This eBook was produced by David Widger

THE WEAVERS

By Gilbert Parker

BOOK II.

V. THE WIDER WAY VI. "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY" VII. THE COMPACT VIII. FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN X. THE FOUR WHO KNEW XI. AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT XII. THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS XIII. ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES XIV. BEYOND THE PALE

CHAPTER V

THE WIDER WAY

Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo from Faith Claridge in Hamley:

David, I write thee from the village and the land of the people which thou didst once love so well. Does thee love them still? They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didst grind the flour for the baking. Thee didst frighten all who knew thee with thy doings that mad midsummer time. The tavern, the theatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit—was ever such a day!

Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing. But first, a moment. Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house on that day? What think thee has happened? He followed to London the lass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him. This she refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if in three years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard- working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider. Her head was high. She has become maid to a lady of degree, who has well befriended her.

How do I know these things? Even from Jasper Kimber, who, on his return from London, was taken to his bed with fever. Because of the hard blows dealt him by thee, I went to make amends. He welcomed me, and soon opened his whole mind. That mind has generous moments, David, for he took to being thankful for thy knocks.

Now for the strange thing I hinted. After visiting Jasper Kimber at Heddington, as I came back over the hill by the path we all took that day after the Meeting—Ebn Ezra Bey, my father, Elder Fairley, and thee and me—I drew near the chairmaker's but where thee lived alone all those sad months. It was late evening; the sun had set. Yet I felt that I must needs go and lay my hand in love upon the door of the empty hut which had been ever as thee left it. So I came down the little path swiftly, and then round the great rock, and up towards the door. But, as I did so, my heart stood still, for I heard voices. The door was open, but I could see no one. Yet there the voices sounded, one sharp and peevish with anger, the other low and rough. I could not hear what was said. At last, a figure came from the door and went quickly down the hillside. Who, think thee, was it? Even "neighbour Eglington." I knew the walk and the forward thrust of the head. Inside the hut all was still. I drew near with a kind of fear, but yet I came to the door and looked in.

As I looked into the dusk, my limbs trembled under me, for who should be sitting there, a half-finished chair between his knees, but Soolsby the old chair-maker! Yes, it was he. There he sat looking at me with his staring blue eyes and shock of redgrey hair. "Soolsby! Soolsby!" said I, my heart hammering at my breast; for was not Soolsby dead and buried? His eyes stared at me in fright. "Why do you come?" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Is he dead, then? Has harm come to him?"

By now I had recovered myself, for it was no ghost I saw, but a human being more distraught than was myself. "Do you not know me, Soolsby?" I asked. "You are Mercy Claridge from beyond—beyond and away," he answered dazedly. "I am Faith Claridge, Soolsby," answered I. He started, peered forward at me, and for a moment he did not speak; then the fear went from his face. "Ay, Faith Claridge, as I said," he answered, with apparent understanding, his stark mood passing. "No, thee said Mercy Claridge, Soolsby," said I, "and she has been asleep these many years." "Ay, she has slept soundly, thanks be to God!" he replied, and crossed himself. "Why should thee call me by her name?" I inquired. "Ay, is not her tomb in the churchyard?" he answered, and added quickly, "Luke Claridge and I are of an age to a day—which, think you, will go first?"

He stopped weaving, and peered over at me with his staring blue eyes, and I felt a sudden quickening of the heart. For, at the question, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave me in the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me to the marrow. I saw myself alone—thee in Egypt and I here, and none of our blood and name beside me. For we are the last, Davy, the last of the Claridges. But I said coldly, and with what was near to anger, that he should link his name and fate with that of Luke Claridge: "Which of ye two goes first is God's will, and according to His wisdom. Which, think thee," added I—and now I cannot forgive myself for saying it—"which, think thee, would do least harm in going?" "I know which would do most good," he answered, with a harsh laugh in his throat. Yet his blue eyes looked kindly at me, and now he began to nod pleasantly. I thought him a little mad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning. "Thee has had a visitor," I said to him presently. He laughed in a snarling way that made me shrink, and answered: "He wanted this and he wanted that—his high-handed, second-best lordship. Ay, and he would have it, because it pleased him to have it—like his father before him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as though it was a bird of paradise. And when he's seen it fall at last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get to its tree-top again—if it can—if it can—if it can, my lord! That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is who left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby's palace, his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies. He has scientific tricks like his father before him. Now is it astronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is the Eglington mind, which let God A'mighty make it as a favour. He would have old Soolsby's palace for his spy-glass, would he then? It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here. I had but come back in time—a day later, and he would have sat here and seen me in the Pit below before giving way. Possession's nine points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the house of the snail as much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle? I'll have no upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a seat on my roof." "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed here. Thy palace was a prison then." "I know well of that. Haven't I found his records here? And do you think his makeshift lordship did not remind me?" "Records? What records, Soolsby?" asked I, most curious. "Writings of his thoughts which he forgot— food for mind and body left in the cupboard." "Give them to me upon this instant, Soolsby," said I. "All but one," said he, "and that is my own, for it was his mind upon Soolsby the drunken chair-maker. God save him from the heathen sword that slew his uncle. Two better men never sat upon a chair!" He placed the papers in my hand, all save that one which spoke of him. Ah, David, what with the flute and the pen, banishment was no pain to thee! . . . He placed the papers, save that one, in my hands, and I, womanlike, asked again for all. "Some day," said he, "come, and I will read it to you. Nay, I will give you a taste of it now," he added, as he brought forth the writing. "Thus it reads."

Here are thy words, Davy. What think thee of them now?

"As I dwell in this house I know Soolsby as I never knew him when he lived, and though, up here, I spent many an hour with him. Men leave their impressions on all around them. The walls which have felt their look and their breath, the floor which has taken their footsteps, the chairs in which they have sat, have something of their presence. I feel Soolsby here at times so sharply that it would seem he came again and was in this room, though he is dead and gone. I ask him how it came he lived here alone; how it came that he made chairs, he, with brains enough to build great houses or great bridges; how it was that drink and he were such friends; and how he, a Catholic, lived here among us Quakers, so singular, uncompanionable, and severe. I think it true, and sadly true, that a man with a vice which he is able to satisfy easily and habitually, even as another satisfies a virtue, may give up the wider actions of the world and the possibilities of his life for the pleasure which his one vice gives him, and neither miss nor desire those greater chances of virtue or ambition which he has lost. The simplicity of a vice may be as real as the simplicity of a virtue."

Ah, David, David, I know not what to think of those strange words; but old Soolsby seemed well to understand thee, and he called thee "a first-best gentleman." Is my story long? Well, it was so strange, and it fixed itself upon my mind so deeply, and thy writings at the hut have been so much in my hands and in my mind, that I have put it all down here. When I asked Soolsby how it came he had been rumoured dead, he said that he himself had been the cause of it; but for what purpose he would not say, save that he was going a long voyage, and had made up his mind to return no more. "I had a friend," he said, "and I was set to go and see that friend again. . . . But the years go on, and friends have an end. Life spills faster than the years," he said. And he would say no more, but would walk with me even to my father's door. "May the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints be with you," he said at parting, "if you will have a blessing from them. And tell him who is beyond and away in Egypt that old Soolsby's busy making a chair for him to sit in when the scarlet cloth is spread, and the East and West come to salaam before him. Tell him the old man says his fluting will be heard."

And now, David, I have told thee all, nearly. Remains to say that thy one letter did our hearts good. My father reads it over and over, and shakes his head sadly, for, truth is, he has a fear that the world may lay its hand upon thee. One thing I do observe, his heart is hard set against Lord Eglington. In degree it has ever been so; but now it is like a constant frown upon his forehead. I see him at his window looking out towards the Cloistered House; and if our neighbour comes forth, perhaps upon his hunter, or now in his cart, or again with his dogs, he draws his hat down upon his eyes and whispers to himself. I think he is ever setting thee off against Lord Eglington; and that is foolish, for Eglington is but a man of the earth earthy. His is the soul of the adventurer.

Now what more to be set down? I must ask thee how is thy friend Ebn Ezra Bey? I am glad thee did find all he said was true, and that in Damascus thee was able to set a mark by my uncle's grave. But that the Prince Pasha of Egypt has set up a claim against my uncle's property is evil news; though, thanks be to God, as my father says, we have enough to keep us fed and clothed and housed. But do thee keep enough of thy inheritance to bring thee safe home again to those who love thee. England is ever grey, Davy, but without thee it is grizzled—all one "Quaker drab," as says the Philistine. But it is a comely and a good land, and here we wait for thee.

In love and remembrance.

I am thy mother's sister, thy most loving friend.

FAITH.

David received this letter as he was mounting a huge white Syrian donkey to ride to the Mokattam Hills, which rise sharply behind Cairo, burning and lonely and large. The cities of the dead Khalifas and Mamelukes separated them from the living city where the fellah toiled, and Arab, Bedouin, Copt strove together to intercept the fruits of his toiling, as it passed in the form of taxes to the Palace of the Prince Pasha; while in the dark corners crouched, waiting, the cormorant usurers—Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, a hideous salvage corps, who saved the house of a man that they might at last walk off with his shirt and the cloth under which he was carried to his grave. In a thousand narrow streets and lanes, in the warm glow of the bazaars, in earth-damp huts, by blistering quays, on the myriad ghiassas on the river, from long before sunrise till the sunset-gun boomed from the citadel rising beside the great mosque whose pinnacles seem to touch the blue, the slaves of the city of Prince Kaid ground out their lives like corn between the millstones.

David had been long enough in Egypt to know what sort of toiling it was. A man's labour was not his own. The fellah gave labour and taxes and backsheesh and life to the State, and the long line of tyrants above him, under the sting of the kourbash; the high officials gave backsheesh to the Prince Pasha, or to his Mouffetish, or to his Chief Eunuch, or to his barber, or to some slave who had his ear.

