Upon the stroke of midnight Dicky entered the room where Selamlik Pasha awaited him with a malicious and greasy smile, in which wanton cruelty was uppermost. Selamlik Pasha knew well the object of this meeting. He had accurately interpreted the message brought by Mahommed Yeleb. He knew his power; he knew that the Englishman's life was in his hands to do with what he chose, for the law of the harem which defies all outside law was on his side. But here he was come to listen to Dicky Donovan, the arrogant little favourite, pleading for the life of the English boy who had done the thing for which the only penalty was death.

Dicky showed no emotion as he entered the room, but salaamed, and said:
"Your Excellency is prompt. Honour and peace be upon your Excellency!"
"Honour and the bounty of the stars be upon thee, saadat el basha!"

There was a slight pause, in which Dicky seated himself, lighted a cigarette, and summoned a servant, of whom he ordered coffee. They did not speak meantime, but Dicky sat calmly, almost drowsily, smoking, and Selamlik Pasha sat with greasy hands clasping and unclasping, his yellow eyes fixed on Dicky with malevolent scrutiny.

When the coffee was brought, the door had been shut, and Dicky had drawn the curtain across, Selamlik Pasha said: "What great affair brings us together here, saadat el basha?"

"The matter of the Englishman you hold a prisoner, Excellency."

"It is painful, but he is dead," said the Pasha, with a grimace of cruelty.

Dicky's eyes twitched slightly, but he answered with coolness, thrusting
his elbow into the cushions and smoking hard: "But, no, he is not dead.
Selamlik Pasha has as great an instinct for a bargain as for revenge.
Also Selamlik Pasha would torture before he kills. Is it not so?"

"What is your wish?"

"That the man be set free, Excellency."

"He has trespassed. He has stolen his way into the harem. The infidel dog has defiled the house of my wives."

"He will marry the woman, with your permission, Excellency. He loved her—so it would seem."

"He shall die—the dog of an infidel!"

Dicky was now satisfied that Sowerby was alive, and that the game was fairly begun. He moved slowly towards his purpose.

"I ask his life, as a favour to me. The Khedive honours me, and I can serve you betimes, Excellency."

"You called me 'Trousers,' and all Egypt laughed," answered the Pasha malignantly.

"I might have called you worse, but I did not. You may call me what you will—I will laugh."

"I will call you a fool for bringing me here to laugh at you, who now would kiss Selamlik Pasha's shoe. I would he were your brother. I would tear out his fingernails, pierce his eyes, burn him with hot irons, pour boiling oil over him and red cinders down his throat—if he were your brother."

"Remember I am in the confidence of the Khedive, Pasha."

"Ismail! What dare he do? Every Egyptian in the land would call him infidel. Ismail would dare do nothing." His voice was angrily guttural with triumph.

"England will ask the price of the young man's life of you, Excellency."

"England dare not move—is thy servant a fool? Every Mussulman in the land would raise the green flag—the Jehad would be upon ye!"

"He is so young. He meant no ill. The face of your daughter drew him on. He did not realise his crimen—or its penalty."

"It is a fool's reasoning. Because he was a stranger and an infidel, so has he been told of dark things done to those who desecrate our faith."

"Had he been an Egyptian or a Turk—"

"I should slay him, were he Ismail himself. Mine own is mine own, as Mahomet hath said. The man shall die—and who shall save him? Not even the Sultan himself."

"There are concessions in the Fayoum—you have sought them long."

"Bah!"

"There is the Grand Cordon of the Mejidieh; there is a way to it,
Excellency."

"The man's blood!"

"There is a high office to be vacant soon, near to the person of the
Khedive, with divers moneys and loans—"

"To see Donovan Pasha cringe and beg is better."

"There is that mercy which one day you may have to ask for yourself or for your own—"

"The fool shall die. And who shall save him?"

"Well, I will save him," said Dicky, rising slowly to his feet.

"Pish! Go to the Khedive with the tale, and I will kill the man within the hour, and tell it abroad, and we shall see where Donovan Pasha will stand to-morrow. The Khedive is not stronger than his people—and there are the French, and others!" He spat upon the floor at Dicky's feet. "Go, tell the Khedive what you will, dog of an Englishman, son of a dog with a dog's heart!" Dicky took a step forward, with an ominous flare of colour in his cheek. There was a table between him and Selamlik Pasha. He put both hands upon it, and leaning over said in a voice of steel:

"So be it, then. Shall I go to the Khedive and say that this night Mustapha Bey, eldest and chosen son of Selamlik Pasha, the darling of his fat heart, was seized by the Chief Eunuch, the gentle Mizraim, in the harem of his Highness? Shall I tell him that, Trousers?"

As Dicky spoke, slowly, calmly, Selamlik Pasha turned a greenish-yellow, his eyes started from his head, his hand chafed the air.

"Mustapha Bey—Khedive's harem!" he stammered in a husky voice.

