Two days following, towards evening, two wounded men on foot trudged through the desert haggard and bent. The feet of one—an Arab—had on a pair of red slippers, the feet of the other were bare. Mahmoud and Macnamara were in a bad way. They were in very truth "walking against time." Their tongues were thick in their mouths, their feet were lacerated and bleeding, they carried nothing now save their pistols and their swords, and a small bag of dates hanging at Macnamara's belt. Prepared for the worst, they trudged on with blind hope, eager to die fighting if they must die, rather than to perish of hunger and thirst in the desert. Another day, and they would be beyond the radius of the Khalifa's power: but would they see another day?

They thought that question answered, when, out of the evening pink and opal and the golden sand behind them, they saw three Arabs riding. The friends of the slain dervishes were come to take revenge, it seemed.

The two men looked at each other, but they did not try to speak. Macnamara took from his shirt a bag of gold and offered it to Mahmoud. It was the balance of the payment promised to Ebn Mazar. Mahmoud salaamed and shook his head, then in a thick voice: "It is my life and thy life. If thou diest, I die. If thou livest, the gold is Ebn Haraf's. At Wady Halfa I will claim it, if it be the will of God."

The words were thick and broken, but Macnamara understood him, and they turned and faced their pursuers, ready for life or death, intent to kill —and met the friends of Ebn Haraf, who had been hired to take them on to Wady Halfa! Their rescuers had been pursued, and had made a detour and forced march, thus coming on them before the time appointed. In three days more they were at Wady Halfa.

Mahmoud lived to take back to Ebn Mazar the other hundred pounds of the gold Macnamara had looted from the Khalifa; and he also took something for himself from the British officers at Wady Halfa. For him nothing remained of the desperate journey but a couple of scars.

It was different with Macnamara. He had to take a longer journey still. He was not glad to do it, for he liked the look of the English faces round him, and he liked what they said to him. Also, he was young enough to "go a-roaming still," as he said to Henry Withers. Besides, it sorely hurt his pride that no woman or child of his would be left behind to lament him. Still, when Henry told him he had to go, he took it like a man.

"'Ere, it ain't no use," said Henry to him the day he got to Wady Halfa. "'Ere, old pal, it ain't no use. You 'ave to take your gruel, an' you 'ave to take it alone. What I want to tell yer quiet and friendly, old pal, is that yer drawfted out—all the way out—for good."

"'Sh-did ye think I wasn't knowin' it, me b'y?" Macnamara's face clouded. "Did ye think I wasn't knowin' it? Go an' lave me alone," he added quickly.

Henry Withers went out pondering, for he was sure it was not mere dying that fretted Macnamara.

The next day the end of it all came. Henry Withers had pondered, and his mind was made up to do a certain thing. Towards evening he sat alone in the room where Macnamara lay asleep—almost his very last sleep. All at once Macnamara's eyes opened wide. "Kitty, Kitty, me darlin'," he murmured vaguely. Then he saw Henry Withers.

"I'm dyin'," he said, breathing heavily. "Don't call anny one, Hinry," he added brokenly. "Dyin's that aisy—aisy enough, but for wan thing."

"'Ere, speak out, Pete."

"Sure, there's no wan but you, Withers, not a wife nor a child av me own to say, 'Poor Peter Macnamara, he is gone."'

"There's one," said Henry Withers firmly. "There's one, old pal."

"Who's that?" said Macnamara huskily. "Kitty."

"She's no wife," said Macnamara, shaking his head. "Though she'd ha' been that, if it hadn't been for Mary Malone."

"She's mine, an' she 'as the marriage lines," said Henry Withers. "An' there's a kid-wich ain't mine—born six months after! 'Oo says no kid won't remark, 'Poor Peter Macnamara, 'ee is gone, wich'ee was my fader!"'

Macnamara trembled; the death-sweat dropped from his forehead as he raised himself up.

"Kitty—a kid av mine—and she married to Hinry Withers—an' you saved me, too!—" Macnamara's eyes were wild.

Henry Withers took his hand.

"'Ere, it's all right, old pal," he said cheerfully. "What's the kid's name?" said Macnamara. "Peter—same as yours."

The voice was scarce above a breath. "Sure, I didn't know at all. An' you forgive me, Hinry darlin', you forgive me?"

"I've nothing to forgive," said Henry Withers.

A smile lighted the blanched face of the dying man. "Give me love to the b'y—to Peter Macnamara," he said, and fell back with a smile on his face.

"I'd do it again. Wot's a lie so long as it does good?" said Henry Withers afterwards to Holgate the engineer. "But tell 'er—tell Kitty— no fear! I ain't no bloomin' fool. 'E's 'appy—that's enough. She'd cut me 'eart out, if she knowed I'd lied that lie."

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS

I

Dimsdale's prospects had suddenly ceased by the productive marriage of a rich uncle late in life; and then his career began. He went to Egypt at the time when men who knew things had their chance to do things. His information was general and discursive, but he had a real gift for science: an inheritance from a grandfather who received a peerage for abstruse political letters written to the Times and lectures before the Royal Institution. Besides, he had known well and loved inadvertently the Hon. Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face was fair, her manners simple, and her tongue demure and biting.

Egypt offered an opportunity for a man like Dimsdale, and he always said that his going there was the one inspiration of his life. He did not know that this inspiration came from Lucy Gray. She had purposely thrown him in the way of General Duncan Pasha, who, making a reputation in Egypt, had been rewarded by a good command in England and a K.C.B.

