Earlshaugh he deemed, of course, now gone from his family for ever;

well, it was only one more case of the now daily sinking out of

sight, the decay or destruction of good old Scottish families, while

mushrooms came up to take their place in the land, though seldom in

history.

Roland had and still loved Hester, and in his heart believed in her

as an embodiment of all that is good and pure in womanhood; but

rather unwisely had allowed the fact to be guessed at by her,

thinking that she understood him, and that his declaration might be

made at any time; and, as we have shown, he was quite upon the point

thereof, when Annot Drummond came with her wiles and smiles to prove

the evil genius of them both.

In connection with Annot's name he almost let his scornful lips form

a malediction now--that name once linked with the dearest and fondest

terms his fancy could frame. Yet he could not even now class all

women under her category, and believe that beauty was given them for

the sole purpose of winning men's hearts without losing their own.

But his reflections at times on his own folly were fiery and bitter

for all that; and as a sedative he enjoyed to the utmost extent the

daily excitement of active service now in that remarkable land, the

Soudan.

Christmas-night in the camp at Korti was indeed a merry one, and

although under the eyes of Lord Wolseley and his staff, the soldiers

were in no way repressed in their jollity and fun--for a little of

the latter goes a long way in the army--and, all unlike the Northern

Yule to which they were accustomed, it was without snow or icicles,

holly-berries, mistletoe, and plum-pudding; but those who lingered

round these watch-fires on the arid sand of the Soudan had many a

kindly and tender thought of the bright family circles, the loved

faces, and household scenes of those who were dear to them, and were

so far, far away beyond the drear Bayuda Desert, and beyond the seas,

in many a pretty English village, where the Christmas carols were

being sung while the chimes rang joyously in the old ivied steeple,

in memory of the star that shone over Bethlehem--the herald of peace

and goodwill to men.

Ere that festival came again more than one battle had to be

fought--Khartoum would be lost or won--Gordon saved or abandoned and

betrayed--and many a young heart that was full of joy and hope would

be as cold as inexorable death could make it; but no thought of these

things marred the merry night our soldiers spent as they turned into

the bivouac at Korti--for though called a camp, it was scarcely a

complete one.

Dick Mostyn had procured some wine from an enterprising Greek sutler;

and this he shared freely with Lindsay and others while it lasted.

Though poor, and such as was never seen on the mess-table, it was

voted 'capital stuff,' in that part of the world, and Dick--with a

sigh--wished his 'throat was a mile long,' as he drained the last of

it.

'Such a wonderful flow of spirits you always have, Dick!' said

Lindsay.

'Well--I have made up my mind to be jolly, remembering Mark Tapley

and his Eden,' replied Mostyn.

'Jolly on your couch--the sand?'

'Jolly as a sandboy--yes; yet not disinclined to pray for the man who

invented a good feather-bed, even as Sancho Panza did for him who

invented sleep.'

Indeed, Mostyn admitted that he was happier in the Soudan than he had

been in England.

He had fluttered the dovecots of the West End with tolerable success,

and might have 'bagged an heiress,' as he phrased it; but high stakes

at his club, bets on every possible thing; a bad book on the Derby,

ditto on the Oaks; unpaid accounts--St. John's Wood and 'going to the

devil on all fours,' marred his chances; then his gouty old governor

had come down upon him with his 'cut-you-off-with-a-shilling face;'

and Dick thought he was well out of all his troubles, and had _only_

the Arabs to face in the Soudan.

Next day the regiment was inspected and highly complimented by Lord

Wolseley, as 'the first to come up with the boats,' adding, 'I know

you will do credit to the county you are named after and to the

character you have won. I am proud to have such a battalion on

service with me.'

This ceremony was scarcely over and the soldiers' dinner drum been

beaten as a summons once more to bully-beef and hard biscuits, when a

few boats brought up a detachment that marched at once into camp,

where crowds gathered round them, as newcomers, to hear the last news

from the rear, as letters were becoming scarce and newspapers just

then still more so.

