ughed with a great contentment. It
was yellow with the desert dust. It was a proof that in this story there
was to be no word of failure.

"Go on," she said.

Willoughby related the despatch of the negro with the donkey to Abou
Fatma at the Wells of Obak.

"Feversham stayed for a fortnight in Berber," Willoughby continued. "A
week during which he came every morning to the well and waited for the
return of his negro from Obak, and a week during which that negro
searched for Yusef, who had once sold rock-salt in the market-place. I
doubt, Miss Eustace, if you can realise, however hard you try, what that
fortnight must have meant to Feversham--the anxiety, the danger, the
continued expectation that a voice would bid him halt and a hand fall
upon his shoulder, the urgent knowledge that if the hand fell, death
would be the least part of his penalty. I imagine the town--a town of
low houses and broad streets of sand, dug here and there into pits for
mud wherewith to build the houses, and overhead the blistering sun and
a hot shadowless sky. In no corner was there any darkness or
concealment. And all day a crowd jostled and shouted up and down these
streets--for that is the Mahdist policy to crowd the towns so that all
may be watched and every other man may be his neighbour's spy. Feversham
dared not seek the shelter of a roof at night, for he dared not trust
his tongue. He could buy his food each day at the booths, but he was
afraid of any conversation. He slept at night in some corner of the old
deserted town, in the acres of the ruined fives-courts. For the same
reason he must not slink in the by-ways by day lest any should question
him about his business; nor listen on the chance of hearing Yusef's name
in the public places lest other loiterers should joke with him and draw
him into their talk. Nor dare he in the daylight prowl about those
crumbled ruins. From sunrise to sunset he must go quickly up and down
the streets of the town like a man bent upon urgent business which
permits of no delay. And that continued for a fortnight, Miss Eustace! A
weary, trying life, don't you think? I wish I could tell you of it as
vividly as he told me that night upon the balcony of the palace at
Suakin."

Ethne wished it too with all her heart. Harry Feversham had made his
story very real that night to Captain Willoughby; so that even after the
lapse of fifteen months this unimaginative creature was sensible of a
contrast and a defic