the crust of form and habit, and regulated
+thought, and controlled emotion, broke forth now, and had its way with
+him.
+
+He turned away staggering and self-reproachful from the first question,
+only to face the other--"And that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if
+thou goest without care to thy end too soon."  It was a thought he had
+never let himself dwell on for an instant in all the days since they had
+last met.  He had driven it back to its covert, even before he could
+recognise its face.  It was disloyal to her, an offence against all that
+she was, an affront to his manhood to let the thought have place in his
+mind even for one swift moment.  She was Lord Eglington's wife--there
+could be no sharing of soul and mind and body and the exquisite devotion
+of a life too dear for thought.  Nothing that she was to Eglington could
+be divided with another, not for an hour, not by one act of impulse; or
+else she must be less, she that might have been, if there had been no
+Eglington--
+
+An exclamation broke from him, and, as one crying out in one's sleep
+wakes himself, so the sharp cry of his misery woke him from the trance of
+memory that had been upon him, and he slowly became conscious of Ebn Ezra
+standing before him.  Their eyes met, and Ebn Ezra spoke:
+
+"The will of Allah be thy will, Saadat.  If it be to go to the Soudan,
+I am thine; if it be to stay, I am thy servant and thy brother.  But
+whether it be life or death, thou must sleep, for the young are like
+water without sleep.  Thou canst not live in strength nor die with
+fortitude without it.  For the old, malaish, old age is between a
+sleeping and a waking!  Come, Saadat!  Forget not, thou must ride again
+to Cairo at dawn."
+
+David got slowly to his feet and turned towards the monastery.  The
+figure of a monk stood in the doorway with a torch to light him to his
+room.
+
+He turned to Ebn Ezra again.  "Does thee think that I have aught of his
+courage--my Uncle Benn?  Thou knowest me--shall I face it out as did he?"
+
+"Saadat," the old man answered, pointing, "yonder acacia, that was he,
+quick to grow and short to live; but thou art as this date-palm, which
+giveth food to the hungry, and liveth through generations.  Peace be upon
+thee," he added at the doorway, as the torch flickered towards the room
+where David was to lie.
+
+"And upon thee, peace!" answered David gently, and followed the smoky
+light to an inner chamber.  The room in which David found himself was
+lofty and large, but was furnished with only a rough wooden bed, a rug,
+and a brazier.  Left alone, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and, for
+a few moments, his mind strayed almost vaguely from one object to
+another.  From two windows far up in the wall the moonlight streamed in,
+making bars of light aslant the darkness.
+
+Not a sound broke the stillness.  Yet, to his sensitive nerves, the air
+seemed tingling with sensation, stirring with unseen activities.  Here
+the spirit of the desert seemed more insistent in its piercing vitality,
+because it was shut in by four stone walls.
+
+Mechanically he took off his coat, and was about to fold and lay it on
+the rug beside the bed, when something hard in one of the pockets knocked
+against his knee.  Searching, he found and drew forth a small bottle
+which, for many a month past, had lain in the drawer of a table where he
+had placed it on his return from the Soudan.  It was an evil spirit which
+sent this tiny phial to his hand at a moment when he had paid out of the
+full treasury of his strength and will its accumulated deposit, leaving
+him with a balance on which no heavy draft could be made.  His pulse
+quickened, then his body stiffened with the effort at self-control.
+
+Who placed this evil elixir in his pocket?  What any enemy of his work
+had done was nothing to what might be achieved by the secret foe, who had
+placed this anodyne within his reach at this the most critical moment of
+his life.  He remembered the last time he had used it--in the desert:
+two days of forgetfulness to the world, when it all moved by him, the
+swarming Arabs, the train of camels, the loads of ivory, the slimy
+crocodile on the sandbanks, the vultures hovering above unburied
+carcasses, the kourbash descending on shining black shoulders,
+corrugating bare brown bodies into cloven skin and lacerated flesh, a
+fight between champions of two tribes who clasped and smote and struggled
+and rained blows, and, both mortally wounded, still writhed in last
+conflict upon the ground--and Mahommed Hassan ever at the tent door or by
+his side, towering, watchful, sullen to all faces without, smiling to his
+own, with dog-like look waiting for any motion of his hand or any
+word....  Ah, Mahommed Hassan, it was he!  Mahommed had put this phial in
+his pocket.  His bitter secret was not hidden from Mahommed.  And this
+was an act of supreme devotion--to put at his hand the lulling, inspiring
+draught.  Did this fellah servant know what it meant--the sin of it, the
+temptation, the terrible joy, the blessed quiet; and then, the agonising
+remorse, the withering self-hatred and torturing penitence?  No, Mahommed
+only knew that when the Saadat was gone beyond his strength, when the
+sleepless nights and feverish days came in the past, in their great
+troubles, when men were dying and only the Saadat could save, that this
+cordial lifted him out of misery and storm into calm.  Yet Mahommed must
+have divined that it was a thing against which his soul revolted, or he
+would have given it to him openly.  In the heart and mind of the giant
+murderer, however, must have been the thought that now when trouble was
+upon his master again, trouble which might end all, this supreme
+destroyer of pain and dark memory and present misery, would give him the
+comfort he needed--and that he would take it.
+
+If he had not seen it, this sudden craving would not have seized him for
+this eager beguiling, this soothing benevolence.  Yet here it was in his
+hand; and even as it lay in his cold fingers--how cold they were, and his
+head how burning!--the desire for it surged up in him.  And, as though
+the thing itself had the magical power to summon up his troubles, that it
+might offer the apathy and stimulus in one--even as it lured him, his
+dangers, his anxieties, the black uncertainties massed, multiplied and
+aggressive, rose before him, buffeted him, caught at his throat, dragged
+down his shoulders, clutched at his heart.
+
+Now, with a cry of agony, he threw the phial on the ground, and, sinking
+on the bed, buried his face in his hands and moaned, and fought for
+freedom from the cords tightening round him.  It was for him to realise
+now how deep are the depths to which the human soul can sink, even while
+labouring to climb.  Once more the sense of awful futility was on him: of
+wasted toil and blenched force, veins of energy drained of their blood,
+hope smitten in the way, and every dear dream shattered.  Was it, then,
+all ended?  Was his work indeed fallen, and all his love undone?  Was his
+own redemption made impossible?  He had offered up his life to this land
+to atone for a life taken when she--when she first looked up with eyes of
+gratitude, eyes that haunted him.  Was it, then, unacceptable?  Was it so
+that he must turn his back upon this long, heart-breaking but beloved
+work, this panacea for his soul, without which he could not pay the price
+of blood?