But all the time the bright, unclouded sun looked down on a smiling land, and in Cairo streets the din of the hammers, the voices of the boys driving heavily laden donkeys, the call of the camel-drivers leading their caravans into the great squares, the clang of the brasses of the sherbet-sellers, the song of the vendor of sweetmeats, the drone of the merchant praising his wares, went on amid scenes of wealth and luxury, and the city glowed with colour and gleamed with light. Dark faces grinned over the steaming pot at the door of the cafes, idlers on the benches smoked hasheesh, female street-dancers bared their faces shamelessly to the men, and indolent musicians beat on their tiny drums, and sang the song of "O Seyyid," or of "Antar"; and the reciter gave his sing-song tale from a bench above his fellows. Here a devout Muslim, indifferent to the presence of strangers, turned his face to the East, touched his forehead to the ground, and said his prayers. There, hung to a tree by a deserted mosque near by, the body of one who was with them all an hour before, and who had paid the penalty for some real or imaginary crime; while his fellows blessed Allah that the storm had passed them by. Guilt or innocence did not weigh with them; and the dead criminal, if such he were, who had drunk his glass of water and prayed to Allah, was, in their sight, only fortunate and not disgraced, and had "gone to the bosom of Allah." Now the Muezzin from a minaret called to prayer, and the fellah in his cotton shirt and yelek heard, laid his load aside, and yielded himself to his one dear illusion, which would enable him to meet with apathy his end—it might be to-morrow!—and go forth to that plenteous heaven where wives without number awaited him, where fields would yield harvests without labour, where rich food in gold dishes would be ever at his hand. This was his faith.

David had now been in the country six months, rapidly perfecting his knowledge of Arabic, speaking it always to his servant Mahommed Hassan, whom he had picked from the streets. Ebn Ezra Bey had gone upon his own business to Fazougli, the tropical Siberia of Egypt, to liberate, by order of Prince Kaid,—and at a high price—a relative banished there. David had not yet been fortunate with his own business—the settlement of his Uncle Benn's estate—though the last stages of negotiation with the Prince Pasha seemed to have been reached. When he had brought the influence of the British Consulate to bear, promises were made, doors were opened wide, and Pasha and Bey offered him coffee and talked to him sympathetically. They had respect for him more than for most Franks, because the Prince Pasha had honoured him with especial favour. Perhaps because David wore his hat always and the long coat with high collar like a Turk, or because Prince Kaid was an acute judge of human nature, and also because honesty was a thing he greatly desired—in others—and never found near his own person; however it was, he had set David high in his esteem at once. This esteem gave greater certainty that any backsheesh coming from the estate of Benn Claridge would not be sifted through many hands on its way to himself. Of Benn Claridge Prince Kaid had scarcely even heard until he died; and, indeed, it was only within the past few years that the Quaker merchant had extended his business to Egypt and had made his headquarters at Assiout, up the river.

David's donkey now picked its way carefully through the narrow streets of the Moosky. Arabs and fellaheen squatting at street corners looked at him with furtive interest. A foreigner of this character they had never before seen, with coat buttoned up like an Egyptian official in the presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head. David knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a passport to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian he believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time. He was more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew. He had also early in his life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile.

From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith's letter again, his back against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days, he scanned the distance. At his feet lay the great mosque, and the citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava stream of shot and shell. The Nile wound its way through the green plains, stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal and mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills. Far over in the western vista a long line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out to a point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand. Here, enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had built, the stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the glow of rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of knowledge, will by knowledge prevail; that:

"The thousand years of thy insolence
The thousand years of thy faith,
Will be paid in fiery recompense,
And a thousand years of bitter death."

"The sword—for ever the sword," David said to himself, as he looked: "Rameses and David and Mahomet and Constantine, and how many conquests have been made in the name of God! But after other conquests there have been peace and order and law. Here in Egypt it is ever the sword, the survival of the strongest."

As he made his way down the hillside again he fell to thinking upon all Faith had written. The return of the drunken chair-maker made a deep impression on him—almost as deep as the waking dreams he had had of his uncle calling him.

"Soolsby and me—what is there between Soolsby and me?" he asked himself now as he made his way past the tombs of the Mamelukes. "He and I are as far apart as the poles, and yet it comes to me now, with a strange conviction, that somehow my life will be linked with that of the drunken Romish chair-maker. To what end?" Then he fell to thinking of his Uncle Benn. The East was calling him. "Something works within me to hold me here, a work to do."

From the ramparts of the citadel he watched the sun go down, bathing the pyramids in a purple and golden light, throwing a glamour over all the western plain, and making heavenly the far hills with a plaintive colour, which spoke of peace and rest, but not of hope. As he stood watching, he was conscious of people approaching. Voices mingled, there was light laughter, little bursts of admiration, then lower tones, and then he was roused by a voice calling. He turned round. A group of people were moving towards the exit from the ramparts, and near himself stood a man waving an adieu.

"Well, give my love to the girls," said the man cheerily. Merry faces looked back and nodded, and in a moment they were gone. The man turned round, and looked at David, then he jerked his head in a friendly sort of way and motioned towards the sunset.

"Good enough, eh?"

"Surely, for me," answered David. On the instant he liked the red, wholesome face, and the keen, round, blue eyes, the rather opulent figure, the shrewd, whimsical smile, all aglow now with beaming sentimentality, which had from its softest corner called out: "Well, give my love to the girls."

"Quaker, or I never saw Germantown and Philadelphy," he continued, with a friendly manner quite without offence. "I put my money on Quakers every time."

"But not from Germantown or Philadelphia," answered David, declining a cigar which his new acquaintance offered.

"Bet you, I know that all right. But I never saw Quakers anywhere else, and I meant the tribe and not the tent. English, I bet? Of course, or you wouldn't be talking the English language—though I've heard they talk it better in Boston than they do in England, and in Chicago they're making new English every day and improving on the patent. If Chicago can't have the newest thing, she won't have anything. 'High hopes that burn like stars sublime,' has Chicago. She won't let Shakespeare or Milton be standards much longer. She won't have it—simply won't have England swaggering over the English language. Oh, she's dizzy, is Chicago—simply dizzy. I was born there. Parents, one Philadelphy, one New York, one Pawtucket—the Pawtucket one was the step-mother. Father liked his wives from the original States; but I was born in Chicago. My name is Lacey—Thomas Tilman Lacey of Chicago."

"I thank thee," said David.

"And you, sir?"

"David Claridge."

"Of—?"

"Of Hamley."

"Mr. Claridge of Hamley. Mr. Claridge, I am glad to meet you." They shook hands. "Been here long, Mr. Claridge?"

"A few months only."

"Queer place—gilt-edged dust-bin; get anything you like here, from a fresh gutter-snipe to old Haroun-al-Raschid. It's the biggest jack-pot on earth. Barnum's the man for this place—P. T. Barnum. Golly, how the whole thing glitters and stews! Out of Shoobra his High Jinks Pasha kennels with his lions and lives with his cellars of gold, as if he was going to take them with him where he's going—and he's going fast. Here —down here, the people, the real people, sweat and drudge between a cake of dourha, an onion, and a balass of water at one end of the day, and a hemp collar and their feet off the ground at the other."

"You have seen much of Egypt?" asked David, feeling a strange confidence in the garrulous man, whose frankness was united to shrewdness and a quick, observant eye.

"How much of Egypt I've seen, the Egypt where more men get lost, strayed, and stolen than die in their beds every day, the Egypt where a eunuch is more powerful than a minister, where an official will toss away a life as I'd toss this cigar down there where the last Mameluke captain made his great jump, where women—Lord A'mighty! where women are divorced by one evil husband, by the dozen, for nothing they ever did or left undone, and yet 'd be cut to pieces by their own fathers if they learned that 'To step aside is human—' Mr. Claridge, of that Egypt I don't know much more'n would entitle me to say, How d'ye do. But it's enough for me. You've seen something—eh?"

"A little. It is not civilised life here. Yet—yet a few strong patriotic men—"

Lacey looked quizzically at David.

"Say," he said, "I thought that about Mexico once. I said Manana— this Manana is the curse of Mexico. It's always to-morrow—to-morrow —to-morrow. Let's teach 'em to do things to-day. Let's show 'em what business means. Two million dollars went into that experiment, but Manana won. We had good hands, but it had the joker. After five years I left, with a bald head at twenty-nine, and a little book of noble thoughts—Tips for the Tired, or Things you can say To-day on what you can do to-morrow. I lost my hair worrying, but I learned to be patient. The Dagos wanted to live in their own way, and they did. It's one thing to be a missionary and say the little word in season; it's another to run your soft red head against a hard stone wall. I went to Mexico a conquistador, I left it a child of time, who had learned to smile; and I left some millions behind me, too. I said to an old Padre down there that I knew—we used to meet in the Cafe Manrique and drink chocolate— I said to him, 'Padre, the Lord's Prayer is a mistake down here.' 'Si, senor,' he said, and smiled his far-away smile at me. 'Yes,' said I, 'for you say in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread."' 'Si, senor,' he says, 'but we do not expect it till to-morrow!' The Padre knew from the start, but I learned at great expense, and went out of business—closed up shop for ever, with a bald head and my Tips for the Tired. Well, I've had more out of it all, I guess, than if I'd trebled the millions and wiped Manana off the Mexican coat of arms."

"You think it would be like that here?" David asked abstractedly.

Lacey whistled. "There the Government was all right and the people all wrong. Here the people are all right and the Government all wrong. Say, it makes my eyes water sometimes to see the fellah slogging away. He's a Jim-dandy—works all day and half the night, and if the tax-gatherer isn't at the door, wakes up laughing. I saw one"—his light blue eyes took on a sudden hardness—"laughing on the other side of his mouth one morning. They were 'kourbashing' his feet; I landed on them as the soles came away. I hit out." His face became grave, he turned the cigar round in his mouth. "It made me feel better, but I had a close call. Lucky for me that in Mexico I got into the habit of carrying a pop-gun. It saved me then. But it isn't any use going on these special missions. We Americans think a lot of ourselves. We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make 'em do it. But a strong man here at the head, with a sword in his hand, peace in his heart, who'd be just and poor—how can you make officials honest when you take all you can get yourself—! But, no, I guess it's no good. This is a rotten cotton show."

Lacey had talked so much, not because he was garrulous only, but because the inquiry in David's eyes was an encouragement to talk. Whatever his misfortunes in Mexico had been, his forty years sat lightly on him, and his expansive temperament, his childlike sentimentality, gave him an appearance of beaming, sophisticated youth. David was slowly apprehending these things as he talked—subconsciously, as it were; for he was seeing pictures of the things he himself had observed, through the lens of another mind, as primitive in some regards as his own, but influenced by different experiences.