A tall officer who was in command, with his canvas haversack,

water-bottle, revolver-case, and jack-knife dangling about him, and

whose new fighting suit of gray contrasted with the tattered attire

of Roland and others, came towards them with impatient strides.

CHAPTER L.

THE START FOR KHARTOUM.

'Elliot, can this be Jack Elliot?' exclaimed Dick Mostyn as he

screwed an eyeglass into his left eye. 'By Jove, he looks as if he

had a bad toothache! What's up, Jack--lost your heart to some fair

Cairene on the Shoubrah road--eh?'

'Jack Elliot it is!' said Roland, as the officer in question, after

'handing over' his detachment, made his way to the quarters of the

South Staffordshire, 'you are just in time to go up the river with

us. We are on the eve of starting for Khartoum.'

'At last!'

'Yes, at last,' continued Roland, as they grasped each other's hands,

and the latter, when looking intently into his brother-in-law's face,

detected a grave, grim, keen-eyed, harassed, and even haggard

expression, which was all unlike the jovial, free, and open one he

was wont to see there. 'Why, Jack,' said he, 'what the devil is up?

Are you ill with fever, or what? Did you leave all well at home?' he

added as he drew him aside.

'Well--yes--I suppose; but ill or well, thereby hangs a tale--a devil

of a tale; but ere I can tell it, give me something to drink, old

fellow--my water-bottle is empty--flask ditto, and then I shall

relate that which you would rather not hear.'

Jack unbuckled and flung his sword aside, while Roland hastily and

impatiently supplied his wants, and then heard his brief, rapid, and

startling story, winding up with the disappearance of Maude from the

villa, and the incoherent and mysterious letter of farewell she left

for him.

'After this--the deluge!' exclaimed Roland in the direst perplexity.

'God and my own heart only know what it cost me to start for the seat

of war, leaving Maude, as I did, untraced, unfollowed, and

undiscovered; but I had neither time nor an address to follow up,'

sighed Elliot; 'and God only knows, too, how all this has cut her as

it must have cut her--my poor darling--to the soul!'

The meeting of Roland and Jack Elliot was one of perplexity, gloom,

and genuine distress. Far away from the land where they could be of

help or use in unravelling the mystery, or succouring Maude, whom

they deemed then a houseless fugitive, they felt themselves miserably

powerless, hopeless, and exasperated; but curiously, perhaps, they

never thought of suspecting the real author of the mischief, and were

utterly at a loss to conceive how such a complication and accusation

came about in any way.

Neither Jack nor Roland could know or conceive that she was safe

under her uncle's wing at Merlwood. Thus they had to endure the

anxiety of supposing her, with all her beauty, refinement, and

delicacy, to be adrift in some homeless, aimless, and despairing way

in London--haunted by anger and terror of an injury and irreparable

wrong. The contemplation of this state of affairs filled the minds

of both with incessant torture--a torture for which there was no

relief, and would be none, either by letter or telegraph, for a long

time, if ever, to them, as inexorably--in two days now--the regiment

would be again on the Nile.

'Reason how we may,' was the ever-recurring and gloomy thought of

Roland now, 'it has been said that Fate does certainly pursue some

families to their ruin and extinction, and such is our probable

end--the Lindsays of Earlshaugh!'

And so, apart from their brother officers, these two conversed and

talked of the mysterious episode of the woman and her claims again

and again, viewing it in every imaginable way, till they almost grew

weary of it, in the hopelessness of elucidating it while in the

Soudan; and as for poor Malcolm Skene and _his_ fate, that was

supposed to be a thing of the past, and they ceased to surmise about

it.

At 2 p.m. on the 28th of December the start for Khartoum began!

It was made by the South Staffordshire, under the gallant Eyre, with

exactly 19 officers and 527 men of the Regiment, and 2 officers and

20 men of the Royal Engineers in 50 boats, having the Staffordshire

Knot painted on their bows, the badge of the old '38th.'