+
+Go back to England--to Hamley where all had changed, where the old man he
+loved no longer ruled in the Red Mansion, where all that had been could
+be no more?  Go to some other land, and there begin again another such a
+work?  Were there not vast fields of human effort, effort such as his,
+where he could ease the sorrow of living by the joy of a divine altruism?
+Go back to Hamley?  Ah, no, a million times, no!  That life was dead, it
+was a cycle of years behind him.  There could be no return.  He was in a
+maelstrom of agony, his veins were afire, his lips were parched.  He
+sprang from his bed, knelt down, and felt for the little phial he had
+flung aside.  After a moment his hand caught it, clutched it.  But, even
+at the crest of the wave of temptation, words that he had heard one night
+in Hamley, that last night of all, flashed into his mind--the words
+of old Luke Claridge's prayer, "And if a viper fasten on his hand,
+O Lord--"
+
+Suddenly he paused.  That scene in the old Meetinghouse swam before his
+eyes, got into his brain.  He remembered the words of his own prayer, and
+how he had then retreated upon the Power that gave him power, for a
+draught of the one true tincture which braced the heart to throw itself
+upon the spears of trial.  Now the trial had come, and that which was in
+him as deep as being, the habit of youth, the mother-fibre and
+predisposition, responded to the draught he had drunk then.  As a body
+freed from the quivering, unrelenting grasp of an electric battery
+subsides into a cool quiet, so, through his veins seemed to pass an ether
+which stilled the tumult, the dark desire to drink the potion in his
+hand, and escape into that irresponsible, artificial world, where he had
+before loosened his hold on activity.
+
+The phial slipped from his fingers to the floor.  He sank upon the side
+of the bed, and, placing his hands on his knees, he whispered a few
+broken words that none on earth was meant to hear.  Then he passed into a
+strange and moveless quiet of mind and body.  Many a time in days gone
+by--far-off days--had he sat as he was doing now, feeling his mind pass
+into a soft, comforting quiet, absorbed in a sensation of existence, as
+it were between waking and sleeping, where doors opened to new experience
+and understanding, where the mind seemed to loose itself from the bonds
+of human necessity and find a freer air.
+
+Now, as he sat as still as the stone in the walls around him, he was
+conscious of a vision forming itself before his eyes.  At first it was
+indefinite, vague, without clear form, but at last it became a room dimly
+outlined, delicately veiled, as it were.  Then it seemed, not that
+the mist cleared, but that his eyes became stronger, and saw through the
+delicate haze; and now the room became wholly, concretely visible.
+
+It was the room in which he had said good-bye to Hylda.  As he gazed like
+one entranced, he saw a figure rise from a couch, pale, agitated, and
+beautiful, and come forward, as it were, towards him.  But suddenly the
+mist closed in again upon the scene, a depth of darkness passed his eyes,
+and he heard a voice say: "Speak--speak to me!"
+
+He heard her voice as distinctly as though she were beside him--as,
+indeed, she had stood before him but an instant ago.
+
+Getting slowly to his feet, into the night he sent an answer to the call.
+
+Would she hear?  She had said long ago that she would speak to him so.
+Perhaps she had tried before.  But now at last he had heard and answered.
+Had she heard?  Time might tell--if ever they met again.  But how good,
+and quiet, and serene was the night!
+
+He composed himself to sleep, but, as he lay waiting for that coverlet of
+forgetfulness to be drawn over him, he heard the sound of bells soft and
+clear.  Just such bells he had heard upon the common at Hamley.  Was it,
+then, the outcome of his vision--a sweet hallucination?  He leaned upon
+his elbow and listened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
+
+The bells that rang were not the bells of Hamley; they were part of no
+vision or hallucination, and they drew David out of his chamber into the
+night.  A little group of three stood sharply silhouetted against the
+moonlight, and towering above them was the spare, commanding form of Ebn
+Ezra Bey.  Three camels crouched near, and beside them stood a Nubian lad
+singing to himself the song of the camel-driver:
+
+         "Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the Etl tree;
+          Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well;
+          Allah send His gard'ner with the green bersim,
+          For thy comfort, fleet one, by the Etl tree.
+          As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown
+          Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more;
+          Till the pursuing winds panting have found thee
+          And, defeated, sink still beside thee--
+          By the well and the Etl tree."
+
+For a moment David stood in the doorway listening to the low song of the
+camel-driver.  Then he came forward.  As he did so, one of the two who
+stood with Ebn Ezra moved towards the monastery door slowly.  It was a
+monk with a face which, even in this dim light, showed a deathly
+weariness.  The eyes looked straight before him, as though they saw
+nothing of the world, only a goal to make, an object to be accomplished.
+The look of the face went to David's heart--the kinship of pain was
+theirs.
+
+"Peace be to thee," David said gently, as the other passed him.
+
+There was an instant's pause, and then the monk faced him with fingers
+uplifted.  "The grace of God be upon thee, David," he said, and his eyes,
+drawn back from the world where they had been exploring, met the other's
+keenly.  Then he wheeled and entered the monastery.
+
+"The grace of God be upon thee, David!"  How strange it sounded, this
+Christian blessing in response to his own Oriental greeting, out in this
+Eastern waste.  His own name, too.  It was as though he had been
+transported to the ancient world where "Brethren" were so few that they
+called each other by their "Christian" names--even as they did in Hamley
+to-day.  In Hamley to-day!  He closed his eyes, a tremor running through
+his body; and then, with an effort which stilled him to peace again, he
+moved forward, and was greeted by Ebn Ezra, from whom the third member of
+the little group had now drawn apart nearer to the acacia-tree, and was
+seated on a rock that jutted from the sand.  "What is it?" David asked.
+
+"Wouldst thou not sleep, Saadat?  Sleep is more to thee now than aught
+thou mayst hear from any man.  To all thou art kind save thyself."
+
+"I have rested," David answered, with a measured calmness, revealing to
+his friend the change which had come since they parted an hour before.
+They seated themselves under the palm-tree, and were silent for a moment,
+then Ebn Ezra said:
+
+"These come from the Place of Lepers."
+
+David started slightly.  "Zaida?" he asked, with a sigh of pity.
+
+"The monk who passed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers
+with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the
+afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left
+behind.  Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and
+after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just
+left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain
+place where he waits.  He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and,
+having read, heaps sand upon it.  And the message which the paper gives
+is for me."