"Say, you're the best listener I ever saw," added Lacey, with a laugh.

David held out his hand. "Thee sees things clearly," he answered.

Lacey grasped his hand.

At that moment an orderly advanced towards them. "He's after us—one of the Palace cavalry," said Lacey.

"Effendi—Claridge Effendi! May his grave be not made till the karadh- gatherers return," said the orderly to David.

"My name is Claridge," answered David.

"To the hotel, effendi, first, then to the Mokattam Hills after thee, then here—from the Effendina, on whom be God's peace, this letter for thee."

David took the letter. "I thank thee, friend," he said.

As he read it, Lacey said to the orderly in Arabic "How didst thou know he was here?"

The orderly grinned wickedly.

"Always it is known what place the effendi honours. It is not dark where he uncovers his face."

Lacey gave a low whistle.

"Say, you've got a pull in this show," he said, as David folded up the letter and put it in his pocket.

"In Egypt, if the master smiles on you, the servant puts his nose in the dust."

"The Prince Pasha bids me to dinner at the Palace to-night. I have no clothes for such affairs. Yet—" His mind was asking itself if this was a door opening, which he had no right to shut with his own hand. There was no reason why he should not go; therefore there might be a reason why he should go. It might be, it no doubt was, in the way of facilitating his business. He dismissed the orderly with an affirmative and ceremonial message to Prince Kaid—and a piece of gold.

"You've learned the custom of the place," said Lacey, as he saw the gold piece glitter in the brown palm of the orderly.

"I suppose the man's only pay is in such service," rejoined David. "It is a land of backsheesh. The fault is not with the people; it is with the rulers. I am not sorry to share my goods with the poor."

"You'll have a big going concern here in no time," observed Lacey. "Now, if I had those millions I left in Mexico—" Suddenly he stopped. "Is it you that's trying to settle up an estate here—at Assiout—belonged to an uncle?"

David inclined his head.

"They say that you and Prince Kaid are doing the thing yourselves, and that the pashas and judges and all the high-mogul sharks of the Medjidie think that the end of the world has come. Is that so?"

"It is so, if not completely so. There are the poor men and humble—the pashas and judges and the others of the Medjidie, as thee said, are not poor. But such as the orderly yonder—" He paused meditatively.

Lacey looked at David with profound respect. "You make the poorest your partners, your friends. I see, I see. Jerusalem, that's masterly! I admire you. It's a new way in this country." Then, after a moment: "It'll do—by golly, it'll do! Not a bit more costly, and you do some good with it. Yes—it—will—do."

"I have given no man money save in charity and for proper service done openly," said David, a little severely.

"Say—of course. And that's just what isn't done here. Everything goes to him who hath, and from him who hath not is taken away even that which he hath. One does the work and another gets paid—that's the way here. But you, Mr. Claridge, you clinch with the strong man at the top, and, down below, you've got as your partners the poor man, whose name is Legion. If you get a fall out of the man at the top, you're solid with the Legion. And if the man at the top gets up again and salaams and strokes your hand, and says, 'Be my brother,' then it's a full Nile, and the fig-tree putteth forth its tender branches, and the date-palm flourisheth, and at the village pond the thanksgiving turkey gobbles and is glad. 'Selah'!"

The sunset gun boomed out from the citadel. David turned to go, and
Lacey added:

"I'm waiting for a pasha who's taking toll of the officers inside there —Achmet Pasha. They call him the Ropemaker, because so many pass through his hands to the Nile. The Old Muslin I call him, because he's so diaphanous. Thinks nobody can see through him, and there's nobody that can't. If you stay long in Egypt, you'll find that Achmet is the worst, and Nahoum the Armenian the deepest, pasha in all this sickening land. Achmet is cruel as a tiger to any one that stands in his way; Nahoum, the whale, only opens out to swallow now and then; but when Nahoum does open out, down goes Jonah, and never comes up again. He's a deep one, and a great artist is Nahoum. I'll bet a dollar you'll see them both to-night at the Palace—if Kaid doesn't throw them to the lions for their dinner before yours is served. Here one shark is swallowed by another bigger, till at last the only and original sea-serpent swallows 'em all."

As David wound his way down the hills, Lacey waved a hand after him.

"Well, give my love to the girls," he said.

CHAPTER VI

"HAST THOU NEVER KILLED A MAN?"

"Claridge Effendi!"

As David moved forward, his mind was embarrassed by many impressions. He was not confused, but the glitter and splendour, the Oriental gorgeousness of the picture into which he stepped, excited his eye, roused some new sense in him. He was a curious figure in those surroundings. The consuls and agents of all the nations save one were in brilliant uniform, and pashas, generals, and great officials were splendid in gold braid and lace, and wore flashing Orders on their breasts. David had been asked for half-past eight o'clock, and he was there on the instant; yet here was every one assembled, the Prince Pasha included. As he walked up the room he suddenly realised this fact, and, for a moment, he thought he had made a mistake; but again he remembered distinctly that the letter said half-past eight, and he wondered now if this had been arranged by the Prince—for what purpose? To afford amusement to the assembled company? He drew himself up with dignity, his face became graver. He had come in a Quaker suit of black broadcloth, with grey steel buttons, and a plain white stock; and he wore his broad-brimmed hat—to the consternation of the British Consul-General and the Europeans present, to the amazement of the Turkish and native officials, who eyed him keenly. They themselves wore red tarbooshes, as did the Prince; yet all of them knew that the European custom of showing respect was by doffing the hat. The Prince Pasha had settled that with David, however, at their first meeting, when David had kept on his hat and offered Kaid his hand.

Now, with amusement in his eyes, Prince Kaid watched David coming up the great hall. What his object was in summoning David for an hour when all the court and all the official Europeans should be already present, remained to be seen. As David entered, Kaid was busy receiving salaams, and returning greeting, but with an eye to the singularly boyish yet gallant figure approaching. By the time David had reached the group, the Prince Pasha was ready to receive him.

"Friend, I am glad to welcome thee," said the Effendina, sly humour lurking at the corner of his eye. Conscious of the amazement of all present, he held out his hand to David.

"May thy coming be as the morning dew, friend," he added, taking David's willing hand.

"And thy feet, Kaid, wall in goodly paths, by the grace of God the compassionate and merciful."

As a wind, unfelt, stirs the leaves of a forest, making it rustle delicately, a whisper swept through the room. Official Egypt was dumfounded. Many had heard of David, a few had seen him, and now all eyed with inquisitive interest one who defied so many of the customs of his countrymen; who kept on his hat; who used a Mahommedan salutation like a true believer; whom the Effendina honoured—and presently honoured in an unusual degree by seating him at table opposite himself, where his Chief Chamberlain was used to sit.

During dinner Kaid addressed his conversation again and again to David, asking questions put to disconcert the consuls and other official folk present, confident in the naive reply which would be returned. For there was a keen truthfulness in the young man's words which, however suave and carefully balanced, however gravely simple and tactful, left no doubt as to their meaning. There was nothing in them which could be challenged, could be construed into active criticism of men or things; and yet much he said was horrifying. It made Achmet Pasha sit up aghast, and Nahoum Pasha, the astute Armenian, for a long time past the confidant and favourite of the Prince Pasha, laugh in his throat; for, if there was a man in Egypt who enjoyed the thrust of a word or the bite of a phrase, it was Nahoum. Christian though he was, he was, nevertheless, Oriental to his farthermost corner, and had the culture of a French savant. He had also the primitive view of life, and the morals of a race who, in the clash of East and West, set against Western character and directness, and loyalty to the terms of a bargain, the demoralised cunning of the desert folk; the circuitous tactics of those who believed that no man spoke the truth directly, that it must ever be found beneath devious and misleading words, to be tracked like a panther, as an Antipodean bushman once said, "through the sinuosities of the underbrush." Nahoum Pasha had also a rich sense of grim humour. Perhaps that was why he had lived so near the person of the Prince, had held office so long. There were no Grand Viziers in Egypt; but he was as much like one as possible, and he had one uncommon virtue, he was greatly generous. If he took with his right hand he gave with his left; and Mahommedan as well as Copt and Armenian, and beggars of every race and creed, hung about his doors each morning to receive the food and alms he gave freely.

After one of David's answers to Kaid, which had had the effect of causing his Highness to turn a sharp corner of conversation by addressing himself to the French consul, Nahoum said suavely:

"And so, monsieur, you think that we hold life lightly in the East—that it is a characteristic of civilisation to make life more sacred, to cherish it more fondly?"

He was sitting beside David, and though he asked the question casually, and with apparent intention only of keeping talk going, there was a lurking inquisition in his eye. He had seen enough to-night to make him sure that Kaid had once more got the idea of making a European his confidant and adviser; to introduce to his court one of those mad Englishmen who cared nothing for gold—only for power; who loved administration for the sake of administration and the foolish joy of labour. He was now set to see what sort of match this intellect could play, when faced by the inherent contradictions present in all truths or the solutions of all problems.

"It is one of the characteristics of that which lies behind civilisation, as thee and me have been taught," answered David.

Nahoum was quick in strategy, but he was unprepared for David's knowledge that he was an Armenian Christian, and he had looked for another answer.

But he kept his head and rose to the occasion. "Ah, it is high, it is noble, to save life—it is so easy to destroy it," he answered. "I saw his Highness put his life in danger once to save a dog from drowning. To cherish the lives of others, and to be careless of our own; to give that of great value as though it were of no worth—is it not the Great Lesson?" He said it with such an air of sincerity, with such dissimulation, that, for the moment, David was deceived. There was, however, on the face of the listening Kaid a curious, cynical smile. He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum's words.

Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible, intervened. "It is not so hard to be careless when care would be useless," he said, with a chuckle. "When the khamsin blows the dust- storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his camels. 'Malaish!' he says, and buries his face in his yelek."

