so hoarse,
so strange, that they all turned and looked.

"On the Nile," repeated Mortimer. "All over Egypt. Why?"

Ainsley made no answer. Unclasping his hold, he suddenly slid down the
face of the rock, and with a bump lit on his hands and knees. With one
bound he had cleared a flower-bed. In two more he had mounted the steps
to the terrace, and in another instant had disappeared into the house.

"What happened to him?" demanded Elsie Mortimer.

"He's gone to get a gun!" exclaimed Mortimer. "But he mustn't! How can
he think of shooting them?" he cried indignantly. "I'll put a stop to
that!"

In the hall he found Ainsley surrounded by a group of startled servants.

"You get that car at the door in five minutes!" he was shouting, "and
YOU telephone the hotel to have my trunks out of the cellar and on board
the Kron Prinz Albert by midnight. Then you telephone Hoboken that I
want a cabin, and if they haven't got a cabin I want the captain's. And
tell them anyway I'm coming on board to-night, and I'm going with them
if I have to sleep on deck. And YOU," he cried, turning to Mortimer,
"take a shotgun and guard that lake, and if anybody tries to molest
those birds--shoot him! They've come from Egypt! From Polly Kirkland!
She sent them! They're a sign!"

"Are you going mad?" cried Mortimer.

"No!" roared Ainsley. "I'm going to Egypt, and I'm going NOW!"

Polly Kirkland and her friends were travelling slowly up the Nile, and
had reached Luxor. A few hundred yards below the village their dahabiyeh
was moored to the bank, and, on the deck, Miss Kirkland was watching
a scarlet sun sink behind two palm-trees. By the grace of that special
Providence that cares for drunken men, citizens of the United States,
and lovers, her friends were on shore, and she was alone. For this she
was grateful, for her thoughts were of a melancholy and tender nature
and she had no wish for any companion save one. In consequence, when
a steam-launch, approaching at full speed with the rattle of a
quick-firing gun, broke upon her meditations, she was distinctly
annoyed.

But when, with much ringing of bells and shouting of orders, the
steam-launch rammed the paint off her dahabiyeh, and a young man flung
himself over the rail and ran toward her, her annoyance passed, and with
a sigh she sank into his outstretched, eager arms.

Half an hour later Ainsley laughed proudly and happily.

"Well!" he exclaimed, "you can never say I kept YOU waitin