+
+"For thee?  Hast thou there one who--"
+
+"There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and
+in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me
+alone,"--the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than
+life.  I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is
+not the mind of man; and he escaped me.  Then he was stricken with
+leprosy, and was carried to the place from whence no leper returns.  At
+first my heart rejoiced; then, at last, I forgave him, Saadat--was he not
+my father's son, and was the woman not gone to the bosom of Allah, where
+is peace?  So I forgave and sorrowed for him--who shall say what miseries
+are those which, minute to minute, day after day, and year upon year,
+repeat themselves, till it is an endless flaying of the body and burning
+of the soul!  Every year I send a message to him, and every year now this
+Christian monk--there is no Sheikh-el-Islam yonder--brings back the
+written message which he finds in the sand."
+
+"And thee has had a message to-night?"
+
+"The last that may come--God be praised, he goeth to his long home.  It
+was written in his last hour.  There was no hope; he is gone.  And so,
+one more reason showeth why I should go where thou goest, Saadat."
+
+Casting his eyes toward the figure by the acacia-tree, his face clouded
+and he pondered anxiously, looking at David the while.  Twice he essayed
+to speak, but paused.
+
+David's eyes followed his look.  "What is it?  Who is he--yonder?"
+
+The other rose to his feet.  "Come and see, Saadat," he replied.
+"Seeing, thou wilt know what to do."
+
+"Zaida--is it of Zaida?" David asked.
+
+"The man will answer for himself, Saadat."  Coming within a few feet of
+the figure crouched upon the rock, Ebn Ezra paused and stretched out a
+hand.  "A moment, Saadat.  Dost thou not see, dost thou not recognise
+him?"
+
+David intently studied the figure, which seemed unconscious of their
+presence.  The shoulders were stooping and relaxed as though from great
+fatigue, but David could see that the figure was that of a tall man.  The
+head was averted, but a rough beard covered the face, and, in the light
+of the fire, one hand that clutched it showed long and skinny and yellow
+and cruel.  The hand fascinated David's eyes.  Where had he seen it?  It
+flashed upon him--a hand clutching a robe, in a frenzy of fear, in the
+court-yard of the blue tiles, in Kaid's Palace--Achmet the Ropemaker!
+He drew back a step.
+
+"Achmet," he said in a low voice.  The figure stirred, the hand dropped
+from the beard and clutched the knee; but the head was not raised, and
+the body remained crouching and listless.
+
+"He escaped?" David said, turning to Ebn Ezra Bey.
+
+"I know not by what means--a camel-driver bribed, perhaps, and a camel
+left behind for him.  After the caravan had travelled a day's journey he
+joined it.  None knew what to do.  He was not a leper, and he was armed."
+
+"Leave him with me," said David.
+
+Ebn Ezra hesitated.  "He is armed; he was thy foe--"
+
+"I am armed also," David answered enigmatically, and indicated by a
+gesture that he wished to be left alone.  Ebn Ezra drew away towards the
+palm-tree, and stood at this distance watching anxiously, for he knew
+what dark passions seize upon the Oriental--and Achmet had many things
+for which to take vengeance.
+
+David stood for a moment, pondering, his eyes upon the deserter.  "God
+greet thee as thou goest, and His goodness befriend thee," he said
+evenly.  There was silence, and no movement.  "Rise and speak," he added
+sternly.  "Dost thou not hear?  Rise, Achmet Pasha!"
+
+Achmet Pasha!  The head of the desolate wretch lifted, the eyes glared at
+David for an instant, as though to see whether he was being mocked, and
+then the spare figure stretched itself, and the outcast stood up.  The
+old lank straightness was gone, the shoulders were bent, the head was
+thrust forward, as though the long habit of looking into dark places had
+bowed it out of all manhood.
+
+"May grass spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice,
+and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's
+formularies.
+
+"What dost thou here, pasha?" asked David formally.  "Thy sentence had
+no limit."
+
+"I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther
+forward.  "Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them.
+I was no leper; I am no leper.  My penalty was my penalty, and I paid
+it to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind.  It was not
+one death, it was death every hour, every day I stayed.  I had no mind.
+I could not think.  Mummy-cloths were round my brain; but the fire burned
+underneath and would not die.  There was the desert, but my limbs were
+like rushes.  I had no will, and I could not flee.  I was chained to the
+evil place.  If I stayed it was death, if I went it was death."
+
+"Thou art armed now," said David suggestively.  Achmet laid a hand
+fiercely upon a dagger under his robe.  "I hid it.  I was afraid.  I
+could not die--my hand was like a withered leaf; it could not strike; my
+heart poured out like water.  Once I struck a leper, that he might strike
+and kill me; but he lay upon the ground and wept, for all his anger,
+which had been great, died in him at last.  There was none other given to
+anger there.  The leper has neither anger, nor mirth, nor violence, nor
+peace.  It is all the black silent shame--and I was no leper."
+
+"Why didst thou come?  What is there but death for thee here, or anywhere
+thou goest!  Kaid's arm will find thee; a thousand hands wait to strike
+thee."
+
+"I could not die there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with
+sudden fierceness.  "Is it that which would make me repent?  Was I worse
+than thousands of others?  I have come out to die--to fight and die.
+Aiwa, I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me death
+as I desire it.  My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and she was got
+by war, and all her people.  War and fighting were their portion--as they
+ate, as they drank and slept.  In the black years behind me among the
+Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the dead, and the
+agony of death, and the poison of the agony!  Life, it is done for me--
+am I not accursed?  But to die fighting--ay, fighting for Egypt, since it
+must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to strike, and strike,
+and strike, and earn death!  Must the dog, because he is a dog, die in
+the slime?  Shall he not be driven from the village to die in the clean
+sand?  Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did with Egypt what
+he willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand?  Is there in me
+aught of that Achmet that any should know?"
+
+"None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David.
+
+"I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way of
+escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan.  There will be fighting
+there--"
+
+"Not by my will," interrupted David.
+
+"Then by the will of Sheitan the accursed; but there will be fighting--
+am I not an Arab, do I not know?  Thou hast not conquered yet.  Bid me go
+where thou wilt, do what thou wilt, so that I may be among the fighters,
+and in the battle forget what I have seen.  Since I am unclean, and am
+denied the bosom of Allah, shall I not go as a warrior to Hell, where men
+will fear me?  Speak, Saadat, canst thou deny me this?"
+
+Nothing of repentance, so far as he knew, moved the dark soul; but, like
+some evil spirit, he would choose the way to his own doom, the place and
+the manner of it: a sullen, cruel, evil being, unyielding in his evil,
+unmoved by remorse--so far as he knew.  Yet he would die fighting, and
+for Egypt "and for thee, if it must be so.  To strike, to strike, to
+strike, and earn death!"  What Achmet did not see, David saw, the glimmer
+of light breaking through the cloud of shame and evil and doom.  Yonder
+in the Soudan more problems than one would be solved, more lives than one
+be put to the extreme test.  He did not answer Achmet's question yet.
