in the lovely moonlight nights, for which the Sudan is so
famed, and talk over matters. The conversation always turns to politics;
the latest news from all directions is eagerly discussed, and often the
most unlikely and impossible stories are credited. The fact is that the
people long for freedom, and their smallest hopes become exaggerated
into not only possibilities, but certainties. The proverb, "El gharkan
yemsik fi shaaru" (_i.e._ "The drowning man catches at a
straw"--literally, a hair), is being continually exemplified. Talk also
turns much on what the Khalifa said and did, what he intends to do, what
has taken place in the last council, &c. But the Khalifa, fearing that
all these conversations might lead to conspiracies, ordered them to be
discontinued. But nevertheless they are still carried on secretly.

Near the market-place there lived a certain fiki named Abdel Nur (_i.e._
the slave of light--that is to say, the slave of the light of the
Prophet; though, when the Copts are called by this name, the reference
is to the light of the Redeemer). The fiki's neighbours used to assemble
in his house every evening, and of course the conversation always turned
on Mahdiism, and the Khalifa was abused freely. Abdel Nur would talk
more excitedly than the rest, and used to say that the Sudan no longer
formed part of Islam, that both the Khalifa and the Mahdi were
unbelievers, and this he proved by quotations from the sacred books.
All this was reported by a spy to the Khalifa, who at once despatched a
company of soldiers by whom the unsuspecting party were suddenly
surrounded and carried off to prison.

Early the following morning Abdel Nur was brought before the judges, who
asked him if he had really spoken against Mahdiism. Seeing that he was
now lost, he thought this a good opportunity, in the presence of such a
large audience, to prove his assertion; he declared that the true Mahdi
should not die in Omdurman, and that true Mahdiism would not be confined
to the Sudan alone; that the people having been once deceived, the paths
of wickedness should be avoided, the paths of truth followed, and the
oppression of the Moslems abandoned once and for all.

The judges, who in their own hearts were convinced of the truth of Abdel
Nur's assertions, were unable to browbeat him, whilst all those who
listened had little doubt in their own minds of the truth of the
statements of this outspoken man, but fear of the Khalifa interven