"By the gentle Mizraim, I said," answered Dicky. "Is Mustapha Bey's life worth an hour's purchase? Is Selamlik Pasha safe?"

"Is—is he dead?" gasped the cowardly Egyptian, furtively glancing towards the door. Suddenly he fell back fainting, and Dicky threw some water in his face, then set a cup of it beside him.

"Drink, and pull yourself together, if you would save yourself," said
Dicky.

"Save—save myself," said Selamlik Pasha, recovering; then, with quick suspicion, and to gain time, added quickly: "Ah, it is a trick! He is not a prisoner—you lie!"

"I have not a reputation for lying," rejoined Dicky quietly. "But see!" he added; and throwing open a door, pointed to where the Chief Eunuch stood with Mahommed Yeleb, Mustapha Bey gagged and bound between them. Dicky shut the door again, as Selamlik Pasha shrank back among the cushions, cowardice incarnate.

"You thought," said Dicky with a soft fierceness" you thought that I would stoop to bargain with Selamlik Pasha and not know my way out of the bargain? You thought an Englishman would beg, even for a life, of such as you! You thought me, Donovan Pasha, such a fool!"

"Mercy, Excellency!" said Selamlik, spreading out his hands.

Dicky laughed. "You called me names, Selamlik—a dog, and the son of a dog with a dog's heart. Was it wise?"

"Is there no way? Can no bargain be made?"

Dicky sat down, lighting a cigarette.

"To save a scandal in Egypt," answered Dicky drily, "I am ready to grant you terms."

"Speak-Excellency."

"The life of the Englishman for the life of your son and your own. Also, the freedom of the six Circassian slaves whom you house now at Beni Hassan, ready to bring to your palace. Also, for these slaves two hundred Turkish pounds apiece. Also, your written word that you will bring no more slaves into Egypt. Is the bargain fair?"

"Mizraim may still betray us," said Selamlik, trembling, with relief, but yet apprehensive.

"Mizraim is in my power—he acts for me," said Dicky. "Whose life is safe here save my own?"

"Malaish! It shall be as your will is, Excellency," answered Selamlik
Pasha, in a shaking voice; and he had time to wonder even then how an
Englishman could so outwit an Oriental. It was no matter how Mustapha
Bey, his son, was lured; he had been seized in the harem, and all truth
can be forsworn in Egypt, and the game was with this Donovan Pasha.

"Send to your palace, commanding that the Englishman be brought here," said Dicky. Selamlik Pasha did so.

Sowerby of the Mounted Infantry was freed that night, and the next day Dicky Donovan had six Circassian slaves upon his hands. He passed them over to the wife of Fielding Bey with whom he had shared past secrets and past dangers.

Selamlik Pasha held his peace in fear; and the Khedive and Cairo never knew why there was a truce to battle between Dicky Donovan and that vile Pasha called Trousers.

AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS

In a certain year when Dicky Donovan was the one being in Egypt who had any restraining influence on the Khedive, he suddenly asked leave of absence to visit England. Ismail granted it with reluctance, chiefly because he disliked any interference with his comforts, and Dicky was one of them—in some respects the most important.

"My friend," he said half petulantly to Dicky, as he tossed the plans for a new palace to his secretary and dismissed him, are you not happy here? Have you not all a prince can give?"

"Highness," answered Dicky, "I have kith and kin in England. Shall a man forget his native land?" The Khedive yawned, lighted a cigarette, and murmured through the smoke: "Inshallah! It might be pleasant—betimes."

"I have your Highness's leave to go?" asked Dicky. "May God preserve your head from harm!" answered Ismail in farewell salutation, and, taking a ring from his finger set with a large emerald, he gave it to Dicky. "Gold is scarce in Egypt," he went on, "but there are jewels still in the palace—and the Khedive's promises-to-pay with every money- barber of Europe!" he added, with a cynical sneer, and touched his forehead and his breast courteously as Dicky retired.

Outside the presence Dicky unbuttoned his coat like an Englishman again, and ten minutes later flung his tarboosh into a corner of the room; for the tarboosh was the sign of official servitude, and Dicky was never the perfect official. Initiative was his strong point, independence his life; he loathed the machine of system in so far as he could not command it; he revolted at being a cog in the wheel. Ismail had discovered this, and Dicky had been made a kind of confidential secretary who seldom wrote a line. By his influence with Ismail he had even more power at last than the Chief Eunuch or the valet-de-chambre, before whom the highest officials bowed low. He was hated profoundly by many of the household, cultivated by certain of the Ministers, fawned upon by outsiders, trusted by the Khedive, and entirely believed in by the few Englishmen and Frenchmen who worked for decent administration faithfully but without hope and sometimes with nausea.