+"Zaida--?" he said in a low voice.  The pathos of her doom had been a
+dark memory.
+
+Achmet's voice dropped lower as he answered.  "She lived till the day her
+sister died.  I never saw her face; but I was sent to bear each day to
+her door the food she ate and a balass of water; and I did according to
+my sentence.  Yet I heard her voice.  And once, at last, the day she
+died, she spoke to me, and said from inside the hut: 'Thy work is done,
+Achmet.  Go in peace.'  And that night she lay down on her sister's
+grave, and in the morning she was found dead upon it."
+
+David's eyes were blinded with tears.  "It was too long," he said at
+last, as though to himself.
+
+"That day," continued Achmet, "there fell ill with leprosy the Christian
+priest from this place who had served in that black service so long; and
+then a fire leapt up in me.  Zaida was gone--I had brought food and a
+balass of water to her door those many times; there was naught to do,
+since she was gone--"
+
+Suddenly David took a step nearer to him and looked into the sullen and
+drooping eyes.  "Thou shalt go with me, Achmet.  I will do this unlawful
+act for thee.  At daybreak I will give thee orders.  Thou shalt join me
+far from here--if I go to the Soudan," he added, with a sudden
+remembrance of his position; and he turned away slowly.
+
+After a moment, with muttered words, Achmet sank down upon the stone
+again, drew a cake of dourha from his inner robe, and began to eat.
+
+The camel-boy had lighted a fire, and he sat beside it warming his hands
+at the blaze and still singing to himself:
+
+    "The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses,
+     The face of my love I will touch with the balm
+     With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood,
+     From the wood without end, in the world without end.
+     My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup,
+     And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew,
+     And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink,
+     I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips--"
+
+David stood listening.  What power was there in desert life that could
+make this poor camel-driver, at the end of a long day of weariness and
+toil and little food and drink, sing a song of content and cheerfulness?
+The little needed, the little granted, and no thought beyond--save the
+vision of one who waited in the hut by the onion-field.  He gathered
+himself together and tuned his mind to the scene through which he had
+just passed, and then to the interview he would have with Kaid on the
+morrow.  A few hours ago he had seen no way out of it all--he had had no
+real hope that Kaid would turn to him again; but the last two hours had
+changed all that.  Hope was alive in him.  He had fought a desperate
+fight with himself, and he had conquered.  Then had come Achmet,
+unrepentant, degraded still, but with the spirit of Something glowing--
+Achmet to die for a cause, driven by that Something deep beneath the
+degradation and the crime.  He had hope, and, as the camel-driver's voice
+died away, and he lay down with a sheep-skin over him and went instantly
+to sleep, David drew to the fire and sat down beside it.  Presently Ebn
+Ezra came to urge him to go to bed, but he would not.  He had slept, he
+said; he had slept and rested, and the night was good--he would wait.
+Then the other brought rugs and blankets, and gave David some, and lay
+down beside the fire, and watched and waited for he knew not what.  Ever
+and ever his eyes were on David, and far back under the acacia-tree
+Achmet slept as he had not slept since his doom fell on him.
+
+At last Ebn Ezra Bey also slept; but David was awake with the night and
+the benevolent moon and the marching stars.  The spirit of the desert was
+on him, filling him with its voiceless music.  From the infinite
+stretches of sand to the south came the irresistible call of life, as
+soft as the leaves in a garden of roses, as deep as the sea.  This world
+was still, yet there seemed a low, delicate humming, as of multitudinous
+looms at a distance so great that the ear but faintly caught it--the
+sound of the weavers of life and destiny and eternal love, the hands of
+the toilers of all the ages spinning and spinning on; and he was part of
+it, not abashed or dismayed because he was but one of the illimitable
+throng.
+
+The hours wore on, but still he sat there, peace in all his heart, energy
+tingling softly through every vein, the wings of hope fluttering at his
+ear.
+
+At length the morning came, and, from the west, with the rising sun, came
+a traveller swiftly, making for where he was.  The sleepers stirred
+around him and waked and rose.  The little camp became alive.  As the
+traveller neared the fresh-made fire, David saw that it was Lacey.  He
+went eagerly to meet him.
+
+"Thee has news," he said.  "I see it is so."  He held Lacey's hand in
+his.
+
+"Say, you are going on that expedition, Saadat.  You wanted money.  Will
+a quarter of a million do?"  David's eyes caught fire.
+
+From the monastery there came the voices of the monks:
+
+     "O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands.  Serve the Lord with
+     gladness, and come before His presence with a song."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE DARK INDENTURE
+
+Nahoum had forgotten one very important thing: that what affected David
+as a Christian in Egypt would tell equally against himself.  If, in his
+ill-health and dejection, Kaid drank deep of the cup of Mahomet, the red
+eyes of fanaticism would be turned upon the Armenian, as upon the
+European Christian.  He had forgotten it for the moment, but when, coming
+into Kaid's Palace, a little knot of loiterers spat upon the ground and
+snarled, "Infidel--Nazarene!" with contempt and hatred, the significance
+of the position came home to him.  He made his way to a far quarter of
+the Palace, thoughtfully weighing the circumstances, and was met by
+Mizraim.
+
+Mizraim salaamed.  "The height of thy renown be as the cedar of Lebanon,
+Excellency."
+
+"May thy feet tread the corn of everlasting fortune, son of Mahomet."
+
+They entered the room together.  Nahoum looked at Mizraim curiously.  He
+was not satisfied with what he saw.  Mizraim's impassive face had little
+expression, but the eyes were furtively eager and sinister.
+
+"Well, so it is, and if it is, what then?" asked Nahoum coolly.
+
+"Ki di, so it is," answered Mizraim, and a ghastly smile came to his
+lips.  This infidel pasha, Nahoum, had a mind that pierced to the meaning
+of words ere they were spoken.  Mizraim's hand touched his forehead, his
+breast, his lips, and, clasping and unclasping his long, snakelike
+fingers, he began the story he had come to tell.
+
+"The Inglesi, whom Allah confound, the Effendina hath blackened by a
+look, his words have smitten him in the vital parts--"
+
+"Mizraim, thou dove, speak to the purpose!"  Mizraim showed a dark
+pleasure at the interruption.  Nahoum was impatient, anxious; that made
+the tale better worth telling.
