is side, he slept dreamlessly while the hosts of the
stars trampled across the heavens above his head.

* * * * *

Now, at this moment Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe was sleeping under
a boulder on the Khor Gwob. He rose early and continued along the broad
plains to the white city of Suakin. There he repeated the story which he
had told to Durrance to one Captain Willoughby, who was acting for the
time as deputy-governor. After he had come from the Palace he told his
story again, but this time in the native bazaar. He told it in Arabic,
and it happened that a Greek seated outside a cafe close at hand
overheard something of what was said. The Greek took Abou Fatma aside,
and with a promise of much merissa, wherewith to intoxicate himself,
induced him to tell it a fourth time and very slowly.

"Could you find the house again?" asked the Greek.

Abou Fatma had no doubts upon that score. He proceeded to draw diagrams
in the dust, not knowing that during his imprisonment the town of Berber
had been steadily pulled down by the Mahdists and rebuilt to the north.

"It will be wise to speak of this to no one except me," said the Greek,
jingling some significant dollars, and for a long while the two men
talked secretly together. The Greek happened to be Harry Feversham whom
Durrance was proposing to visit in Donegal. Captain Willoughby was
Deputy-Governor of Suakin, and after three years of waiting one of Harry
Feversham's opportunities had come.

CHAPTER VIII

LIEUTENANT SUTCH IS TEMPTED TO LIE

Durrance reached London one morning in June, and on that afternoon took
the first walk of the exile, into Hyde Park, where he sat beneath the
trees marvelling at the grace of his countrywomen and the delicacy of
their apparel, a solitary figure, sunburnt and stamped already with that
indefinable expression of the eyes and face which marks the men set
apart in the distant corners of the world. Amongst the people who
strolled past him, one, however, smiled, and, as he rose from his chair,
Mrs. Adair came to his side. She looked him over from head to foot with
a quick and almost furtive glance which might have told even Durrance
something of the place which he held in her thoughts. She was comparing
him with the picture which she had of him now three years old. She was
looking for the small marks of change which those three years might have
brought about, and with eyes of apprehension. But D