Imshi Pasha. "More tricks," he said to himself between his
teeth.

"Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry
large plumes."

"What a blitherer you are, Mahommed! Rip it open and let's have it
over."

The kavass handed him a large letter, pedantically and rhetorically
written; and Dimsdale, scarce glancing at it, sleepily said: "Read it
out, Mahommed. Skip the flummery in it, if you know how."

Two minutes later Dimsdale sat up aghast with a surprise that made his
heart thump painfully, made his head go round. For the letter conveyed
to him the fact that there had been placed to the credit of his
department, subject to his own disposal for irrigation works, the sum
of eight hundred thousand pounds; and appended was the copy of a letter
from the Caisse de la Dette granting three-fourths of this sum, and
authorising its expenditure. Added to all was a short scrawl from Imshi
Pasha himself, beginning, "God is with the patient, my dear friend," and
ending with the remarkable statement: "Inshallah, we shall now reap the
reward of our labours in seeing these great works accomplished at
last, in spite of the suffering thrust upon us by our enemies--to whom
perdition come."

Eight hundred thousand pounds!

In a week Dimsdale was at work again. In another month he was at Cairo,
and the night after his arrival he attended a ball at the Khedive's
Palace. To Fielding Bey he poured out the wonder of his soul at the
chance that had been given him at last. He seemed to think it was his
own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports,
which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la
Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him.

He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: "Not much, my Belisarius. As
Imshi Pasha always was, so he will be to the end. It wasn't Imshi Pasha,
and it wasn't English influence, and it wasn't the Caisse de la Dette,
each by its lonesome, or all together by initiative."

"What was it--who was it, then?" inquired Dimsdale breathlessly. "Was
it you?--I know you've worked for me. It wasn't backsheesh anyhow. But
Imshi Pasha didn't turn honest and patriotic for nothing--I know that."

Fielding, who had known him all his life, looked at him curiously for a
moment, and then, in a far-away, sort of voice, made recitative:

"'Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to s