as intense. The river was
out of sight, lying low between its banks. To infinite distance on
every side of them stretched the plain, and the soil here was not
golden sand, but curiously black, like powdered coal or lava. Not a
living thing moved near them; only, far away towards the horizon,
now and then passed a string of camels of some Bedouins travelling.
They walked on in silence. Stanhope found the walking heavy, as his
heeled boots sank into the loose, black soil, and it was difficult
to keep up with the swift, easy steps of the bare black feet beside
him. His duck suit was damp, and the line of flesh exposed between
cuff and glove on his wrist was burnt to a livid red already in the
smiting heat. Suddenly Merla's eyes fell on this, and she stopped.
Over her head she wore a loose veil of coarse white muslin. As she
stopped, she unwound this from her hair, and tore two strips from
it. Stanhope stopped too, well pleased at the pause.

"You burn your English skin; the flesh will come off," she said
gravely, and before he quite realised it, she had passed one of the
muslin strips round and tied it on his wrist. Stanhope's instinct
was to protest at once, but there was something in the girl's
earnestness and the tender interest with which she put the muslin
on his hand that checked him. Also the pain, whenever his sharp
cuff touched the seared skin, was unpleasant, and made him really
appreciate the improvised protection.

"Your pretty veil, Merla, you've torn it up for me," he remarked
regretfully as they started again. Merla glanced at him suddenly;
she said nothing, but the pride and joy in her eyes startled the
man beside her. He could find no more words, and silence fell
on them again till Merla roused him from a reverie by saying
indifferently:

"Look! that white heap there--bones, dead men, dead horses. This
side, white bones too; many dead here--many bones."

Stanhope looked round. Everywhere, scattered in heaps, shone the
white bones. They had come to the edge of the battlefield. Before
them rose the little hill of Teb-el-Surgham, crowned by its cairn
of black stones and rocks, surrounded by whitened bones and skulls,
from the summit of which the English watched the defeat of the
Khalifa's force. Stanhope cast his eyes over the dreary, black,
blood-soaked plain, on which there was no blade of grass, no plant,
no flower--only black rock and white bones, that shimmered together
in the torrid heat.

"Horr