entence is
only modified and softened, but in the latter, the man who pleads guilty
receives a free pardon and ultimate deliverance from _all_ sin for the
sake of Jesus Christ. Will you accept this deliverance, my friend?"

What the soldier replied in his heart we cannot tell, for his voice was
silent. Before the conversation could be resumed a halt was called, to
partake of the midday meal and rest.

That evening the party came upon a strange and animated scene. It was
one of the mountain camps of Osman Digna, where men were assembling from
all quarters, to swell the hordes with which their chief hoped to drive
the hated Europeans into the Red Sea. Camels and other beasts of burden
were bringing in supplies for the vast army, and to this spot had been
brought the poor fellows who had been wounded in recent battles.

Here the captives were thrust into a small dark hut and left to their
meditations, while a couple of Arab sentries guarded the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

SHOWS THAT SUFFERING TENDS TO DRAW OUT SYMPATHY.

The word _captivity_, even when it refers to civilised lands and
peoples, conveys, we suspect, but a feeble and incorrect idea to the
minds of those who have never been in a state of personal bondage.
Still less do we fully appreciate its dread significance when it refers
to foreign lands and barbarous people.

It was not so much the indignities to which the captive Britons were
subjected that told upon them ultimately, as the hard, grinding,
restless toil, and the insufficient food and rest--sometimes accompanied
with absolute corporeal pain.

"A merciful man is merciful to his beast." There is not much of mercy
to his beast in an Arab. We have seen an Arab, in Algiers, who made use
of a sore on his donkey's back as a sort of convenient spur! It is
exhausting to belabour a thick-skinned and obstinate animal with a
stick. It is much easier, and much more effective, to tickle up a sore,
kept open for the purpose, with a little bit of stick, while comfortably
seated on the creature's back. The fellow we refer to did that. We do
not say or think that all Arabs are cruel; very far from it, but we hold
that, as a race, they are so. Their great prophet taught them cruelty
by example and precept, and the records of history, as well as of the
African slave-trade, bear witness to the fact that their "tender
mercies" are not and never have been conspicuous!

At first, as we have shown, ind