It was nausea that had seized upon Dicky at last, nausea and one other thing—the spirit of adventure, an inveterate curiosity. His was the instinct of the explorer, his feet were the feet of the Wandering Jew. He knew things behind closed doors by instinct; he was like a thought- reader in the sure touch of discovery; the Khedive looked upon him as occult almost and laughed in the face of Sadik the Mouffetish when he said some evil things of Dicky. Also, the Khedive told the Mouffetish that if any harm came to Dicky there would come harm to him. The Khedive loved to play one man off against another, and the death of Sadik or the death of Dicky would have given him no pain, if either seemed necessary. For the moment, however, he loved them both after his fashion; for Sadik lied to him, and squeezed the land dry, and flailed it with kourbashes for gold for his august master and himself; and Dicky told him the truth about everything—which gave the Khedive knowledge of how he really stood all round.

Dicky told the great spendthrift the truth about himself; but he did not tell the truth when he said he was going to England on a visit to his kith and kin. Seized by the most irresistible curiosity of his life, moved by desire for knowledge, that a certain plan in his mind might be successfully advanced he went south and east, not west and north.

For four months Egypt knew him not. For four months the Khedive was never told the truth save by European financiers, when truths were obvious facts; for four long months never saw a fearless or an honest eye in his own household. Not that it mattered in one sense; but Ismail was a man of ideas, a sportsman of a sort, an Iniquity with points; a man who chose the broad way because it was easier, not because he was remorseless. At the start he meant well by his people, but he meant better by himself; and not being able to satisfy both sides of the equation, he satisfied one at the expense of the other and of that x quantity otherwise known as Europe. Now Europe was heckling him; the settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and the tongue of an honest man.

But the day Dicky had set for his return had come and gone, and Dicky himself had not appeared. With a grim sort of satisfaction, harmonious with his irritation, Ismail went forth with his retinue to the Dosah, the gruesome celebration of the Prophet's birthday, following on the return of the pilgrimage from Mecca. At noon he entered his splendid tent at one side of a square made of splendid tents, and looked out listlessly, yet sourly, upon the vast crowds assembled—upon the lines of banners, the red and green pennons embroidered with phrases from the Koran. His half-shut, stormy eyes fell upon the tent of the chief of the dervishes, and he scarcely checked a sneer, for the ceremony to be performed appealed to nothing in him save a barbaric instinct, and this barbaric instinct had been veneered by French civilisation and pierced by the criticism of one honest man. His look fell upon the long pathway whereon, for three hundred yards, matting had been spread. It was a field of the cloth of blood; for on this cloth dervishes returned from Mecca, mad with fanaticism and hashish, would lie packed like herrings, while the Sheikh of the Dosah rode his horse over their bodies, a pavement of human flesh and bone.

As the Khedive looked, his lip curled a little, for he recalled what Dicky Donovan had said about it; how he had pleaded against it, describing loathsome wounds and pilgrims done to death. Dicky had ended his brief homily by saying: "And isn't that a pretty dish to set before a king!" to Ismail's amusement; for he was no good Mussulman, no Mussulman at all, in fact, save in occasional violent prejudices got of inheritance and association.

To-day, however, Ismail was in a bad humour with Dicky and with the world. He had that very morning flogged a soldier senseless with his own hand; he had handed over his favourite Circassian slave to a ruffian Bey, who would drown her or sell her within a month; and he had dishonoured his own note of hand for fifty thousand pounds to a great merchant who had served him not wisely but too well. He was not taking his troubles quietly, and woe be to the man or woman who crossed him this day! Tiberius was an hungered for a victim to his temper. His entourage knew it well, and many a man trembled that day for his place, or his head, or his home. Even Sadik the Mouffetish—Sadik, who had four hundred women slaves dressed in purple and fine linen—Sadik, whose kitchen alone cost him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose cigarette ash-trays was equal to the salary of an English consul—even Sadik, foster-brother, panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent and watchful to-day.

And Sadik, silent and watchful and fearful, was also a dangerous man. As Sadik's look wandered over the packed crowds, his faded eyes scarce realising the bright-coloured garments of the men, the crimson silk tents and banners and pennons, the gorgeous canopies and trappings and plumes of the approaching dervishes, led by the Amir-el-Haj or Prince of the Pilgrims, returned from Mecca, he wondered what lamb for the sacrifice might be provided to soothe the mind of his master. He looked at the matting in the long lane before them, and he knew that the bodies which would lie here presently, yielding to the hoofs of the Sheikh's horse, were not sufficient to appease the rabid spirit tearing at the Khedive's soul. He himself had been flouted by one ugly look this morning, and one from Ismail was enough.

It did his own soul good now to see the dervish fanatics foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolling, as they crushed glass in their mouths and ate it, as they swallowed fire, as they tore live serpents to pieces with their teeth and devoured them, as they thrust daggers and spikes of steel through their cheeks, and gashed their breasts with knives and swords. He watched the effect of it on the Khedive; but Ismail had seen all this before, and he took it in the stride. This was not sufficient.

