berg joined the officer, who, accompanied by an escort of
four men, started at once for head-quarters.

"By the way," said the officer, after they had ridden a little way
in silence, "the man who was leading the rebels is a prisoner--he is
a white man. Do you know anything of him?"

George glanced at his young friend riding beside him.

"Do I know him, sir?" he said, repeating his superior's question.
"There is a story of villainous treachery surrounding that man that
will sound to you like fiction; if it will not weary you, as we have
yet some miles to travel, I will tell it."

The officer expressed his willingness to listen, and George
recounted to him all that had occurred from the time the three
companions left Germany. The latter part of the story was new to
Osterberg, and he exclaimed in horror and indignation at the
villainous way Arden had persecuted his friend. When our hero came
to the flogging, the officer's face became hard and stern.

"And you still bear the marks of that inhuman treatment?" he asked,
when George had finished.

"That I do, sir," he replied, with a look of chagrin on his face.
"My back is scored and lined like a ploughed field. I shall carry
the marks to my grave, but, even so, I regret not one moment of the
agony I have gone through so long as Cairo and the many hundreds of
true men and women in it are saved. Had I not gone through this, had
I not been a prisoner, I do not know who Naoum could have sent with
the news. It is an ill wind that blows no one any good. Let us hope
I am in time."

George's calm words, his lack of resentment at the treatment he had
received from Mark Arden, touched a deep chord in the officer's
nature, but he wondered at George's apparent unconcern.

"I should think considerably more of vengeance than you appear to
do," he said, with an ominous glitter in his eyes; "prisoners, when
left to the authorities, do not always get what they deserve."

"That may be, sir," replied George, "but time will show. Arden has
lost his chance, the chance he wanted, of getting out of the
country with his ill-gotten gains, therefore his rascality has
brought him but little fortune. To my mind that is sufficient
punishment, and, after all, revenge is but a small thing--he will be
punished in some way."

"'m!" said the officer doubtfully. "I should want something more
definite."

By sundown the British camp was in view, and, to Helmar at least,
never was any sight more w