strongly guarded by French troops. There was but one way of
succeeding. You thought of that way. You planned it all out. You
invented a likely story, which was yet very close to the truth. You went
into the midst of the men that you have been fighting against, and you
so sustained the character that you had chosen, that none of the French
officers suspected for a moment that you were aught but what you seemed,
and so, listening to your pleading on his behalf, let him go free. Well
did I say, the other day, that though we might be beaten, I believed
that you and my son would escape, for that Allah had clearly sent you to
save him from danger, and that he would therefore assuredly preserve you
both."

[Illustration: ALI AND AYALA APPEARED

_Page 150_]

"It is Allah, who is our God as well as yours, who is to be thanked,
sheik, that all our lives have been preserved," Edgar said reverently,
"and that we are again united when so many have perished."

In spite of the shade of the blanket overhead, Edgar found it
tremendously hot in the middle of the day, but as soon as the sun had
passed west, he was able to get some hours' comfortable sleep. A short
time before sunset they started again and carried the sheik to the cave.
The two Arabs did this while Edgar and Sidi loitered behind pulling up
the parched-up bushes that grew here and there among the rocks, and
making them into faggots. As soon, therefore, as the sheik was laid down
the fire was lighted, giving a cheerful air to the dark chamber. Ali and
Hassan went down again and brought up the provisions, water, and
bundles. The air was cool and pleasant in the tomb, and a hearty meal
was made by all but the sheik, who, however, not only drank a cup of
broth, but ate some dates with something like an appetite.

"Now, sheik," Edgar said, after he had put some more sticks upon the
fire, "we can chat about our future plans. I have been talking with
Sidi. It must be a fortnight or three weeks before you are fit to sit a
horse again. It is very fortunate, by the way, that you sent your
favourite horse, as well as Sidi's and mine, back by two of your
followers from the Pyramids when you decided to enter the town; and that
we rode other horses in that charge in Cairo. It would have been a loss,
indeed, if those noble steeds of ours had been all killed."

"That was one of my first thoughts when I was able to think," the sheik
said. "Next to my wife, my son, and you, I love Zei