Sadik racked his brain to think who in the palace or in official life might be made the scapegoat, upon whom the dark spirit in the heart of the Khedive might be turned. His mean, colourless eyes wandered inquiringly over the crowd, as the mad dervishes, half-naked, some with masses of dishevelled hair, some with no hair at all, bleached, haggard, moaning and shrieking, threw themselves to the ground on the matting, while attendants pulled off their slippers and placed them under their heads, which lay face downwards. At last Sadik's eyes were arrested by a group of ten dervishes, among them one short in stature and very slight, whose gestures were not so excited as those of his fellows. He also saw that one or two of the dervishes watched the slight man covertly.

Five of the little group suddenly threw themselves upon the matting, adding their bodies to the highway of bones and flesh. Then another and another did the same, leaving three who, with the little man, made a fanatical chorus. Now the three near the little man began to cut themselves with steel and knives, and one set fire to his jibbeh and began to chew the flames. Yet the faces of all three were turned towards the little man, who did no more than shriek and gesticulate and sway his body wildly up and down. He was tanned and ragged and bearded and thin, and there was a weird brilliance in his eyes, which watched his companions closely.

So fierce and frenzied were the actions of those with him, that the attention of the Khedive was drawn; and Sadik, looking at his master, saw that his eyes also were intently fixed on the little man. At that instant the little man himself caught the eye of the Khedive, and Ismail involuntarily dropped a hand upon his sword, for some gesture of this dervish, some familiar turn of his body, startled him. Where had he seen the gesture before? Who was this pilgrim who did not cut and wound himself like his companions? Suddenly the three mad dervishes waved their hands towards the matting and shrieked something into his ear. The little man's eyes shot a look at the Khedive. Ismail's ferret eye fastened on him, and a quick fear as of assassination crossed his face as the small dervish ran forward with the other three to the lane of human flesh, where there was still a gap to be filled, and the cry rose up that the Sheikh of the Dosah had left his tent and was about to begin his direful ride.

Sadik the Mouffetish saw the Khedive's face, and suddenly said in his ear: "Shall my slave seize him, Highness whom God preserve?"

The Khedive did not reply, for at that moment he recognised the dervish; and now he understood that Dicky Donovan had made the pilgrimage to Mecca with the Mahmal caravan; that an infidel had desecrated the holy city; and that his Englishman had lied to him. His first impulse was to have Dicky seized and cast to the crowd, to be torn to pieces. Dicky's eyes met his without wavering—a desperate yet resolute look—and Ismail knew that the little man would sell his life dearly, if he had but half a chance. He also saw in Dicky's eyes the old honesty, the fearless straightforwardness—and an appeal too, not humble, but still eager and downright. Ismail's fury was great, for the blue devils had him by the heels that day; but on the instant he saw the eyes of Sadik the Mouffetish, and their cunning, cruelty, and soulless depravity, their present search for a victim to his master's bad temper, acted at once on Ismail's sense of humour. He saw that Sadik half suspected something, he saw that Dicky's three companions suspected, and his mind was made up on the instant—things should take their course—he would not interfere. He looked Dicky squarely in the face, and Dicky knew that the Khedive's glance said as plainly as words:

"Fool of an Englishman, go on! I will not kill you, but I will not save you. The game is in your hands alone. You can only avert suspicion by letting the Sheikh of the Dosah make a bridge of your back. Mecca is a jest you must pay for."

With the wild cry of a dervish fanatic Dicky threw himself down, his head on his arms, and the vengeful three threw themselves down beside him. The attendants pulled off their slippers and thrust them under their faces, and now the siais of the Sheikh ran over their bodies lightly, calling out for all to lie still—the Sheikh was coming on his horse.

Dicky weighed his chances with a little shrinking, but with no fear: he had been in imminent danger for four long months, and he was little likely to give way now. The three men lying beside him had only suspected him for the last three days, and during that time they had never let him out of heir sight. What had roused their suspicion he did not know: probably a hesitation concerning some Arab custom or the pronunciation of some Arab word—the timbre of the Arab voice was rougher and heavier. There had been no chance of escape during these three days, for his three friends had never left his side, and now they were beside him. His chances were not brilliant. If he escaped from the iron hoofs of the Sheikh's horse, if the weight did not crush the life out of his small body, there was a fair chance; for to escape unhurt from the Dosah is to prove yourself for ever a good Mussulman, who has undergone the final test and is saved evermore by the promise of the Prophet. But even if he escaped unhurt, and the suspicions of his comrades were allayed, what would the Khedive do? The Khedive had recognised him, and had done nothing—so far. Yet Ismail, the chief Mussulman in Egypt, should have thrown him like a rat to the terriers! Why he had acted otherwise he was not certain: perhaps to avoid a horrible sensation at the Dosah and the outcry of the newspapers of Europe; perhaps to have him assassinated privately; perhaps, after all, to pardon him. Yet this last alternative was not reasonable, save from the stand-point that Ismail had no religion at all.

Whatever it was to be, his fate would soon come, and in any case he had done what only one European before him had done—he had penetrated to the tomb of Mahomet at Mecca. Whatever should come, he had crowded into his short life a thousand unusual and interesting things. His inveterate curiosity had served him well, and he had paid fairly for the candles of his game. He was ready.

