"

"Why, Auntie," cried the girl, "it isn't like you to be faint-hearted."

"Well, I don't know how it is, Sadie, but I feel a bit unstrung, and
that beast caterwauling over yonder was just more than I could put up
with. There's one consolation, we are scheduled to be on our way home
to-morrow, after we've seen this one rock or temple, or whatever it is.
I'm full up of rocks and temples, Mr. Stephens. I shouldn't mope if I
never saw another. Come, Sadie! Good-night!"

"Good-night! Good-night, Miss Adams!" and the two ladies passed down to
their cabins.

Monsieur Fardet was chatting, in a subdued voice, with Headingly, the
young Harvard graduate, bending forward confidentially between the
whiffs of his cigarette.

"Dervishes, Mister Headingly!" said he, speaking excellent English, but
separating his syllables as a Frenchman will. "There are no Dervishes.
They do not exist."

"Why, I thought the woods were full of them," said the American.

Monsieur Fardet glanced across to where the red core of Colonel
Cochrane's cigar was glowing through the darkness.

"You are an American, and you do not like the English," he whispered.
"It is perfectly comprehended upon the Continent that the Americans are
opposed to the English."

"Well," said Headingly, with his slow, deliberate manner, "I won't say
that we have not our tiffs, and there are some of our people--mostly of
Irish stock--who are always mad with England; but the most of us have a
kindly thought for the mother country. You see, they may be aggravating
folk sometimes, but after all they are our _own_ folk, and we can't wipe
that off the slate."

"_Eh bien!_" said the Frenchman. "At least I can say to you what I could
not without offence say to these others. And I repeat that there _are_
no Dervishes. They were an invention of Lord Cromer in the year 1885."

"You don't say!" cried Headingly.

"It is well known in Paris, and has been exposed in _La Patrie_ and
other of our so well-informed papers."

"But this is colossal," said Headingly.

"Do you mean to tell me, Monsieur Fardet, that the siege of Khartoum and
the death of Gordon and the rest of it was just one great bluff?"

"I will not deny that there was an emeute, but it was local, you
understand, and now long forgotten. Since then there has been profound
peace in the Soudan."

"But I have heard of raids, Monsieur Fardet, and I've read of battles,
too, when the Arabs tried to invade Egypt. It was only