After a talk with the General, who had spent his Egyptian days in the agreeable strife with native premiers and hesitating Khedives, Dimsdale rose elated, with his mission in his hand. After the knock-down blow his uncle had given him, he was in a fighting mood. General Duncan's tale had come at the psychological moment, and hot with inspiration he had gone straight off to Lucy Gray with his steamship ticket in his pocket, and told her he was going to spend his life in the service of the pasha and the fellah. When she asked him a little bitingly what form his disciplined energy would take, he promptly answered: "Irrigation."

She laughed in his face softly. "What do you know about irrigation?" she asked.

"I can learn it—it's the game to play out there, I'm sure of that," he answered.

"It doesn't sound distinguished," she remarked drily. Because she smiled satirically at him, and was unresponsive to his enthusiasm, and gave him no chance to tell her of the nobility of the work in which he was going to put his life; of the work of the Pharaohs in their day, the hope of Napoleon in his, and the creed Mahomet Ali held and practised, that the Nile was Egypt and Egypt was irrigation—because of this he became angry, said unkind things, drew acid comments upon himself, and left her with a last good-bye. He did not realise that he had played into the hands of Lucy Gray in a very childish manner. For in scheming that he should go to Egypt she had planned also that he should break with her; for she never had any real intention of marrying him, and yet it was difficult to make him turn his back on her, while at the same time she was too tender of his feelings to turn her back on him. She held that anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation. In anger there was no humiliation. There was something dignified and brave about a quarrel, while a growing coolness which must end in what the world called "jilting" was humiliating. Besides, people who quarrel and separate may meet again and begin over again: impossible in the other circumstance.

II

In Egypt Dimsdale made a reputation; not at once, but he did make it. The first two years of his stay he had plenty to do. At the end of the time he could have drawn a map of the Nile from Uganda to the Barrages; he knew the rains in each district from the region of the Sadds to the Little Borillos; there was not a canal, from the small Bahr Shebin to the big Rayeh Menoufieh or the majestic Ibrahimieh, whose slope, mean velocity and discharge he did not know; and he carried in his mind every drainage cut and contour from Tamis to Damanhur, from Cairo to Beltim. He knew neither amusement nor society, for every waking hour was spent in the study of the Nile and what the Nile might do.

After one of his journeys up the Nile, Imshi Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, said to him: "Ah, my dear friend, with whom be peace and power, what have you seen as you travel?"

"I saw a fellah yesterday who has worked nine months on the corvee— six months for the Government and three for a Pasha, the friend of the Government. He supplied his own spades and baskets; his lantern was at the service of the Khedive; he got his own food as best he could. He had one feddan of land in his own village, but he had no time to work it or harvest it. Yet he had to pay a house-tax of five piastres, a war-tax of five piastres, a camel-tax of five piastres, a palm-tax of five piastres, a salt-tax of nine piastres, a poll-tax of thirty piastres, a land-tax of ninety piastres. The canal for which he was taxed gave his feddan of land no water, for the Pasha, the friend of the Government, took all the water for his own land."

Prince Imshi stifled a yawn. "I have never seen so much at one breath, my friend. And having seen, you feel now that Egypt must be saved—eh?"

This Pasha was an Egyptian of the Egyptians—a Turk of the Turks, Oriental in mind with the polish of a Frenchman. He did not like Dimsdale, but he did not say so. He knew it was better to let a man have his fling and come a cropper over his own work than to have him unoccupied, excited, and troublesome, especially when he was an Englishman and knew about what he was talking. Imshi Pasha saw that Dimsdale was a dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are, no matter how right-headed; but it comforted him to think that many a reformer, from Amenhotep down, had, as it were, cut his own throat in the Irrigation Department. Some had tried to distribute water fairly, efficiently and scientifically, but most of them had got lost in the underbush of officialdom, and never got out of the wood again. This wood is called Backsheesh. Reformers like Dimsdale had drawn straight lines of purpose for the salvation of the country, and they had seen these straight lines go crooked under their very eyes, with a devilish smoothness. Therefore Imshi Pasha, being a wise man and a deep-dyed official who had never yet seen the triumph of the reformer and the honest Aryan, took Dimsdale's hands and said suddenly, with a sorrowful break in his voice:

"Behold, my friend, to tell the whole truth as God gives it, it is time you have come. Egypt has waited for you—the man who sees and knows. I have watched you for two years. I have waited, but now the time is ripe. You shall stretch your arm over Egypt and it will rise to you. You shall have paper for plans, and men and money for travel and works-cuttings, and pumps, and sand-bags for banks and barrages. You shall be second in your department—but first in fact, for shall not I, your friend, be your chief? And you shall say 'Go there,' and they shall go, and 'Come here,' and they shall come. For my soul is with you for Egypt, O friend of the fellah and saviour of the land. Have I not heard of the great reservoirs you would make in the Fayoum, of the great dam at Assouan? Have I not heard, and waited, and watched? and now . . ."

He paused and touched his breast and his forehead in respect.

Dimsdale was well-nigh taken off his feet. It seemed too wonderful to be true—a free hand in Egypt, and under Imshi Pasha, the one able Minister of them all, who had, it was said, always before resisted the irrigation schemes of the foreigners, who believed only in the corroee and fate!

Dimsdale rejoiced that at the beginning of his career he had so inspired the powerful one with confidence. With something very like emotion he thanked the Minister.

"Yes, my dear friend," answered the Pasha, "the love of Egypt has helped us to understand each other. And we shall know each other better still by-and-by -by-and-by. . . . You shall be gazetted to-morrow. Allah preserve you from all error!"