Low moans came to his ears. He could hear the treading hoofs of the Sheikh's horse. Nearer and nearer the frightened animal came; the shout of those who led the horse was in his ears: "Lie close and still, O brothers of giants!" he heard the ribs of a man but two from him break- he heard the gurgle in the throat of another into whose neck the horse's hoof had sunk. He braced himself and drew his breast close to the ground.

He could hear now the heavy breathing of the Sheikh of the Dosah, who, to strengthen himself for his ride, had taken a heavy dose of hashish. The toe of the Arab leading the horse touched his head, then a hoof was on him—between the shoulders, pressing-pressing down, the iron crushing into the flesh—down—down—down, till his eyes seemed to fill with blood. Then another hoof—and this would crush the life out of him. He gasped, and nerved himself. The iron shoe came down, slipped a little, grazed his side roughly, and sank between himself and the dervish next him, who had shrunk away at the last moment.

A mad act; for the horse stumbled, and in recovering himself plunged forward heavily. Dicky expected the hind hoofs to crush down on his back or neck, and drew in his breath; but the horse, excited by the cries of the people, drove clear of him, and the hind hoofs fell with a sickening thud on the back and neck of the dervish who had been the cause of the disaster.

Dicky lay still for a moment to get his breath, then sprang to his feet lightly, cast a swift glance of triumph towards the Khedive, and turned to the dervishes who had lain beside him. The man who had shrunk away from the horse's hoofs was dead, the one on the other side was badly wounded, and the last, bruised and dazed, got slowly to his feet.

"God is great," said Dicky to him: "I have no hurt, Mahommed."

"It is the will of God. Extolled be Him who created thee!" answered the dervish, all suspicion gone, and admiration in his eyes, as Dicky cried his Allah Kerim—"God is bountiful!"

A kavass touched Dicky on the arm.

"His Highness would speak with you," he said. Dicky gladly turned his back on the long lane of frantic immolation and the sight of the wounded and dead being carried away. Coming over to the Khedive he salaamed, and kneeling on the ground touched the toe of Ismail's boot with his forehead.

Ismail smiled, and his eyes dropped with satisfaction upon the prostrate
Dicky. Never before had an Englishman done this, and that Dicky, of all
Englishmen, should do it gave him an ironical pleasure which chased his
black humour away.

"It is written that the true believer shall come unscathed from the hoofs of the horse. Thou hast no hurt, Mahommed?"

"None, Highness, whose life God preserve," said Dicky in faultless
Arabic, with the eyes of Sadik upon him searching his mystery.

"May the dogs bite the heart of thine enemies! What is thy name?" said
Ismail.

"Rekab, so God wills, Highness."

"Thine occupation?"

"I am a poor scribe, Highness," answered Dicky with a dangerous humour, though he had seen a look in the Khedive's face which boded only safety.

"I have need of scribes. Get you to the Palace of Abdin, and wait upon me at sunset after prayers," said Ismail.

"I am the slave of your Highness. Peace be on thee, O Prince of the
Faithful!"

"A moment, Mahommed. Hast thou wife or child?"

"None, Highness."

"Nor kith nor kin?" Ismail's smile was grim.

"They be far away, beyond the blessed rule of your Highness."

"Thou wilt desire to return to them. How long wilt thou serve me?" asked Ismail slowly.

"Till the two Karadh-gatherers return," answered Dicky, quoting the old Arabic saying which means for ever, since the two Karadh-gatherers who went to gather the fruit of the sant and the leaves of the selem never returned.

"So be it," said the Khedive, and, rising, waved Dicky away. "At sunset!"

"At sunset after prayers, Highness," answered Dicky, and was instantly lost in the throng which now crowded upon the tent to see the Sheikh of the Dosah arrive to make obeisance to Ismail.

That night at sunset, Dicky, once more clothed and shaven and well appointed, but bronzed and weatherbeaten, was shown into the presence of the Khedive, whose face showed neither pleasure nor displeasure.

"You have returned from your kith and kin in England?" asked Ismail, with malicious irony.

"I have no excuses, Highness. I have done what I set out to do."

"If I had given you to death as an infidel who had defiled the holy tomb and the sacred city—"

"Your Highness would have lost a faithful servant," answered Dicky. "I took my chances."

"Even now it would be easy to furnish—accidents for you."

"But not wise, Highness, till my story is told."

"Sadik Pasha suspects you."

"I suspect Sadik Pasha," answered Dicky.

"Of what?" inquired Ismail, starting. "He is true to me—Sadik is true to me?" he urged, with a shudder; for if Sadik was false in this crisis, with Europe clamouring for the payment of debts and for reforms, where should he look for faithful knavery?

"He will desert your Highness in the last ditch. Let me tell your
Highness the truth, in return for saving my life. Your only salvation
lies in giving up to the creditors of Egypt your own wealth, and also
Sadik's, which is twice your own."

"Sadik will not give it up."