+
+"Sharif and the discontented ones who dare not act, like the vultures,
+they flee the living man, but swoop upon the corpse.  The consuls of
+those countries who love not England or Claridge Pasha, and the holy men,
+and the Cadi, all scatter smouldering fires.  There is a spirit in the
+Palace and beyond which is blowing fast to a great flame."
+
+"Then, so it is, great one, and what bodes it?"
+
+"It may kill the Inglesi; but it will also sweep thee from the fields of
+life where thou dost flourish."
+
+"It is not against the foreigner, but against the Christian, Mizraim?"
+
+"Thy tongue hath wisdom, Excellency."
+
+"Thou art a Muslim--"
+
+"Why do I warn thee?  For service done to me; and because there is none
+other worth serving in Egypt.  Behold, it is my destiny to rule others,
+to serve thee."
+
+"Once more thy turban full of gold, Mizraim, if thou dost service now
+that hath meaning and is not a belching of wind and words.  Thou hast a
+thing to say--say it, and see if Nahoum hath lost his wit, or hath a
+palsied arm."
+
+"Then behold, pasha.  Are not my spies in all the Palace?  Is not my
+scourge heavier than the whip of the horned horse?  Ki di, so it is.
+This I have found.  Sharif hath, with others, made a plot which hath
+enough powder in it to shake Egypt, and toss thee from thy high place
+into the depths.  There is a Christian--an Armenian, as it chances; but
+he was chosen because he was a Christian, and for that only.  His name is
+Rahib.  He is a tent-maker.  He had three sons.  They did kill an effendi
+who had cheated them of their land.  Two of them were hanged last week;
+the other, caught but a few days since, is to hang within three days.
+To-day Kaid goes to the Mosque of Mahmoud, as is the custom at this
+festival.  The old man hath been persuaded to attempt the life of Kaid,
+upon condition that his son--his Benjamin--is set free.  It will be but
+an attempt at Kaid's life, no more; but the cry will go forth that a
+Christian did the thing; and the Muslim flame will leap high."
+
+"And the tent-maker?" asked Nahoum musingly, though he was turning over
+the tale in his mind, seeing behind it and its far consequences.
+
+"Malaish, what does it matter!  But he is to escape, and they are to hang
+another Christian in his stead for the attempt on Kaid.  It hath no
+skill, but it would suffice.  With the dervishes gone malboos, and the
+faithful drunk with piety--canst thou not see the issue, pasha?  Blood
+will be shed."
+
+"The Jews of Europe would be angry," said Nahoum grimly but evenly.  "The
+loans have been many, and Kaid has given a lien by the new canal at Suez.
+The Jews will be angry," he repeated, "and for every drop of Christian
+blood shed there would be a lanced vein here.  But that would not bring
+back Nahoum Pasha," he continued cynically.  "Well, this is thy story,
+Mizraim; this is what they would do.  Now what hast thou done to stop
+their doing?"
+
+"Am I not a Muslim?  Shall I give Sharif to the Nile?"
+
+Nahoum smiled darkly.  "There is a simpler way.  Thy mind ever runs on
+the bowstring and the sword.  These are great, but there is a greater.
+It is the mocking finger.  At midnight, when Kaid goes to the Mosque
+Mahmoud, a finger will mock the plotters till they are buried in
+confusion.  Thou knowest the governor of the prisons--has he not need of
+something?  Hath he never sought favours of thee?"
+
+"Bismillah, but a week ago!"
+
+"Then, listen, thou shepherd of the sheep--"
+
+He paused, as there came a tap at the door, and a slave entered hurriedly
+and addressed Nahoum.  "The effendi, Ebn Ezra Bey, whom thou didst set me
+to watch, he hath entered the Palace, and asks for the Effendina."
+
+Nahoum started, and his face clouded, but his eyes flashed fire.  He
+tossed the slave a coin.  "Thou hast done well.  Where is he now?"
+
+"He waits in the hall, where is the statue of Mehemet Ali and the lions."
+
+"In an hour, Mizraim, thou shalt hear what I intend.  Peace be to thee!"
+
+"And on thee, peace!" answered Mizraim, as Nahoum passed from the room,
+and walked hastily towards the hall where he should find Ebn Ezra Bey.
+Nearing the spot, he brought his step to a deliberate slowness, and
+appeared not to notice the stately Arab till almost upon him.
+
+"Salaam, effendi," he said smoothly, yet with inquisition in his eye,
+with malice in his tone.
+
+"Salaam, Excellency."
+
+"Thou art come on the business of thy master?"
+
+"Who is my master, Excellency?"
+
+"Till yesterday it was Claridge Pasha.  Hast thou then forsaken him in
+his trouble--the rat from the sinking ship?"
+
+A flush passed over Ebn Ezra Bey's face, and his mouth opened with a gasp
+of anger.  Oriental though he was, he was not as astute as this Armenian
+Christian, who was purposely insulting him, that he might, in a moment of
+heat, snatch from him the business he meant to lay before Kaid.  Nahoum
+had not miscalculated.
+
+"I have but one master, Excellency," Ebn Ezra answered quietly at last,
+"and I have served him straightly.  Hast thou done likewise?"
+
+"What is straight to thee might well be crooked to me, effendi."
+
+"Thou art crooked as the finger of a paralytic."
+
+"Yet I have worked in peace with Claridge Pasha for these years past,
+even until yesterday, when thou didst leave him to his fate."
+
+"His ship will sail when thine is crumbling on the sands, and all thou
+art is like a forsaken cockatrice's nest."
+
+"Is it this thou hast come to say to the Effendina?"
+
+"What I have come to say to the Effendina is for the world to know after
+it hath reached his ears.  I know thee, Nahoum Pasha.  Thou art a
+traitor.  Claridge Pasha would abolish slavery, and thou dost receive
+great sums of gold from the slave-dealers to prevent it."
+
+"Is it this thou wilt tell Kaid?" Nahoum asked with a sneer.  "And hast
+thou proofs?"
+
+"Even this day they have come to my hands from the south."
+
+"Yet I think the proofs thou hast will not avail; and I think that thou
+wilt not show them to Kaid.  The gift of second thinking is a great gift.
+Thou must find greater reason for seeking the Effendina."
+
+"That too shall be.  Gold thou hadst to pay the wages of the soldiers of
+the south.  Thou didst keep the gold and order the slave-hunt; and the
+soldiers of the Effendina have been paid in human flesh and blood--ten
+thousand slaves since Claridge Pasha left the Soudan, and three thousand
+dead upon the desert sands, abandoned by those who hunted them when water
+grew scarce and food failed.  To-day shall see thy fall."
