it is to be hoped, by the companionship of their clerical
entertainers, till the hottest part of the day was passed, and then,
once more mounting their camels, went on their way to El Obeid--an easy
march for the evening.

Days passed before Harry Forsyth was conscious of anything; then for
weeks he had no sense of life but pain and weariness, with intervals of
blissful rest. He had no doctor but the first lady who ever practised--
Dame Nature, who sometimes, strange to say, pulls her patients through
almost as well as if she had a diploma. But he was well nursed, and
there is a great deal in that.

At length there came a time when he knew that people moved about and
talked, and that he took food and was very weak; but he did not know
where he was, nor cared. He had visions, and half knew they were
visions; sometimes these were rather pleasant but more often very much
the other way. What was the matter with him? As no medical man
diagnosed his case, it is impossible to say, though that he was for some
time in a high state of fever we may safely assume. He had gone through
a good deal, and had had a cut through the scalp of his head right down
to the skull. At last he woke one day after a long sleep and recognised
his nurse, whom he took to be a demon--a very nice, amiable one, with
gleaming white teeth, who grinned from ear to ear with pleasure to see
him better.

At last it dawned upon him that it was absurd to suppose an evil spirit
would sit there fanning the flies away, or would put cooling drinks to
his lips; and he jumped abruptly to the opposite conclusion, that there
were such things as black angels, and this was one of them. Though
perhaps nearer the mark, he was not quite right yet, for his kind and
careful nurse was but a negress--a slave from the interior. Black,
white, or brown, women are always more patient and tender when anything
is really the matter than men, bless them!

It was rather a shame to have called her Fatima, because that leads one
to expect rather prettier lips and a fairer complexion; not that this
incongruity ever struck Harry, even when he came to know it, which was
not for some time yet. For by that time he had come to associate his
nurse's homely features with all that was pleasant and solacing.

He did not know where he was, nor had he any clear perception of past
events. He had been very uncomfortable, and there was a dim impression
upon his mind of past misfortunes,