"Is not Ismail the Khedive master in Egypt?"

"Sit down and smoke," said Ismail eagerly, handing Dicky a cigarette.

………………….

When Dicky left the Khedive at midnight, he thought he saw a better day dawning for Egypt. He felt also that he had done the land a good turn in trying to break the shameless contract between Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish; and he had the Khedive's promise that it should be broken, given as Ismail pinned on his breast the Order of the Mejidieh.

He was not, however, prepared to hear of the arrest of the Mouffetish before another sunset, and then of his hugger-mugger death, of which the world talks to this day; though the manner of it is only known to a few, and to them it is an ugly memory.

Up to thirty-two years of age David Hyam, of the village of Framley, in Staffordshire, was not a man of surprises. With enough of this world's goods to give him comfort of body and suave gravity of manner, the figure he cut was becoming to his Quaker origin and profession. No one suspected the dynamic possibilities of his nature till a momentous day in August, in the middle Victorian period, when news from Bristol came that an uncle in chocolate had died and left him the third of a large fortune, without condition or proviso.

This was of a Friday, and on the Saturday following David did his first startling act—he offered marriage to Hope Marlowe, the only Quaker girl in Framley who had ever dared to discard the poke bonnet even for a day, and who had been publicly reproved for laughing in meeting—for Mistress Hope had a curious, albeit demure and suggestive, sense of humour; she was, in truth, a kind of sacred minuet in grey. Hope had promptly accepted David, at the same time taunting him softly with the fact that he had recklessly declared he would never marry, even saying profanely that upon his word and honour he never would! She repeated to him what his own mother once replied to his audacious worldly protests:

"If thee say thee will never, never, never do a thing, thee will some day surely do it."

Then, seeing that David was a bit chagrined, Hope slipped one hand into his, drew him back within the door, lifted the shovel hat off his forehead, and whispered with a coquetry unworthy a Quaker maid:

"But thee did not say, friend David, thee would never, never, never smite thy friend on both cheeks after she had flouted thee."

Having smitten her on both cheeks, after the manner of foolish men, David gravely got him to his home and to a sound sleep that night. Next morning, the remembrance of the pleasant smiting roused him to an outwardly sedate and inwardly vainglorious courage. Going with steady steps to the Friends' meeting-house at the appointed time, the Spirit moved him, after a decorous pause, to announce his intended marriage to the prettiest Quaker in Framley, even the maid who had shocked the community's sense of decorum and had been written down a rebel—though these things he did not say.

From the recesses of her poke bonnet Hope watched the effect of David's words upon the meeting; but when the elders turned and looked at her, as became her judges before the Lord, her eyes dropped; also her heart thumped so hard she could hear it; and in the silence that followed it seemed to beat time to the words like the pendulum of a clock: "Fear not- Love on! Fear not—Love on!" But the heart beat faster still, the eyes came up quickly, and the face flushed a deep, excited red when David, rising again, said that, with the consent of the community—a consent which his voice subtly insisted upon—he would take a long journey into the Holy Land, into Syria, travelling to Baalbec and Damascus, and even beyond as far as the desolate city of Palmyra; and then, afterwards, into Egypt, where Joseph and the sons of Israel were captive aforetime. He would fain visit the Red Sea, and likewise confer with the Coptic Christians in Egypt, "of whom thee and me have read to our comfort," he added piously, looking at friend Fairley, the oldest and heretofore the richest man in the community.

Friend Fairley rejoiced now that he had in by-gone days lent David books to read; but he rejoiced secretly, for though his old bookman's heart warmed at the thought that he should in good time hear, from one who had seen with his own eyes, of the wonders of the East, it became him to assume a ponderous placidity—for Framley had always been doubtful of his bookishness and its influence on such as David. They said it boded no good; there were those even who called Fairley "a new light," that schism in a sect.

These God-fearing, dull folk were present now, and, disapproving of David's choice in marriage, disapproved far more of its consequence; for so they considered the projected journey into the tumultuous world and the garish Orient. In the end, however, an austere approval was promised, should the solemn commission of men and women appointed to confer with and examine the candidates find in their favour—as in this case they would certainly do; for thirty thousand pounds bulked potently even in this community of unworldly folk, though smacking somewhat of the world, the flesh and the devil.

If David, however, would stand to the shovel hat, and if Hope would be faithful for ever to the poke bonnet and grey cloth, all might yet be well. At the same time, they considered that friend David's mind was distracted by the things of this world, and they reasoned with the Lord in prayer upon the point in David's presence.

In worldly but religiously controlled dudgeon David left the meeting- house, and inside the door of Hope's cottage said to his own mother and to hers some bitter and un-Quaker-like things against the stupid world— for to him as yet the world was Framley, though he would soon mend that.

When he had done speaking against "the mad wits that would not see," Hope laid her cool fingers on his arm and said, with a demure humour: "All the world's mad but thee and me, David—and thee's a bit mad!"