+
+At his first words Nahoum had felt a shock, from which his spirit reeled;
+but an inspiration came to him on the moment; and he listened with a
+saturnine coolness to the passionate words of the indignant figure
+towering above him.  When Ebn Ezra had finished, he replied quietly:
+
+"It is even as thou sayest, effendi.  The soldiers were paid in slaves
+got in the slave-hunt; and I have gold from the slave-dealers.  I needed
+it, for the hour is come when I must do more for Egypt than I have ever
+done."
+
+With a gesture of contempt Ebn Ezra made to leave, seeing an official of
+the Palace in the distance.  Nahoum stopped him.  "But, one moment ere
+thou dost thrust thy hand into the cockatrice's den.  Thou dost measure
+thyself against Nahoum?  In patience and with care have I trained myself
+for the battle.  The bulls of Bashan may roar, yet my feet are shod with
+safety.  Thou wouldst go to Kaid and tell him thy affrighted tale.  I
+tell thee, thou wilt not go.  Thou hast reason yet, though thy blood is
+hot.  Thou art to Claridge Pasha like a brother--as to his uncle before
+him, who furnished my father's palace with carpets.  The carpets still
+soften the fall of my feet in my father's palace, as they did soften the
+fall of my brother's feet, the feet of Foorgat Bey."
+
+He paused, looking at Ebn Ezra with quiet triumph, though his eyes had
+ever that smiling innocence which had won David in days gone by.  He was
+turning his words over on the tongue with a relish born of long waiting.
+
+"Come," he said presently--"come, and I will give thee reason why thou
+wilt not speak with Kaid to-day.  This way, effendi."
+
+He led the other into a little room hung about with rugs and tapestry,
+and, going to the wall, he touched a spring.  "One moment here, effendi,"
+he added quietly.  The room was as it had been since David last stood
+within it.
+
+"In this room, effendi," Nahoum said with cold deliberation, "Claridge
+Pasha killed my brother, Foorgat Bey."
+
+Ebn Ezra fell back as though he had been struck.  Swiftly Nahoum told him
+the whole truth--even to the picture of the brougham, and the rigid,
+upright figure passing through the night to Foorgat's palace, the gaunt
+Mizraim piloting the equipage of death.
+
+"I have held my peace for my own reasons, effendi.  Wilt thou then force
+me to speak?  If thou dost still cherish Claridge Pasha, wilt thou see
+him ruined?  Naught but ruin could follow the telling of the tale at this
+moment--his work, his life, all done.  The scandal, the law, vengeance!
+But as it is now, Kaid may turn to him again; his work may yet go on--he
+has had the luck of angels, and Kaid is fickle.  Who can tell?"
+
+Abashed and overwhelmed, Ebn Ezra Bey looked at him keenly.  "To tell of
+Foorgat Bey would ruin thee also," he said.  "That thou knowest.  The
+trick--would Kaid forgive it?  Claridge Pasha would not be ruined alone."
+
+"Be it so.  If thou goest to Kaid with thy story, I go to Egypt with
+mine.  Choose."
+
+Ebn Ezra turned to go.  "The high God judge between him and thee," he
+said, and, with bowed head, left the Palace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
+
+"CLARIDGE PASHA!"
+
+At the sound of the words, announced in a loud voice, hundreds of heads
+were turned towards the entrance of the vast salon, resplendent with
+gilded mirrors, great candelabra and chandeliers, golden hangings, and
+divans glowing with robes of yellow silk.
+
+It was the anniversary of Kaid's succession, and all entitled to come
+poured into the splendid chamber.  The showy livery of the officials, the
+loose, spacious, gorgeous uniforms of the officers, with the curved
+jewelled scimitars and white turbans, the rich silk robes of the Ulema,
+robe over robe of coloured silk with flowing sleeves and sumptuous silken
+vests, the ample dignity of noble-looking Arabs in immense white turbans,
+the dark straight Stambouli coat of the officials, made a picture of
+striking variety and colour and interest.
+
+About the centre of the room, laying palm to palm again and yet again,
+touching lips and forehead and breast, speaking with slow, leisurely,
+voices, were two Arab sheikhs from the far Soudan.  One of these showed a
+singular interest in the movements of Nahoum Pasha as he entered the
+chamber, and an even greater interest in David when he was announced; but
+as David, in his journey up the chamber, must pass near him, he drew
+behind a little group of officials, who whispered to each other excitedly
+as David came on.  More than once before this same Sheikh Abdullah had
+seen David, and once they had met, and had made a treaty of amity, and
+Abdullah had agreed to deal in slaves no more; and yet within three
+months had sent to Cairo two hundred of the best that could be found
+between Khartoum and Senaar.  His business, of which Ebn Ezra Bey had due
+knowledge, had now been with Nahoum.  The business of the other Arab, a
+noble-looking and wiry Bedouin from the South, had been with Ebn Ezra
+Bey, and each hid his business from his friend.  Abdullah murmured to
+himself as David passed--a murmur of admiration and astonishment.  He had
+heard of the disfavour in which the Inglesi was; but, as he looked at
+David's face with its quiet smile, the influence which he felt in the
+desert long ago came over him again.
+
+"By Allah," he said aloud abstractedly, "it is a face that will not hide
+when the khamsin blows!  Who shall gainsay it?  If he were not an infidel
+he would be a Mahdi."
+
+To this his Bedouin friend replied: "As the depths of the pool at Ghebel
+Farik, so are his eyes.  You shall dip deep and you shall not find the
+bottom.  Bismillah, I would fight Kaid's Nubians, but not this infidel
+pasha!"
+
+Never had David appeared to such advantage.  The victory over himself the
+night before, the message of hope that had reached him at the monastery
+in the desert, the coming of Lacey, had given him a certain quiet
+masterfulness not reassuring to his foes.
+
+As he entered the chamber but now, there flashed into his mind the scene
+six years ago when, an absolute stranger, he had stepped into this
+Eastern salon, and had heard his name called out to the great throng:
+"Claridge efendi!"
+
+He addressed no one, but he bowed to the group of foreign consuls-
+general, looking them steadily in the eyes.  He knew their devices and
+what had been going on of late, he was aware that his fall would mean a
+blow to British prestige, and the calmness of his gaze expressed a
+fortitude which had a disconcerting effect upon the group.  The British
+Consul-General stood near by.  David advanced to him, and, as he did so,
+the few who surrounded the Consul-General fell back.  David held out his
+hand.  Somewhat abashed and ill at ease, the Consul-General took it.