"Life is beautiful and so difficult—to save," observed Nahoum, in a tone meant to tempt David on one hand and to reach the ears of the notorious Achmet Pasha, whose extortions, cruelties, and taxations had built his master's palaces, bribed his harem, given him money to pay the interest on his European loans, and made himself the richest man in Egypt, whose spies were everywhere, whose shadow was across every man's path. Kaid might slay, might toss a pasha or a slave into the Nile now and then, might invite a Bey to visit him, and stroke his beard and call him brother and put diamond-dust in the coffee he drank, so that he died before two suns came and went again, "of inflammation and a natural death"; but he, Achmet Pasha, was the dark Inquisitor who tortured every day, for whose death all men prayed, and whom some would have slain, but that another worse than himself might succeed him.

At Nahoum's words the dusky brown of Achmet's face turned as black as the sudden dilation of the pupil of an eye deepens its hue, and he said with a guttural accent:

"Every man hath a time to die."

"But not his own time," answered Nahoum maliciously.

"It would appear that in Egypt he hath not always the choice of the fashion or the time," remarked David calmly. He had read the malice behind their words, and there had flashed into his own mind tales told him, with every circumstance of accuracy, of deaths within and without the Palace. Also he was now aware that Nahoum had mocked him. He was concerned to make it clear that he was not wholly beguiled.

"Is there, then, for a man choice of fashion or time in England, effendi?" asked Nahoum, with assumed innocence.

"In England it is a matter between the Giver and Taker of life and himself—save where murder does its work," said David.

"And here it is between man and man—is it that you would say?" asked
Nahoum.

"There seem wider privileges here," answered David drily.

"Accidents will happen, privileges or no," rejoined Nahoum, with lowering eyelids.

The Prince intervened. "Thy own faith forbids the sword, forbids war, or—punishment."

"The Prophet I follow was called the Prince of Peace, friend," answered
David, bowing gravely across the table.

"Hast thou never killed a man?" asked Kaid, with interest in his eyes.
He asked the question as a man might ask another if he had never visited
Paris.

"Never, by the goodness of God, never," answered David.

"Neither in punishment nor in battle?"

"I am neither judge nor soldier, friend."

"Inshallah, thou hast yet far to go! Thou art young yet. Who can tell?"

"I have never so far to go as that, friend," said David, in a voice that rang a little.

"To-morrow is no man's gift."

David was about to answer, but chancing to raise his eyes above the Prince Pasha's head, his glance was arrested and startled by seeing a face—the face of a woman-looking out of a panel in a mooshrabieh screen in a gallery above. He would not have dwelt upon the incident, he would have set it down to the curiosity of a woman of the harem, but that the face looking out was that of an English girl, and peering over her shoulder was the dark, handsome face of an Egyptian or a Turk.

Self-control was the habit of his life, the training of his faith, and, as a rule, his face gave little evidence of inner excitement. Demonstration was discouraged, if not forbidden, among the Quakers, and if, to others, it gave a cold and austere manner, in David it tempered to a warm stillness the powerful impulses in him, the rivers of feeling which sometimes roared through his veins.

Only Nahoum Pasha had noticed his arrested look, so motionless did he
sit; and now, without replying, he bowed gravely and deferentially to
Kaid, who rose from the table. He followed with the rest. Presently the
Prince sent Higli Pasha to ask his nearer presence.

The Prince made a motion of his hand, and the circle withdrew. He waved
David to a seat.

"To-morrow thy business shall be settled," said the Prince suavely, "and on such terms as will not startle. Death-tribute is no new thing in the East. It is fortunate for thee that the tribute is from thy hand to my hand, and not through many others to mine."

"I am conscious I have been treated with favour, friend," said David. "I would that I might show thee kindness. Though how may a man of no account make return to a great Prince?"

"By the beard of my father, it is easily done, if thy kindness is a real thing, and not that which makes me poorer the more I have of it—as though one should be given a herd of horses which must not be sold but still must be fed."

"I have given thee truth. Is not truth cheaper than falsehood?"

"It is the most expensive thing in Egypt; so that I despair of buying thee. Yet I would buy thee to remain here—here at my court; here by my hand which will give thee the labour thou lovest, and will defend thee if defence be needed. Thou hast not greed, thou hast no thirst for honour, yet thou hast wisdom beyond thy years. Kaid has never besought men, but he beseeches thee. Once there was in Egypt, Joseph, a wise youth, who served a Pharaoh, and was his chief counsellor, and it was well with the land. Thy name is a good name; well-being may follow thee. The ages have gone, and the rest of the world has changed, but Egypt is the same Egypt, the Nile rises and falls, and the old lean years and fat years come and go. Though I am in truth a Turk, and those who serve and rob me here are Turks, yet the fellah is the same as he was five thousand years ago. What Joseph the Israelite did, thou canst do; for I am no more unjust than was that Rameses whom Joseph served. Wilt thou stay with me?"

David looked at Kaid as though he would read in his face the reply that he must make, but he did not see Kaid; he saw, rather, the face of one he had loved more than Jonathan had been loved by the young shepherd-prince of Israel. In his ears he heard the voice that had called him in his sleep-the voice of Benn Claridge; and, at the same instant, there flashed into his mind a picture of himself fighting outside the tavern beyond Hamley and bidding farewell to the girl at the crossroads.

"Friend, I cannot answer thee now," he said, in a troubled voice.

Kaid rose. "I will give thee an hour to think upon it. Come with me."
He stepped forward. "To-morrow I will answer thee, Kaid."

"To-morrow there is work for thee to do. Come." David followed him.

The eyes that followed the Prince and the Quaker were not friendly. What Kaid had long foreshadowed seemed at hand: the coming of a European counsellor and confidant. They realised that in the man who had just left the room with Kaid there were characteristics unlike those they had ever met before in Europeans.

"A madman," whispered High Pasha to Achmet the Ropemaker.

"Then his will be the fate of the swine of Gadarene," said Nahoum Pasha, who had heard.

"At least one need not argue with a madman." The face of Achmet the
Ropemaker was not more pleasant than his dark words.

"It is not the madman with whom you have to deal, but his keeper," rejoined Nahoum.

Nahoum's face was heavier than usual. Going to weight, he was still muscular and well groomed. His light brown beard and hair and blue eyes gave him a look almost Saxon, and bland power spoke in his face and in every gesture.

He was seldom without the string of beads so many Orientals love to carry, and, Armenian Christian as he was, the act seemed almost religious. It was to him, however, like a ground-wire in telegraphy— it carried off the nervous force tingling in him and driving him to impulsive action, while his reputation called for a constant outward urbanity, a philosophical apathy. He had had his great fight for place and power, alien as he was in religion, though he had lived in Egypt since a child. Bar to progress as his religion had been at first, it had been an advantage afterwards; for, through it, he could exclude himself from complications with the Wakfs, the religious court of the Muslim creed, which had lands to administer, and controlled the laws of marriage and inheritance. He could shrug his shoulders and play with his beads, and urbanely explain his own helplessness and ineligibility when his influence was summoned, or it was sought to entangle him in warring interests. Oriental through and through, the basis of his creed was similar to that of a Muslim: Mahomet was a prophet and Christ was a prophet. It was a case of rival prophets—all else was obscured into a legend, and he saw the strife of race in the difference of creed. For the rest, he flourished the salutations and language of the Arab as though they were his own, and he spoke Arabic as perfectly as he did French and English.

He was the second son of his father. The first son, who was but a year older, and was as dark as he was fair, had inherited—had seized—all his father's wealth. He had lived abroad for some years in France and England. In the latter place he had been one of the Turkish Embassy, and, having none of the outward characteristics of the Turk, and being in appearance more of a Spaniard than an Oriental, he had, by his gifts, his address and personal appearance, won the good-will of the Duchess of Middlesex, and had had that success all too flattering to the soul of a libertine. It had, however, been the means of his premature retirement from England, for his chief at the Embassy had a preference for an Oriental entourage. He was called Foorgat Bey.

Sitting at table, Nahoum alone of all present had caught David's arrested look, and, glancing up, had seen the girl's face at the panel of mooshrabieh, and had seen also over her shoulder the face of his brother, Foorgat Bey. He had been even more astonished than David, and far more disturbed. He knew his brother's abilities; he knew his insinuating address—had he not influenced their father to give him wealth while he was yet alive? He was aware also that his brother had visited the Palace often of late. It would seem as though the Prince Pasha was ready to make him, as well as David, a favourite. But the face of the girl—it was an English face! Familiar with the Palace, and bribing when it was necessary to bribe, Foorgat Bey had evidently brought her to see the function, there where all women were forbidden. He could little imagine Foorgat doing this from mere courtesy; he could not imagine any woman, save one wholly sophisticated, or one entirely innocent, trusting herself with him—and in such a place. The girl's face, though not that of one in her teens, had seemed to him a very flower of innocence.

But, as he stood telling his beads, abstractedly listening to the scandal talked by Achmet and Higli, he was not thinking of his brother, but of the two who had just left the chamber. He was speculating as to which room they were likely to enter. They had not gone by the door convenient to passage to Kaid's own apartments. He would give much to hear the conversation between Kaid and the stranger; he was all too conscious of its purport. As he stood thinking, Kaid returned. After looking round the room for a moment, the Prince came slowly over to Nahoum, and, stretching out a hand, stroked his beard.

"Oh, brother of all the wise, may thy sun never pass its noon!" said
Kaid, in a low, friendly voice.

Despite his will, a shudder passed through Nahoum Pasha's frame. How often in Egypt this gesture and such words were the prelude to assassination, from which there was no escape save by death itself. Into Nahoum's mind there flashed the words of an Arab teacher, "There is no refuge from God but God Himself," and he found himself blindly wondering, even as he felt Kaid's hand upon his beard and listened to the honeyed words, what manner of death was now preparing for him, and what death of his own contriving should intervene. Escape, he knew, there was none, if his death was determined on; for spies were everywhere, and slaves in the pay of Kaid were everywhere, and such as were not could be bought or compelled, even if he took refuge in the house of a foreign consul. The lean, invisible, ghastly arm of death could find him, if Kaid willed, though he delved in the bowels of the Cairene earth, or climbed to an eagle's eyrie in the Libyan Hills. Whether it was diamond-dust or Achmet's thin thong that stopped the breath, it mattered not; it was sure. Yet he was not of the breed to tremble under the descending sword, and he had long accustomed himself to the chance of "sudden demise." It had been chief among the chances he had taken when he entered the high and perilous service of Kaid. Now, as he felt the secret joy of these dark spirits surrounding him—Achmet, and High Pasha, who kept saying beneath his breath in thankfulness that it was not his turn, Praise be to God!—as he, felt their secret self-gratulations, and their evil joy over his prospective downfall, he settled himself steadily, made a low salutation to Kaid, and calmly awaited further speech. It came soon enough.