So pleased was David's mother with this speech that then and there she was reconciled to Hope's rebellious instincts, and saw safety for her son in the hands of the quaint, clear-minded daughter of her old friend and kinswoman, Mercy Marlowe.

II

Within three months David and Hope had seen the hills of Moab from the top of the Mount of Olives; watched the sun go down over the Sea of Galilee; plucked green boughs from the cedars on Lebanon; broken into placid exclamations of delight in the wild orchard of nectarine blossoms by the lofty ruins of Baalbac; walked in that street called Straight at Damascus; journeyed through the desert with a caravan to Palmyra when the Druses were up; and, at last, looked upon the spot where lived that Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.

In this land they stayed; and even now far up the Nile you will hear of the Two Strange People who travelled the river even to Dongola and some way back—only some way back, for a long time. In particular you will hear of them from an old dragoman called Mahommed Ramadan Saggara, and a white-haired jeweller of Assiout, called Abdul Huseyn. These two men still tell the tale of the two mad English folk with faces like no English people ever seen in Egypt, who refused protection in their travels, but went fearlessly among the Arabs everywhere, to do good and fear not. The Quaker hat and saddened drab worked upon the Arab mind to advantage.

In Egypt, David and Hope found their pious mission—though historians have since called it "whimsical and unpractical": David's to import the great Syrian donkey, which was to banish the shame of grossly burdening the small donkey of the land of Pharaoh; and Hope's to build schools where English should be taught, to exclude "that language of Belial," as David called French. When their schemes came home to Framley, with an order on David's bankers for ten thousand pounds, grey-garbed consternation walked abroad, and in meeting the First Day following no one prayed or spoke for an hour or more. At last, however, friend Fairley rose in his place and said:

"The Lord shall deliver the heathen into their hands."

Then the Spirit moved freely and severely among them all, and friend Fairley was, as he said himself, "crowded upon the rails by the yearlings of the flock." For he alone of all Framley believed that David and Hope had not thrown away the Quaker drab, the shovel hat and the poke bonnet, and had gone forth fashionable, worldly and an hungered, among the fleshpots of Egypt. There was talk of gilded palaces, Saracenic splendours and dark suggestions from the Arabian Nights.

Still, the ten thousand pounds went to David and Hope where they smilingly laboured through the time of high Nile and low Nile, and khamsin and sirocco, and cholera, and, worse than all, the banishments to the hot Siberia of Fazougli.

But Mahommed Ramadan Saggara babbles yet of the time when, for one day, David threw away his shovel hat; and Abdul Huseyn, the jeweller, tells how, on the same day, the Sitt—that is, Hope—bought of him a ring of turquoises and put it on her finger with a curious smile.

That day David and Hope, the one in a pith helmet, the other with a turquoise ring on her left hand, went to dine with Shelek Pasha, the Armenian Governor of the province, a man of varied talents, not least of which was deceit of an artistic kind. For, being an Armenian, he said he was a true Christian, and David believed him, though Hope did not; and being an Oriental, he said he told the truth; and again David believed him, though Hope did not. He had a red beard, an eye that glinted red also, and fat, smooth fingers which kept playing with a string of beads as though it were a rosary.

As hard as he worked to destroy the Quaker in David, she worked against him; and she did not fear the end, for she believed in David Hyam of Framley. It was Shelek Pasha's influence, persistently and adroitly used for two years, which made friend David at last put aside for this one day his Quaker hat. And the Pasha rejoiced; for, knowing human nature after a fashion, he understood that when you throw the outer sign away—the sign to you since your birth, like the fingers of your hand—the inner grace begins decadence and in due time disappears.

Shelek Pasha had awaited this with Oriental patience, for he was sure that if David gave way in one thing he would give way in all—and with a rush, some day. Now, at last, he had got David and Hope to dine with him; he had his meshes of deceit around them.

When they came to dinner Shelek Pasha saw the turquoise ring upon the finger of friend Hope, and this startled him and pleased him. Here, he knew, was his greatest enemy where David was concerned, and yet this pretty Saint Elizabeth was wearing a fine turquoise ring with a poke bonnet, in a very worldly fashion. He almost rubbed his eyes, it was so hard to believe; for time and again he had offered antichi in bracelets, rings and scarabs, and fine cottons from Beni-Mazar; and had been promptly and firmly told that the Friends wore no jewelry nor gay attire. Shelek Pasha, being a Christian—after the Armenian fashion—then desired to learn of this strange religion, that his own nature might be bettered, for, alas! snares for the soul are many in the Orient. For this Hope had quietly but firmly referred him to David.

Then he had tried another tack: he had thrown in his interest with her first school in his mudirieh; he got her Arab teachers from Cairo who could speak English; he opened the large schoolhouse himself with great ceremony, and with many kavasses in blue and gold. He said to himself that you never could tell what would happen in this world, and it was well to wait, and to watch the approach of that good angel Opportunity.