+
+"Have you good news from Downing Street?" asked David quietly.
+
+The Consul-General hesitated for an instant, and then said: "There is no
+help to be had for you or for what you are doing in that quarter."  He
+lowered his voice.  "I fear Lord Eglington does not favour you; and he
+controls the Foreign Minister.  I am very sorry.  I have done my best,
+but my colleagues, the other consuls, are busy--with Lord Eglington."
+
+David turned his head away for an instant.  Strange how that name sent a
+thrill through him, stirred his blood!  He did not answer the Consul-
+General, and the latter continued:
+
+"Is there any hope?  Is the breach with Kaid complete?"
+
+David smiled gravely.  "We shall see presently.  I have made no change in
+my plans on the basis of a breach."
+
+At that moment he caught sight of Nahoum some distance away and moved
+towards him.  Out of the corner of his eye Nahoum saw David coming, and
+edged away towards that point where Kaid would enter, and where the crowd
+was greater.  As he did so Kaid appeared.  A thrill went through the
+chamber.  Contrary to his custom, he was dressed in the old native
+military dress of Mehemet Ali.  At his side was a jewelled scimitar, and
+in his turban flashed a great diamond.  In his hand he carried a snuff-
+box, covered with brilliants, and on his breast were glittering orders.
+
+The eyes of the reactionaries flashed with sinister pleasure when they
+saw Kaid.  This outward display of Orientalism could only be a reflex of
+the mind.  It was the outer symbol of Kaid's return to the spirit of the
+old days, before the influence of the Inglesi came upon him.  Every
+corrupt and intriguing mind had a palpitation of excitement.
+
+In Nahoum the sight of Kaid produced mixed feelings.  If, indeed, this
+display meant reaction towards an entourage purely Arab, Egyptian, and
+Muslim, then it was no good omen for his Christian self.  He drew near,
+and placed himself where Kaid could see him.  Kaid's manner was cheerful,
+but his face showed the effect of suffering, physical and mental.
+Presently there entered behind him Sharif Bey, whose appearance was the
+signal for a fresh demonstration.  Now, indeed, there could be no doubt
+as to Kaid's reaction.  Yet if Sharif had seen Mizraim's face evilly
+gloating near by he would have been less confident.
+
+David was standing where Kaid must see him, but the Effendina gave no
+sign of recognition.  This was so significant that the enemies of David
+rejoiced anew.  The day of the Inglesi was over.  Again and again did
+Kaid's eye wander over David's head.
+
+David remained calm and watchful, neither avoiding nor yet seeking the
+circle in which Kaid moved.  The spirit with which he had entered the
+room, however, remained with him, even when he saw Kaid summon to him
+some of the most fanatical members of the court circle, and engage them
+in talk for a moment.  But as this attention grew more marked, a cloud
+slowly gathered in the far skies of his mind.
+
+There was one person in the great assembly, however, who seemed to be
+unduly confident.  It was an ample, perspiring person in evening dress,
+who now and again mopped a prematurely bald head, and who said to
+himself, as Kaid talked to the reactionaries:
+
+"Say, Kald's overdoing it.  He's putting potted chicken on the butter.
+But it's working all right-r-i-g-h-t.  It's worth the backsheesh!"
+
+At this moment Kaid fastened David with his look, and spoke in a tone so
+loud that people standing at some distance were startled.
+
+"Claridge Pasha!"
+
+In the hush that followed David stepped forward.  "May the bounty of the
+years be thine, Saadat," Kaid said in a tone none could misunderstand.
+
+"May no tree in thy orchard wither, Effendina," answered David in a firm
+voice.
+
+Kaid beckoned him near, and again he spoke loudly: "I have proved thee,
+and found thee as gold tried seven times by the fire, Saadat.  In the
+treasury of my heart shall I store thee up.  Thou art going to the Soudan
+to finish the work Mehemet Ali began.  I commend thee to Allah, and will
+bid thee farewell at sunrise--I and all who love Egypt."
+
+There was a sinister smile on his lips, as his eyes wandered over the
+faces of the foreign consuls-general.  The look he turned on the
+intriguers of the Palace was repellent; he reserved for Sharif a moody,
+threatening glance, and the desperate hakim shrank back confounded from
+it.  His first impulse was to flee from the Palace and from Cairo; but he
+bethought himself of the assault to be made on Kaid by the tent-maker, as
+he passed to the mosque a few hours later, and he determined to await the
+issue of that event.  Exchanging glances with confederates, he
+disappeared, as Kaid laid a hand on David's arm and drew him aside.
+
+After viewing the great throng cynically for a moment Kaid said: "To-
+morrow thou goest.  A month hence the hakim's knife will find the thing
+that eats away my life.  It may be they will destroy it and save me; if
+not, we shall meet no more."
+
+David looked into his eyes.  "Not in a month shall thy work be completed,
+Effendina.  Thou shalt live.  God and thy strong will shall make it so."
+
+A light stole over the superstitious face.  "No device or hatred, or
+plot, has prevailed against thee," Kaid said eagerly.  "Thou hast
+defeated all--even when I turned against thee in the black blood of
+despair.  Thou hast conquered me even as thou didst Harrik."
+
+"Thou dost live," returned David drily.  "Thou dost live for Egypt's
+sake, even as Harrik died for Egypt's sake, and as others shall die."
+
+"Death hath tracked thee down how often!  Yet with a wave of the hand
+thou hast blinded him, and his blow falls on the air.  Thou art beset by
+a thousand dangers, yet thou comest safe through all.  Thou art an honest
+man.  For that I besought thee to stay with me.  Never didst thou lie to
+me.  Good luck hath followed thee.  Kismet!  Stay with me, and it may be
+I shall be safe also.  This thought came to me in the night, and in the
+morning was my reward, for Lacey effendi came to me and said, even as I
+say now, that thou wilt bring me good luck; and even in that hour, by the
+mercy of God, a loan much needed was negotiated.  Allah be praised!"
+
+A glint of humour shot into David's eyes.  Lacey--a loan--he read it all!
+Lacey had eased the Prince Pasha's immediate and pressing financial
+needs--and, "Allah be praised!"  Poor human nature--backsheesh to a
+Prince regnant!
+
+"Effendina," he said presently, "thou didst speak of Harrik.  One there
+was who saved thee then--" "Zaida!"  A change passed over Kaid's face.
+"Speak!  Thou hast news of her?  She is gone?"  Briefly David told him
+how Zaida was found upon her sister's grave.  Kaid's face was turned away
+as he listened.