"It is written upon a cucumber leaf—does not the world read it?—that Nahoum Pasha's form shall cast a longer shadow than the trees; so that every man in Egypt shall, thinking on him, be as covetous as Ashaah, who knew but one thing more covetous than himself—the sheep that mistook the rainbow for a rope of hay, and, jumping for it, broke his neck."

Kaid laughed softly at his own words.

With his eye meeting Kaid's again, after a low salaam, Nahoum made answer:

"I would that the lance of my fame might sheathe itself in the breasts of thy enemies, Effendina."

"Thy tongue does that office well," was the reply. Once more Kaid laid a gentle hand upon Nahoum's beard. Then, with a gesture towards the consuls and Europeans, he said to them in French: "If I might but beg your presence for yet a little time!" Then he turned and walked away. He left by a door leading to his own apartments.

When he had gone, Nahoum swung slowly round and faced the agitated groups.

"He who sleeps with one eye open sees the sun rise first," he said, with a sarcastic laugh. "He who goes blindfold never sees it set."

Then, with a complacent look upon them all, he slowly left the room by the door out of which David and Kaid had first passed.

Outside the room his face did not change. His manner had not been bravado. It was as natural to him as David's manner was to himself. Each had trained himself in his own way to the mastery of his will, and the will in each was stronger than any passion of emotion in them. So far at least it had been so. In David it was the outcome of his faith, in Nahoum it was the outcome of his philosophy, a simple, fearless fatalism.

David had been left by Kaid in a small room, little more than an alcove, next to a larger room richly furnished. Both rooms belonged to a spacious suite which lay between the harem and the major portion of the Palace. It had its own entrance and exits from the Palace, opening on the square at the front, at the back opening on its own garden, which also had its own exits to the public road. The quarters of the Chief Eunuch separated the suite from the harem, and Mizraim, the present Chief Eunuch, was a man of power in the Palace, knew more secrets, was more courted, and was richer than some of the princes. Nahoum had an office in the Palace, also, which gave him the freedom of the place, and brought him often in touch with the Chief Eunuch. He had made Mizraim a fast friend ever since the day he had, by an able device, saved the Chief Eunuch from determined robbery by the former Prince Pasha, with whom he had suddenly come out of favour.

When Nahoum left the great salon, he directed his steps towards the quarters of the Chief Eunuch, thinking of David, with a vague desire for pursuit and conflict. He was too much of a philosopher to seek to do David physical injury—a futile act; for it could do him no good in the end, could not mend his own fortunes; and, merciless as he could be on occasion, he had no love of bloodshed. Besides, the game afoot was not of his making, and he was ready to await the finish, the more so because he was sure that to-morrow would bring forth momentous things. There was a crisis in the Soudan, there was trouble in the army, there was dark conspiracy of which he knew the heart, and anything might happen to-morrow! He had yet some cards to play, and Achmet and Higli—and another very high and great—might be delivered over to Kaid's deadly purposes rather than himself tomorrow. What he knew Kaid did not know. He had not meant to act yet; but new facts faced him, and he must make one struggle for his life. But as he went towards Mizraim's quarters he saw no sure escape from the stage of those untoward events, save by the exit which is for all in some appointed hour.

He was not, however, more perplexed and troubled than David, who, in the little room where he had been brought and left alone with coffee and cigarettes, served by a slave from some distant portion of the Palace, sat facing his future.

David looked round the little room. Upon the walls hung weapons of every kind—from a polished dagger of Toledo to a Damascus blade, suits of chain armour, long-handled, two-edged Arab swords, pistols which had been used in the Syrian wars of Ibrahim, lances which had been taken from the Druses at Palmyra, rude battle-axes from the tribes of the Soudan, and neboots of dom-wood which had done service against Napoleon at Damietta. The cushions among which he sat had come from Constantinople, the rug at his feet from Tiflis, the prayer-rug on the wall from Mecca.

All that he saw was as unlike what he had known in past years as though he had come to Mars or Jupiter. All that he had heard recalled to him his first readings in the Old Testament—the story of Nebuchadnezzar, of Belshazzar, of Ahasuerus—of Ahasuerus! He suddenly remembered the face he had seen looking down at the Prince's table from the panel of mooshrabieh. That English face—where was it? Why was it there? Who was the man with her? Whose the dark face peering scornfully over her shoulder? The face of an English girl in that place dedicated to sombre intrigue, to the dark effacement of women, to the darker effacement of life, as he well knew, all too often! In looking at this prospect for good work in the cause of civilisation, he was not deceived, he was not allured. He knew into what subterranean ways he must walk, through what mazes of treachery and falsehood he must find his way; and though he did not know to the full the corruption which it was his duty to Kaid to turn to incorruption, he knew enough to give his spirit pause. What would be —what could be—the end? Would he not prove to be as much out of place as was the face of that English girl? The English girl! England rushed back upon him—the love of those at home; of his father, the only father he had ever known; of Faith, the only mother or sister he had ever known; of old John Fairley; the love of the woods and the hills where he had wandered came upon him. There was work to do in England, work too little done—the memory of the great meeting at Heddington flashed upon him. Could his labour and his skill, if he had any, not be used there? Ah, the green fields, the soft grey skies, the quiet vale, the brave, self- respecting, toiling millions, the beautiful sense of law and order and goodness! Could his gifts and labours not be used there? Could not—

He was suddenly startled by a smothered cry, then a call of distress.
It was the voice of a woman.

He started up. The voice seemed to come from a room at his right; not that from which he had entered, but one still beyond this where he was. He sprang towards the wall and examined it swiftly. Finding a division in the tapestry, he ran his fingers quickly and heavily down the crack between. It came upon the button of a spring. He pressed it, the door yielded, and, throwing it back, he stepped into the room-to see a woman struggling to resist the embraces and kisses of a man. The face was that of the girl who had looked out of the panel in the mooshrabieh screen. Then it was beautiful in its mirth and animation, now it was pale and terror-stricken, as with one free hand she fiercely beat the face pressed to hers.

The girl only had seen David enter. The man was not conscious of his presence till he was seized and flung against the wall. The violence of the impact brought down at his feet two weapons from the wall above him. He seized one-a dagger-and sprang to his feet. Before he could move forward or raise his arm, however, David struck him a blow in the neck which flung him upon a square marble pedestal intended for a statue. In falling his head struck violently a sharp corner of the pedestal. He lurched, rolled over on the floor, and lay still.

The girl gave a choking cry. David quickly stooped and turned the body over. There was a cut where the hair met the temple. He opened the waistcoat and thrust his hand inside the shirt. Then he felt the pulse of the limp wrist.

For a moment he looked at the face steadily, almost contemplatively it might have seemed, and then drew both arms close to the body.

Foorgat Bey, the brother of Nahoum Pasha, was dead.

Rising, David turned, as if in a dream, to the girl. He made a motion of the hand towards the body. She understood. Dismay was in her face, but the look of horror and desperation was gone. She seemed not to realise, as did David, the awful position in which they were placed, the deed which David had done, the significance of the thing that lay at their feet.

"Where are thy people?" said David. "Come, we will go to them."

"I have no people here," she said, in a whisper.

"Who brought thee?"

She made a motion behind her towards the body. David glanced down. The eyes of the dead man were open. He stooped and closed them gently. The collar and tie were disarranged; he straightened them, then turned again to her.

"I must take thee away," he said calmly. "But it must be secretly." He looked around, perplexed. "We came secretly. My maid is outside the garden—in a carriage. Oh, come, let us go, let us escape. They will kill you—!" Terror came into her face again. "Thee, not me, is in danger—name, goodness, future, all. . . . Which way did thee come?"

"Here—through many rooms—" She made a gesture to curtains beyond. "But we first entered through doors with sphinxes on either side, with a room where was a statue of Mehemet Ali."

It was the room through which David had come with Kaid. He took her hand. "Come quickly. I know the way. It is here," he said, pointing to the panel-door by which he had entered.

Holding her hand still, as though she were a child, he led her quickly from the room, and shut the panel behind them. As they passed through, a hand drew aside the curtains on the other side of the room which they were leaving.

Presently the face of Nahoum Pasha followed the hand. A swift glance to the floor, then he ran forward, stooped down, and laid a hand on his brother's breast. The slight wound on the forehead answered his rapid scrutiny. He realised the situation as plainly as if it had been written down for him—he knew his brother well.

Noiselessly he moved forward and touched the spring of the door through which the two had gone. It yielded, and he passed through, closed the door again and stealthily listened, then stole a look into the farther chamber. It was empty. He heard the outer doors close. For a moment he listened, then went forward and passed through into the hall. Softly turning the handle of the big wooden doors which faced him, he opened them an inch or so, and listened. He could hear swiftly retreating footsteps. Presently he heard the faint noise of a gate shutting. He nodded his head, and was about to close the doors and turn away, when his quick ear detected footsteps again in the garden. Some one—the man, of course—was returning.

"May fire burn his eyes for ever! He would talk with Kald, then go again among them all, and so pass out unsuspected and safe. For who but I—who but I could say he did it? And I—what is my proof? Only the words which I speak."

A scornful, fateful smile passed over his face. "'Hast thou never killed
a man?' said Kaid. 'Never,' said he—'by the goodness of God, never!'
The voice of Him of Galilee, the hand of Cain, the craft of Jael. But
God is with the patient."

He went hastily and noiselessly-his footfall was light for so heavy a man-through the large room to the farther side from that by which David and Kaid had first entered. Drawing behind a clump of palms near a door opening to a passage leading to Mizraim's quarters, he waited. He saw David enter quickly, yet without any air of secrecy, and pass into the little room where Kaid had left him.

For a long time there was silence.

The reasons were clear in Nahoum's mind why he should not act yet. A new factor had changed the equation which had presented itself a short half hour ago.