With all his devices, however, he could not quite understand Hope, and he walked warily, lest through his lack of understanding he should, by some mischance, come suddenly upon a reef, and his plans go shipwreck. Yet all the time he laughed in his sleeve, for he foresaw the day when all this money the Two Strange People were spending in his mudirieh should become his own. If he could not get their goods and estates peaceably, riots were so easy to arrange; he had arranged them before. Then, when the Two Strange People had been struck with panic, the Syrian donkey- market, and the five hundred feddans of American cotton, and the new schools would be his for a song—or a curse.

When he saw the turquoise ring on the finger of the little Quaker lady he fancied he could almost hear the accompaniment of the song. He tore away tender portions of roasted lamb with his fingers, and crammed them into his mouth, rejoicing. With the same greasy fingers he put upon Hope's plate a stuffed cucumber, and would have added a clammy sweet and a tumbler of sickly sherbet at the same moment; but Hope ate nothing save a cake of dourha bread, and drank only a cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, Shelek Pasha talked of the school, of the donkey-market, the monopoly of which the Khedive had granted David; and of the new prosperous era opening up in Egypt, due to the cotton David had introduced as an experiment. David's heart waxed proud within him that he had walked out of Framley to the regeneration of a country. He likened himself to Joseph, son of Jacob; and at once the fineness of his first purposes became blunted.

As Shelek Pasha talked on, of schools, of taxes, of laws, of government, to David, with no hat on—Samson without his hair—Hope's mind was working as it had never worked before. She realised what a prodigious liar Shelek Pasha was; for, talking benignly of equitable administration as he did, she recalled the dark stories she had heard of rapine and cruel imprisonment in this same mudirieh.

Suddenly Shelek Pasha saw the dark-blue eyes fastened upon his face with a curious intentness, a strange questioning; and the blue of the turquoise on the hand folded over the other in the grey lap did not quite reassure him. He stopped talking, and spoke in a low voice to his kavass, who presently brought a bottle of champagne—a final proof that Shelek Pasha was not an ascetic or a Turk. As the bottle was being opened the Pasha took up his string of beads and began to finger them, for the blue eyes in the poke bonnet were disconcerting. He was about to speak when Hope said, in a clear voice:

"Thee has a strange people beneath thee. Thee rules by the sword, or the word of peace, friend?" The fat, smooth hands fingered the beads swiftly. Shelek Pasha was disturbed, as he proved by replying in French —he had spent years of his youth in France: "Par la force morale, toujours, madame—by moral force, always," he hastened to add in English. Then, casting down his eyes with truly Armenian modesty, he continued in Arabic: "By the word of peace, oh woman of the clear eyes—to whom God give length of days!"

Shelek Pasha smiled a greasy smile, and held the bottle of champagne over the glass set for friend David.

Never in his life had David the Quaker tasted champagne. In his eyes, in the eyes of Framley, it had been the brew especially prepared by Sheitan to tempt to ruin the feeble ones of the earth. But the doublet of David's mind was all unbraced now; his hat was off, his Quaker drab was spotted with the grease of a roasted lamb. He had tasted freedom; he was near to license now.

He took his hand from the top of the glass, and the amber liquid and the froth poured in. At that instant he saw Hope's eyes upon his, he saw her hand go to the poke bonnet, as it were to unloosen the strings. He saw for the first time the turquoise ring; he saw the eyes of Shelek Pasha on Hope with a look prophesying several kinds of triumph, none palatable to him; and he stopped short on that road easy of gradient, which Shelek Pasha was macadamising for him. He put his hand up as though to pull his hat down over his eyes, as was his fashion when troubled or when he was setting his mind to a task.

The hat was not there; but Hope's eyes were on his, and there were a hundred Quaker hats or Cardinals' hats in them. He reached out quickly and caught Hope's hand as it undid the strings of her grey bonnet. "Will thee be mad, Hope?"

"All the world's mad but thee and me, David, and thee's a bit mad," she answered in the tongue of Framley.

"The gaud upon thy hand?" he asked sternly; and his eyes flashed from her to Shelek Pasha, for a horrible suspicion crept into his brain—a shameless suspicion; but even a Quaker may be human and foolish, as history has shown.

"The wine at thine elbow, David, and thine hat!" she answered steadily.

David, the friend of peace, was bitterly angry. He caught up the glass of champagne and dashed it upon the fine prayer-rug which Shelek Pasha had, with a kourbash, collected for taxes from a Greek merchant back from Tiflis—the rug worth five hundred English pounds, the taxes but twenty Turkish pounds.

"Thee is a villain, friend," he said to Shelek Pasha in a voice like a noise in a barrel; "I read thee as a book."

"But through the eyes of your wife, effendi; she read me first—we understand each other!" answered the Governor with a hateful smile, knowing the end of one game was at hand, and beginning another instantly with an intelligent malice.

Against all Quaker principles David's sinful arm was lifted to strike, but Hope's hand prevented him, and Shelek Pasha motioned back the Abyssinian slaves who had sprung forward menacingly from behind a screen.

Hope led the outraged David, hatless, into the street.