+
+"She spoke no word of me?" Kaid said at last.  "To whom should she
+speak?" David asked gently.  "But the amulet thou gavest her, set with
+one red jewel, it was clasped in her hand in death."
+
+Suddenly Kaid's anger blazed.  "Now shall Achmet die," he burst out.
+"His hands and feet shall be burnt off, and he shall be thrown to the
+vultures."
+
+"The Place of the Lepers is sacred even from thee, Effendina," answered
+David gravely.  "Yet Achmet shall die even as Harrik died.  He shall die
+for Egypt and for thee, Effendina."
+
+Swiftly he drew the picture of Achmet at the monastery in the desert.
+"I have done the unlawful thing, Effendina," he said at last, "but thou
+wilt make it lawful.  He hath died a thousand deaths--all save one."
+
+"Be it so," answered Kaid gloomily, after a moment; then his face lighted
+with cynical pleasure as he scanned once more the faces of the crowd
+before him.  At last his eyes fastened on Nahoum.  He turned to David.
+
+"Thou dost still desire Nahoum in his office?" he asked keenly.
+
+A troubled look came into David's eyes, then it cleared away, and he said
+firmly: "For six years we have worked together, Effendina.  I am surety
+for his loyalty to thee."
+
+"And his loyalty to thee?"
+
+A pained look crossed over David's face again, but he said with a will
+that fought all suspicion down: "The years bear witness."
+
+Kaid shrugged his shoulders slightly.  "The years have perjured
+themselves ere this.  Yet, as thou sayest, Nahoum is a Christian," he
+added, with irony scarcely veiled.
+
+Now he moved forward with David towards the waiting court.  David
+searched the groups of faces for Nahoum in vain.  There were things
+to be said to Nahoum before he left on the morrow, last suggestions
+to be given.  Nahoum could not be seen.
+
+Nahoum was gone, as were also Sharif and his confederates, and in the
+lofty Mosque of Mahmoud soft lights were hovering, while the Sheikh-el-
+Islam waited with Koran and scimitar for the ruler of Egypt to pray to
+God and salute the Lord Mahomet.
+
+At the great gateway in the Street of the Tent Makers Kaid paused on his
+way to the Mosque Mahmoud.  The Gate was studded with thousands of nails,
+which fastened to its massive timbers relics of the faithful, bits of
+silk and cloth, and hair and leather; and here from time immemorial a
+holy man had sat and prayed.  At the gateway Kaid salaamed humbly, and
+spoke to the holy man, who, as he passed, raised his voice shrilly in an
+appeal to Allah, commending Kaid to mercy and everlasting favour.  On
+every side eyes burned with religious zeal, and excited faces were turned
+towards the Effendina.  At a certain point there were little groups of
+men with faces more set than excited.  They had a look of suppressed
+expectancy.  Kald neared them, passed them, and, as he did so, they
+looked at each other in consternation.  They were Sharif's confederates,
+fanatics carefully chosen.  The attempt on Kaid's life should have been
+made opposite the spot where they stood.  They craned their necks in
+effort to find the Christian tent-maker, but in vain.
+
+Suddenly they heard a cry, a loud voice calling.  It was Rahib the tent-
+maker.  He was beside Kaid's stirrups, but no weapon was in his hand; and
+his voice was calling blessings down on the Effendina's head for having
+pardoned and saved from death his one remaining son, the joy of his old
+age.  In all the world there was no prince like Kaid, said the tent-
+maker; none so bountiful and merciful and beautiful in the eyes of men.
+God grant him everlasting days, the beloved friend of his people, just to
+all and greatly to be praised.
+
+As the soldiers drove the old man away with kindly insistence--for Kaid
+had thrown him a handful of gold--Mizraim, the Chief Eunuch, laughed
+wickedly.  As Nahoum had said, the greatest of all weapons was the
+mocking finger.  He and Mizraim had had their way with the governor of
+the prisons, and the murderer had gone in safety, while the father stayed
+to bless Kaid.  Rahib the tent-maker had fooled the plotters.  They were
+mad in derision.  They did not know that Kaid was as innocent as
+themselves of having pardoned the tent-maker's son.  Their moment had
+passed; they could not overtake it; the match had spluttered and gone out
+at the fuel laid for the fire of fanaticism.
+
+The morning of David's departure came.  While yet it was dark he had
+risen, and had made his last preparations.  When he came into the open
+air and mounted, it was not yet sunrise, and in that spectral early
+light, which is all Egypt's own, Cairo looked like some dream-city in a
+forgotten world.  The Mokattam Hills were like vast dun barriers guarding
+and shutting in the ghostly place, and, high above all, the minarets of
+the huge mosque upon the lofty rocks were impalpable fingers pointing an
+endless flight.  The very trees seemed so little real and substantial
+that they gave the eye the impression that they might rise and float
+away.  The Nile was hung with mist, a trailing cloud unwound from the
+breast of the Nile-mother.  At last the sun touched the minarets of the
+splendid mosque with shafts of light, and over at Ghizeh and Sakkarah the
+great pyramids, lifting their heads from the wall of rolling blue mist
+below, took the morning's crimson radiance with the dignity of four
+thousand years.
+
+On the decks of the little steamer which was to carry them south David,
+Ebn Ezra, Lacey, and Mahommed waited.  Presently Kaid came, accompanied
+by his faithful Nubians, their armour glowing in the first warm light of
+the rising sun, and crowds of people, who had suddenly emerged, ran
+shrilling to the waterside behind him.
+
+Kaid's pale face had all last night's friendliness, as he bade David
+farewell with great honour, and commended him to the care of Allah; and
+the swords of the Nubians clashed against their breasts and on their
+shields in salaam.
+
+But there was another farewell to make; and it was made as David's foot
+touched the deck of the steamer.  Once again David looked at Nahoum as he
+had done six years ago, in the little room where they had made their bond
+together.  There was the same straight look in Nahoum's eyes.  Was he not
+to be trusted?  Was it not his own duty to trust?  He clasped Nahoum's
+hand in farewell, and turned away.  But as he gave the signal to start,
+and the vessel began to move, Nahoum came back.  He leaned over the
+widening space and said in a low tone, as David again drew near:
+
+"There is still an account which should be settled, Saadat.  It has
+waited long; but God is with the patient.  There is the account of
+Foorgat Bey."
+
+The light fled from David's eyes and his heart stopped beating for a
+moment.  When his eyes saw the shore again Nahoum was gone with Kaid.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Cherish any alleviating lie
+Triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation
+When God permits, shall man despair?
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEAVERS BY PARKER, V4 ***
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