ogether for the best part of an hour. At the end of that
time the Arab was seen to descend the glacis, cross the trench, and
proceed toward the hills. Durrance gave the order for the resumption of
the march.

The water-tanks were filled, the men replenished their zamshyehs,
knowing that of all thirsts in this world the afternoon thirst is the
very worst, saddled their camels, and mounted to the usual groaning and
snarling. The detachment moved northwestward from Sinkat, at an acute
angle to its morning's march. It skirted the hills opposite to the pass
from which it had descended in the morning. The bushes grew sparse. It
came into a black country of stones scantily relieved by yellow
tasselled mimosas.

Durrance called Mather to his side.

"That Arab had a strange story to tell me. He was Gordon's servant in
Khartum. At the beginning of 1884, eighteen months ago in fact, Gordon
gave him a letter which he was to take to Berber, whence the contents
were to be telegraphed to Cairo. But Berber had just fallen when the
messenger arrived there. He was seized upon and imprisoned the day after
his arrival. But during the one day which he had free he hid the letter
in the wall of a house, and so far as he knows it has not been
discovered."

"He would have been questioned if it had been," said Mather.

"Precisely, and he was not questioned. He escaped from Berber at night,
three weeks ago. The story is curious, eh?"

"And the letter still remains in the wall? It is curious. Perhaps the
man was telling lies."

"He had the chain mark on his ankles," said Durrance.

The cavalcade turned to the left into the hills on the northern side of
the plateau, and climbed again over shale.

"A letter from Gordon," said Durrance, in a musing voice, "scribbled
perhaps upon the roof-top of his palace, by the side of his great
telescope--a sentence written in haste, and his eye again to the lens,
searching over the palm trees for the smoke of the steamers--and it
comes down the Nile to be buried in a mud wall in Berber. Yes, it's
curious," and he turned his face to the west and the sinking sun. Even
as he looked, the sun dipped behind the hills. The sky above his head
darkened rapidly, to violet; in the west it flamed a glory of colours
rich and iridescent. The colours lost their violence and blended
delicately into one rose hue, the rose lingered for a little, and,
fading in its turn, left a sky of the purest emerald green transfused