A new factor had also entered into the equation which had been presented to David by Kaid with so flattering an insistence. He sat in the place where Kaid had left him, his face drawn and white, his eyes burning, but with no other "sign of agitation. He was frozen and still. His look was fastened now upon the door by which the Prince Pasha would enter, now upon the door through which he had passed to the rescue of the English girl, whom he had seen drive off safely with her maid. In their swift passage from the Palace to the carriage, a thing had been done of even greater moment than the killing of the sensualist in the next room. In the journey to the gateway the girl David served had begged him to escape with her. This he had almost sharply declined; it would be no escape, he had said. She had urged that no one knew. He had replied that Kaid would come again for him, and suspicion would be aroused if he were gone.

"Thee has safety," he had said. "I will go back. I will say that I killed him. I have taken a life, I will pay for it as is the law."

Excited as she was, she had seen the inflexibility of his purpose. She had seen the issue also clearly. He would give himself up, and the whole story would be the scandal of Europe.

"You have no right to save me only to kill me," she had said desperately. "You would give your life, but you would destroy that which is more than life to me. You did not intend to kill him. It was no murder, it was punishment." Her voice had got harder. "He would have killed my life because he was evil. Will you kill it because you are good? Will you be brave, quixotic, but not pitiful? . . . No, no, no!" she had said, as his hand was upon the gate, "I will not go unless you promise that you will hide the truth, if you can." She had laid her hand upon his shoulder with an agonised impulse. "You will hide it for a girl who will cherish your memory her whole life long. Ah—God bless you!"

She had felt that she conquered before he spoke as, indeed, he did not speak, but nodded his head and murmured something indistinctly. But that did not matter, for she had won; she had a feeling that all would be well. Then he had placed her in her carriage, and she was driven swiftly away, saying to herself half hysterically: "I am safe, I am safe. He will keep his word."

Her safety and his promise were the new factor which changed the equation for which Kaid would presently ask the satisfaction. David's life had suddenly come upon problems for which his whole past was no preparation. Conscience, which had been his guide in every situation, was now disarmed, disabled, and routed. It had come to terms.

In going quickly through the room, they had disarranged a table. The girl's cloak had swept over it, and a piece of brie-a-brae had been thrown upon the floor. He got up and replaced it with an attentive air. He rearranged the other pieces on the table mechanically, seeing, feeling another scene, another inanimate thing which must be for ever and for ever a picture burning in his memory. Yet he appeared to be casually doing a trivial and necessary act. He did not definitely realise his actions; but long afterwards he could have drawn an accurate plan of the table, could have reproduced upon it each article in its exact place as correctly as though it had been photographed. There were one or two spots of dust or dirt on the floor, brought in by his boots from the garden. He flicked them aside with his handkerchief.

How still it was! Or was it his life which had become so still? It seemed as if the world must be noiseless, for not a sound of the life in other parts of the Palace came to him, not an echo or vibration of the city which stirred beyond the great gateway. Was it the chilly hand of death passing over everything, and smothering all the activities? His pulses, which, but a few minutes past, were throbbing and pounding like drums in his ears, seemed now to flow and beat in very quiet. Was this, then, the way that murderers felt, that men felt who took human life—so frozen, so little a part of their surroundings? Did they move as dead men among the living, devitalised, vacuous calm?

His life had been suddenly twisted out of recognition. All that his habit, his code, his morals, his religion, had imposed upon him had been overturned in one moment. To take a human life, even in battle, was against the code by which he had ever been governed, yet he had taken life secretly, and was hiding it from the world.

Accident? But had it been necessary to strike at all? His presence alone would have been enough to save the girl from further molestation; but, he had thrown himself upon the man like a tiger. Yet, somehow, he felt no sorrow for that. He knew that if again and yet again he were placed in the same position he would do even as he had done—even as he had done with the man Kimber by the Fox and Goose tavern beyond Hamley. He knew that the blow he had given then was inevitable, and he had never felt real repentance. Thinking of that blow, he saw its sequel in the blow he had given now. Thus was that day linked with the present, thus had a blow struck in punishment of the wrong done the woman at the crossroads been repeated in the wrong done the girl who had just left him.

A sound now broke the stillness. It was a door shutting not far off. Kaid was coming. David turned his face towards the room where Foorgat Bey was lying dead. He lifted his arms with a sudden passionate gesture. The blood came rushing through his veins again. His life, which had seemed suspended, was set free; and an exaltation of sorrow, of pain, of action, possessed him.

"I have taken a life, O my God!" he murmured. "Accept mine in service for this land. What I have done in secret, let me atone for in secret, for this land—for this poor land, for Christ's sake!"

Footsteps were approaching quickly. With a great effort of the will he ruled himself to quietness again. Kaid entered, and stood before him in silence. David rose. He looked Kaid steadily in the eyes. "Well?" said Kaid placidly.

"For Egypt's sake I will serve thee," was the reply. He held out his hand. Kaid took it, but said, in smiling comment on the action: "As the Viceroy's servant there is another way!"

"I will salaam to-morrow, Kaid," answered David.

"It is the only custom of the place I will require of thee, effendi.
Come."

A few moments later they were standing among the consuls and officials in the salon.

"Where is Nahoum?" asked Kaid, looking round on the agitated throng.

No one answered. Smiling, Kaid whispered in David's ear.

CHAPTER VII

THE COMPACT

One by one the lights went out in the Palace. The excited guests were now knocking at the doors of Cairene notables, bent upon gossip of the night's events, or were scouring the bazaars for ears into which to pour the tale of how David was exalted and Nahoum was brought low; how, before them all, Kaid had commanded Nahoum to appear at the Palace in the morning at eleven, and the Inglesi, as they had named David, at ten. But they declared to all who crowded upon their words that the Inglesi left the Palace with a face frozen white, as though it was he that had met debacle, while Nahoum had been as urbane and cynical as though he had come to the fulness of his power.

Some, on hearing this, said: "Beware Nahoum!" But those who had been at the Palace said: "Beware the Inglesi!" This still Quaker, with the white shining face and pontifical hat, with his address of "thee" and "thou," and his forms of speech almost Oriental in their imagery and simplicity, himself an archaism, had impressed them with a sense of power. He had prompted old Diaz Pasha to speak of him as a reincarnation, so separate and withdrawn he seemed at the end of the evening, yet with an uncanny mastery in his dark brown eyes. One of the Ulema, or holy men, present had said in reply to Diaz: "It is the look of one who hath walked with Death and bought and sold with Sheitan the accursed." To Nahoum Pasha, Dim had said, as the former left the Palace, a cigarette between his fingers: "Sleep not nor slumber, Nahoum. The world was never lost by one earthquake." And Nahoum had replied with a smooth friendliness: "The world is not reaped in one harvest."

"The day is at hand—the East against the West," murmured old Diaz, as he passed on.

"The day is far spent," answered Nahoum, in a voice unheard by Diaz; and, with a word to his coachman, who drove off quickly, he disappeared in the shrubbery.

A few minutes later he was tapping at the door of Mizraim, the Chief Eunuch. Three times he tapped in the same way. Presently the door opened, and he stepped inside. The lean, dark figure of Mizraim bowed low; the long, slow fingers touched the forehead, the breast, and the lips.

"May God preserve thy head from harm, excellency, and the night give thee sleep," said Mizraim. He looked inquiringly at Nahoum.

"May thy head know neither heat nor cold, and thy joys increase," responded Nahoum mechanically, and sat down.

To an European it would have seemed a shameless mockery to have wished joy to this lean, hateful dweller in the between-worlds; to Nahoum it was part of a life which was all ritual and intrigue, gabbling superstition and innate fatalism, decorated falsehood and a brave philosophy.

"I have work for thee at last, Mizraim," said Nahoum.

"At last?"

"Thou hast but played before. To-night I must see the sweat of thy brow."

Mizraim's cold fingers again threw themselves against his breast, forehead, and lips, and he said:

"As a woman swims in a fountain, so shall I bathe in sweat for thee, who hath given with one hand and hath never taken with the other."

"I did thee service once, Mizraim—eh?"

"I was as a bird buffeted by the wind; upon thy masts my feet found rest.
Behold, I build my nest in thy sails, excellency."

"There are no birds in last year's nest, Mizraim, thou dove," said Nahoum, with a cynical smile. "When I build, I build. Where I swear by the stone of the corner, there am I from dark to dark and from dawn to dawn, pasha." Suddenly he swept his hand low to the ground and a ghastly sort of smile crossed over his face. "Speak—I am thy servant. Shall I not hear? I will put my hand in the entrails of Egypt, and wrench them forth for thee."

He made a gesture so cruelly, so darkly, suggestive that Nahoum turned his head away. There flashed before his mind the scene of death in which his own father had lain, butchered like a beast in the shambles, a victim to the rage of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mehemet Ali.

"Then listen, and learn why I have need of thee to-night."

First, Nahoum told the story of David's coming, and Kaid's treatment of himself, the foreshadowing of his own doom. Then of David and the girl, and the dead body he had seen; of the escape of the girl, of David's return with Kaid—all exactly as it had happened, save that he did; not mention the name of the dead man.

It did not astonish Mizraim that Nahoum had kept all this secret. That crime should be followed by secrecy and further crime, if need be, seems natural to the Oriental mind. Mizraim had seen removal follow upon removal, and the dark Nile flowed on gloomily, silently, faithful to the helpless ones tossed into its bosom. It would much have astonished him if Nahoum had not shown a gaping darkness somewhere in his tale, and he felt for the key to the mystery.

"And he who lies dead, excellency?"

"My brother."

"Foorgat Bey!"

"Even he, Mizraim. He lured the girl here—a mad man ever. The other madman was in the next room. He struck—come, and thou shalt see."

Together they felt their way through the passages and rooms, and presently entered the room where Foorgat Bey was lying. Nahoum struck a light, and, as he held the candle, Mizraim knelt and examined the body closely. He found the slight wound on the temple, then took the candle from Nahoum and held it close to the corner of the marble pedestal. A faint stain of blood was there. Again he examined the body, and ran his fingers over the face and neck. Suddenly he stopped, and held the light close to the skin beneath the right jaw. He motioned, and Nahoum laid his fingers also on the spot. There was a slight swelling.

"A blow with the fist, excellency—skilful, and English." He looked inquiringly at Nahoum. "As a weasel hath a rabbit by the throat, so is the Inglesi in thy hands."

Nahoum shook his head. "And if I went to Kaid, and said, 'This is the work of the Inglesi,' would he believe? Kaid would hang me for the lie— would it be truth to him? What proof have I, save the testimony of mine own eyes? Egypt would laugh at that. Is it the time, while yet the singers are beneath the windows, to assail the bride? All bridegrooms are mad. It is all sunshine and morning with the favourite, the Inglesi. Only when the shadows lengthen may he be stricken. Not now."

"Why dost thou hide this from Kaid, O thou brother of the eagle?"

"For my gain and thine, keeper of the gate. To-night I am weak, because I am poor. To-morrow I shall be rich and, it may be, strong. If Kaid knew of this tonight, I should be a prisoner before cockcrow. What claims has a prisoner? Kaid would be in my brother's house at dawn, seizing all that is there and elsewhere, and I on my way to Fazougli, to be strangled or drowned."

"O wise and far-seeing! Thine eye pierces the earth. What is there to do? What is my gain—what thine?"

"Thy gain? The payment of thy debt to me." Mizraim's face lengthened. His was a loathsome sort of gratitude. He was willing to pay in kind; but what Oriental ever paid a debt without a gift in return, even as a bartering Irishman demands his lucky penny.

"So be it, excellency, and my life is thine to spill upon the ground, a scarlet cloth for thy feet. And backsheesh?"

Nahoum smiled grimly. "For backsheesh, thy turban full of gold."

Mizraim's eyes glittered-the dull black shine of a mongrel terrier's. He caught the sleeve of Nahoum's coat and kissed it, then kissed his hand.

Thus was their bargain made over the dead body; and Mizraim had an almost superstitious reverence for the fulfilment of a bond, the one virtue rarely found in the Oriental. Nothing else had he, but of all men in Egypt he was the best instrument Nahoum could have chosen; and of all men in Egypt he was the one man who could surely help him.

"What is there now to do, excellency?"

"My coachman is with the carriage at the gate by which the English girl left. It is open still. The key is in Foorgat's pocket, no doubt; stolen by him, no doubt also. . . . This is my design. Thou wilt drive him"—he pointed to the body—"to his palace, seated in the carriage as though he were alive. There is a secret entrance. The bowab of the gate will show the way; I know it not. But who will deny thee? Thou comest from high places—from Kaid. Who will speak of this? Will the bowab? In the morning Foorgat will be found dead in his bed! The slight bruise thou canst heal—thou canst?"

Mizraim nodded. "I can smooth it from the sharpest eye."

"At dawn he will be found dead; but at dawn I shall be knocking at his gates. Before the world knows I shall be in possession. All that is his shall be mine, for at once the men of law shall be summoned, and my inheritance secured before Kaid shall even know of his death. I shall take my chances for my life."

"And the coachman, and the bowab, and others it may be?"

"Shall not these be with thee—thou, Kaid's keeper of the harem, the lion at the door of his garden of women? Would it be strange that Foorgat, who ever flew at fruit above his head, perilous to get or keep, should be found on forbidden ground, or in design upon it? Would it be strange to the bowab or the slave that he should return with thee stark and still? They would but count it mercy of Kaid that he was not given to the serpents of the Nile. A word from thee—would one open his mouth? Would not the shadow of thy hand, of the swift doom, be over them? Would not a handful of gold bind them to me? Is not the man dead? Are they not mine—mine to bind or break as I will?"

"So be it! Wisdom is of thee as the breath of man is his life. I will drive Foorgat Bey to his home."

A few moments later all that was left of Foorgat Bey was sitting in his carriage beside Mizraim the Chief Eunuch—sitting upright, stony, and still, and in such wise was driven swiftly to his palace.

CHAPTER VIII

FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE

David came to know a startling piece of news the next morning-that Foorgat Bey had died of heart-disease in his bed, and was so found by his servants. He at once surmised that Foorgat's body had been carried out of the Palace; no doubt that it might not be thought he had come to his death by command of Kaid. His mind became easier. Death, murder, crime in Egypt was not a nine days' wonder; it scarce outlived one day. When a man was gone none troubled. The dead man was in the bosom of Allah; then why should the living be beset or troubled? If there was foul play, why make things worse by sending another life after the life gone, even in the way of justice?

The girl David saved had told him her own name, and had given him the name of the hotel at which she was staying. He had an early breakfast, and prepared to go to her hotel, wishing to see her once more. There were things to be said for the first and last time and then be buried for ever. She must leave the country at once. In this sick, mad land, in this whirlpool of secret murder and conspiracy, no one could tell what plot was hatching, what deeds were forward; and he could not yet be sure that no one save himself and herself knew who had killed Foorgat Bey. Her perfect safety lay in instant flight. It was his duty to see that she went, and at once—this very day. He would go and see her.

He went to the hotel. There he learned that, with her aunt, she had left that morning for Alexandria en route to England.

He approved her wisdom, he applauded her decision. Yet—yet, somehow, as he bent his footsteps towards his lodgings again he had a sense of disappointment, of revelation. What might happen to him—evidently that had not occurred to her. How could she know but that his life might be in danger; that, after all, they might have been seen leaving the fatal room? Well, she had gone, and with all his heart he was glad that she was safe.

His judgment upon last night's event was not coloured by a single direct criticism upon the girl. But he could not prevent the suggestion suddenly flashing into his mind that she had thought of herself first and last. Well, she had gone; and he was here to face the future, unencumbered by aught save the weight of his own conscience.

Yet, the weight of his conscience! His feet were still free—free for one short hour before he went to Kaid; but his soul was in chains. As he turned his course to the Nile, and crossed over the great bridge, there went clanking by in chains a hundred conscripts, torn from their homes in the Fayoum, bidding farewell for ever to their friends, receiving their last offerings, for they had no hope of return. He looked at their haggard and dusty faces, at their excoriated ankles, and his eyes closed in pain. All they felt he felt. What their homes were to them, these fellaheen, dragged forth to defend their country, to go into the desert and waste their lives under leaders tyrannous, cruel, and incompetent, his old open life, his innocence, his integrity, his truthfulness and character, were to him. By an impulsive act, by a rash blow, he had asserted his humanity; but he had killed his fellow-man in anger. He knew that as that fatal blow had been delivered, there was no thought of punishment—it was blind anger and hatred: it was the ancient virus working which had filled the world with war, and armed it at the expense, the bitter and oppressive expense, of the toilers and the poor. The taxes for wars were wrung out of the sons of labour and sorrow. These poor fellaheen had paid taxes on everything they possessed. Taxes, taxes, nothing but taxes from the cradle! Their lands, houses, and palm- trees would be taxed still, when they would reap no more. And having given all save their lives, these lives they must now give under the whip and the chain and the sword.

As David looked at them in their single blue calico coverings, in which they had lived and slept-shivering in the cold night air upon the bare ground—these thoughts came to him; and he had a sudden longing to follow them and put the chains upon his own arms and legs, and go forth and suffer with them, and fight and die? To die were easy. To fight?. . . . Was it then come to that? He was no longer a man of peace, but a man of the sword; no longer a man of the palm and the evangel, but a man of blood and of crime! He shrank back out of the glare of the sun; for it suddenly seemed to him that there was written upon his fore head, "This is a brother of Cain." For the first time in his life he had a shrinking from the light, and from the sun which he had loved like a Persian, had, in a sense, unconsciously worshipped.

He was scarcely aware where he was. He had wandered on until he had come to the end of the bridge and into the great groups of traffickers who, at this place, made a market of their wares. Here sat a seller of sugar cane; there wandered, clanking his brasses, a merchant of sweet waters; there shouted a cheap-jack of the Nile the virtues of a knife from Sheffield. Yonder a camel-driver squatted and counted his earnings; and a sheepdealer haggled with the owner of a ghiassa bound for the sands of the North. The curious came about him and looked at him, but he did not see or hear. He sat upon a stone, his gaze upon the river, following with his eyes, yet without consciously observing, the dark riverine population whose ways are hidden, who know only the law of the river and spend their lives in eluding itpirates and brigands now, and yet again the peaceful porters of commerce.

To his mind, never a criminal in this land but less a criminal than he! For their standard was a standard of might the only right; but he—his whole life had been nurtured in an atmosphere of right and justice, had been a spiritual demonstration against force. He was with out fear, as he was without an undue love of life. The laying down of his life had never been presented to him; and yet, now that his conscience was his only judge, and it condemned him, he would gladly have given his life to pay the price of blood.

That was impossible. His life was not his own to give, save by suicide; and that would be the unpardonable insult to God and humanity. He had given his word to the woman, and he would keep it. In those brief moments she must have suffered more than most men suffer in a long life. Not her hand, however, but his, had committed the deed. And yet a sudden wave of pity for her rushed over him, because the conviction seized him that she would also in her heart take upon herself the burden of his guilt as though it were her own. He had seen it in the look of her face last night.

For the sake of her future it was her duty to shield herself from any imputation which might as unjustly as scandalously arise, if the facts of that black hour ever became known. Ever became known? The thought that there might be some human eye which had seen, which knew, sent a shiver through him.

"I would give my life a thousand times rather than that," he said aloud to the swift-flowing river. His head sank on his breast. His lips murmured in prayer:

"But be merciful to me, Thou just Judge of Israel, for Thou hast made me, and Thou knowest whereof I am made. Here will I dedicate my life to Thee for the land's sake. Not for my soul's sake, O my God! If it be Thy will, let my soul be cast away; but for the soul of him whose body I slew, and for his land, let my life be the long sacrifice."

Dreams he had had the night before—terrible dreams, which he could never forget; dreams of a fugitive being hunted through the world, escaping and eluding, only to be hemmed in once more; on and on till he grew grey and gaunt, and the hunt suddenly ended in a great morass, into which he plunged with the howling world behind him. The grey, dank mists came down on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the cries, as of damned spirits, grew in his ears. Mocking shapes flitted past him, the wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up about him; and now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving about him. With a moan of agony he felt the dolorous flood above his shoulders, and then a cry pierced the gloom and the loathsome misery, and a voice he knew called to him, "David, David, I am coming!" and he had awaked with the old hallucination of his uncle's voice calling to him in the dawn.

It came to him now as he sat by the water-side, and he raised his face to the sun and to the world. The idlers had left him alone; none were staring at him now. They were all intent on their own business, each man labouring after his kind. He heard the voice of a riverman as he toiled at a rope standing on the corn that filled his ghiassa from end to end, from keel to gunwale. The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack and burden of the body:

"O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap!
O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls;
O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing,
And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God;
Strength of my soul, O my brother, all's well!"

The meaning of the song got into his heart. He pressed his hand to his breast with a sudden gesture. It touched something hard. It was his flute. Mechanically he had put it in his pocket when he dressed in the morning. He took it out and looked at it lovingly. Into it he had poured his soul in the old days—days, centuries away, it seemed now. It should still be the link with the old life. He rose and walked towards his home again. The future spread clearly before him. Rapine, murder, tyranny, oppression, were round him on every side, and the ruler of the land called him to his counsels. Here a great duty lay—his life for this land, his life, and his love, and his faith. He would expiate his crime and his sin, the crime of homicide for which he alone was responsible, the sin of secrecy for which he and another were responsible. And that other? If only there had been but one word of understanding between them before she left!

At the door of his house stood the American whom he had met at the citadel yesterday-it seemed a hundred years ago.

"I've got a letter for you," Lacey said. "The lady's aunt and herself are cousins of mine more or less removed, and originally at home in the U. S. A. a generation ago. Her mother was an American. She didn't know your name—Miss Hylda Maryon, I mean. I told her, but there wasn't time to put it on." He handed over the unaddressed envelope.

David opened the letter, and read:

"I have seen the papers. I do not understand what has happened, but I know that all is well. If it were not so, I would not go. That is the truth. Grateful I am, oh, believe me! So grateful that I do not yet know what is the return which I must make. But the return will be made. I hear of what has come to you—how easily I might have destroyed all! My thoughts blind me. You are great and good; you will know at least that I go because it is the only thing to do. I fly from the storm with a broken wing. Take now my promise to pay what I owe in the hour Fate wills—or in the hour of your need. You can trust him who brings this to you; he is a distant cousin of my own. Do not judge him by his odd and foolish words. They hide a good character, and he has a strong nature. He wants work to do. Can you give it? Farewell."

David put the letter in his pocket, a strange quietness about his heart.

He scarcely realised what Lacey was saying. "Great girl that. Troubled about something in England, I guess. Going straight back."

David thanked him for the letter. Lacey became red in the face. He tried to say something, but failed. "Thee wishes to say something to me, friend?" asked David.

"I'm full up; I can't speak. But, say—"

"I am going to the Palace now. Come back at noon if you will."

He wrung David's hand in gratitude. "You're going to do it. You're going to do it. I see it. It's a great game—like Abe Lincoln's. Say, let me black your boots while you're doing it, will you?"

David pressed his hand.

CHAPTER IX

THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN

"To-day has come the fulfilment of my dream, Faith. I am given to my appointed task; I am set on a road of life in which there is no looking back. My dreams of the past are here begun in very truth and fact. When, in the night, I heard Uncle Benn calling, when in the Meeting-house voices said, 'Come away, come away, and labour, thou art idle,' I could hear my heart beat in the ardour to be off. Yet I knew not whither. Now I know.

"Last night the Prince Pasha called me to his Council, made me adviser, confidant, as one who has the ear of his captain—after he had come to terms with me upon that which Uncle Benn left of land and gold. Think not that he tempted me.

"Last night I saw favourites look upon me with hate because of Kaid's favour, though the great hall was filled with show of cheerful splendour, and men smiled and feasted. To-day I know that in the Palace where I was summoned to my first: duty with the Prince, every step I took was shadowed, every motion recorded, every look or word noted and set down. I have no fear of them. They are not subtle enough for the unexpected acts of honesty in the life of a true man. Yet I do not wonder men fail to keep honest in the midst of this splendour, where all is strife as to who shall have the Prince's favour; who shall enjoy the fruits of bribery, backsheesh, and monopoly; who shall wring from the slave and the toil-ridden fellah the coin his poor body mints at the corvee, in his own taxed fields of dourha and cucumbers.

"Is this like anything we ever dreamed at Hamley, Faith? Yet here am I set, and here shall I stay till the skein be ravelled out. Soon I shall go into the desert upon a mission to the cities of the South, to Dongola, Khartoum, and Darfur and beyond; for there is trouble yonder, and war is near, unless it is given to me to bring peace. So I must bend to my study of Arabic, which I am thankful I learned long ago. And I must not forget to say that I shall take with me on my journey that faithful Muslim Ebn Ezra. Others I shall take also, but of them I shall write hereafter.

"I shall henceforth be moving in the midst of things which I was taught to hate. I pray that I may not hate them less as time goes on. To-morrow I shall breathe the air of intrigue, shall hear footsteps of spies behind me wherever I go; shall know that even the roses in the garden have ears; that the ground under my feet will telegraph my thoughts. Shall I be true? Shall I at last whisper, and follow, and evade, believe in no one, much less in myself, steal in and out of men's confidences to use them for my own purposes? Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation or of the daily pressure of the life around him? what powers of resistance are in his soul? how long the vital energy will continue to throw off the never-ending seduction, the freshening force of evil? Therein lies the power of evil, that it is ever new, ever fortified by continuous conquest and achievements. It has the rare fire of aggression; is ever more upon the offence than upon the defence; has, withal, the false lure of freedom from restraint, the throbbing force of sympathy.

"Such things I dreamed not of in Soolsby's but upon the hill, Faith, though, indeed, that seemed a time of trial and sore-heartedness. How large do small issues seem till we have faced the momentous things! It is true that the larger life has pleasures and expanding capacities; but it is truer still that it has perils, events which try the soul as it is never tried in the smaller life—unless, indeed, the soul be that of the Epicurean. The Epicurean I well understand, and in his way I might have walked with a wicked grace. I have in me some hidden depths of luxury, a secret heart of pleasure, an understanding for the forbidden thing. I could have walked the broad way with a laughing heart, though, in truth, habit of mind and desire have kept me in the better path. But offences must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh! I have begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life. I begin to see how near good is to evil; how near faith is to unfaith; and how difficult it is to judge from actions only; how little we can know to-day what we shall feel tomorrow. Yet one must learn to see deeper, to find motive, not in acts that shake the faith, but in character which needs no explanation, which—"

He paused, disturbed. Then he raised his head, as though not conscious of what was breaking the course of his thoughts. Presently he realised a low, hurried knocking at his door. He threw a hand over his eyes, and sprang up. An instant later the figure of a woman, deeply veiled, stood within the room, beside the table where he had been writing. There was silence as they faced each other, his back against the door.

"Oh, do you not know me?" she said at last, and sank into the chair where he had been sitting.

The question was unnecessary, and she knew it was so; but she could not bear the strain of the silence. She seemed to have risen out of the letter he had been writing; and had he not been writing of her—of what concerned them both? How mean and small-hearted he had been, to have thought for an instant that she had not the highest courage, though in going she had done the discreeter, safer thing. But she had come—she had come!

All this was in his eyes, though his face was pale and still. He was almost rigid with emotion, for the ancient habit of repose and self- command of the Quaker people was upon him.

"Can you not see—do you not know?" she repeated, her back upon him now, her face still veiled, her hands making a swift motion of distress.

"Has thee found in the past that thee is so soon forgotten?"

"Oh, do not blame me!" She raised her veil suddenly, and showed a face as pale as his own, and in the eyes a fiery brightness. "I did not know. It was so hard to come—do not blame me. I went to Alexandria—I felt that I must fly; the air around me seemed full of voices crying out. Did you not understand why I went?"

"I understand," he said, coming forward slowly. "Thee should not have returned. In the way I go now the watchers go also."

"If I had not come, you would never have understood," she answered quickly. "I am not sorry I went. I was so frightened, so shaken. My only thought was to get away from the terrible Thing. But I should have been sorry all my life long had I not come back to tell you what I feel, and that I shall never forget. All my life I shall be grateful. You have saved me from a thousand deaths. Ah, if I could give you but one life! Yet—yet—oh, do not think but that I would tell you the whole truth, though I am not wholly truthful. See, I love my place in the world more than I love my life; and but for you I should have lost all."

He made a protesting motion. "The debt is mine, in truth. But for you I should never have known what, perhaps—" He paused.

His eyes were on hers, gravely speaking what his tongue faltered to say. She looked and looked, but did not understand. She only saw troubled depths, lighted by a soul of kindling purpose. "Tell me," she said, awed.

"Through you I have come to know—" He paused again. What he was going to say, truthful though it was, must hurt her, and she had been sorely hurt already. He put his thoughts more gently, more vaguely.

"By what happened I have come to see what matters in life. I was behind the hedge. I have broken through upon the road. I know my goal now. The highway is before me."

She felt the tragedy in his words, and her voice shook as she spoke. "I wish I knew life better. Then I could make a better answer. You are on the road, you say. But I feel that it is a hard and cruel road—oh, I understand that at least! Tell me, please, tell me the whole truth. You are hiding from me what you feel. I have upset your life, have I not? You are a Quaker, and Quakers are better than all other Christian people, are they not? Their faith is peace, and for me, you—" She covered her face with her hands for an instant, but turned quickly and looked him in the eyes: "For me you put your hand upon the clock of a man's life, and stopped it."

She got to her feet with a passionate gesture, but he put a hand gently upon her arm, and she sank back again. "Oh, it was not you; it was I who did it!" she said. "You did what any man of honour would have done, what a brother would have done."

"What I did is a matter for myself only," he responded quickly. "Had I never seen your face again it would have been the same. You were the occasion; the thing I did had only one source, my own heart and mind. There might have been another way; but for that way, or for the way I did take, you could not be responsible."

"How generous you are!" Her eyes swam with tears; she leaned over the table where he had been writing, and the tears dropped upon his letter. Presently she realised this, and drew back, then made as though to dry the tears from the paper with her handkerchief. As she did so the words that he had written met her eye: "'But offences must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh!' I have begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life."