The sight was a fine and impressive one; the band was playing merrily

in the leading boat, as usual, Scottish and Irish airs, as England,

apparently, has none for any martial purpose. Thus it is that

Scottish and Irish quicksteps are now ordered by the Horse Guards for

nearly all the English regiments, with Highland reels for the

Cavalry, and one other air in the 'Queen's Regulations,' with which

we bid farewell to the old colours, is 'Auld Lang Syne.'

Steadily the whole battalion moved up stream, cheering joyously--the

first away for Khartoum--exhibiting a regularity and power of stroke

as they feathered their oars, and showing how much recent practice

had done to convert them into able boatmen, and soon the camp was

left behind, and the boats had the bare desert on both sides of the

stream; but on and on they went, stemming the current of the famous

Nile, famous even in the remotest ages, when the Egyptians worshipped

the cow, the cat, the ibis, and the crocodile, and when King

Amenchat, sixth of the Twelfth Dynasty, cut his huge river-like canal

to join Lake M[oe]ris, 250 miles lower down.

On the 29th the Staffordshire boats were off the island of Massawi,

where the atmosphere was grilling, being 120 degrees in the shade;

but the soldiers were in the highest spirits, their regiment being

the leading one of the whole army.

One scorching day followed another, yet on and on they toiled

unwearyingly, passing Merawi and Abu Dom amid date-trees and rank,

gigantic tropical vegetation, till the New Year's Day of 1885 found

them nearing the foot of a cataract, after passing which the River

Column was to form for its final advance on Khartoum. Already the

uniforms were more than ever ragged, and scarcely a man had boots to

his feet.

Roland and Elliot had command of different boats, so they could

commune no more, even when they moored for the night by the river's

bank, when the crimson sun had set in ruddy splendour beyond the gray

hills of the Bayuda Desert, and the dingy yellow of the Nile was

touched by the afterglow, in which its waves rippled in purple and

silver sheen, while the dark, feathery palms and fronds swayed slowly

to and fro in the friendly breeze, and the great pelicans were seen

to wade amid the slime and ooze where the hideous crocodiles were

dozing.

In some places the boats were rowed between islets which displayed a

wondrous tropical wealth of dhurra, sugar-canes, and cotton-trees,

with palms innumerable.

Officers and men--even chaplains--worked hard at the oars in their

anxiety to get on. For days some never had the oar out of their

hands; on others they were hauling the boats over the rapids and up

cataracts, where at times they stuck in rocks and sandbanks, and had

to be unloaded and lifted bodily off. At times the pulling was

awful, and the hot sun scorched the back like fire, while the boats

seemed to stand still in places where the main stream forced itself

between masses of rock in a downward torrent, forming ugly

whirlpools, about which the only certainty was, that whoever fell

into them was drowned.

'Pull for your lives,' was then the cry; 'give way, men--give way

with a will! Pull, or you'll be down the rapids.'

Then might be seen the men with their helmets off, bare-headed, and

braving sunstroke under that merciless sunshine; steaming with

perspiration--their teeth set hard--their hearts panting with the

awful and, at times, apparently hopeless exertion of pulling against

that mighty barrier of downward rolling water against which they

seemed to make no head; yet ever and anon the cry went up:

'Pull, my lads, cheerily--we'll shake hands with old Gordon yet!'

And so they toiled on--now up to their knees in mud, now up to their

chins in water, in rags and tatters, their blistered and festered

hands swathed in dirty linen bandages, officers and men alike; often

hungry, ever thirsty and weary, yet strong in heart and high in

impulse, as our soldiers ever are when face to face with difficulty

or death.

Then a little breeze might catch the sails, carry the boats ahead,

and then a cheer of satisfaction would make the welkin ring.

Incredible was the amount of skill, care, and toil requisite for

getting the boats of the flotilla up the Nile, especially at these

places where with terrible force the rapids came in one sheet of

foam, with a ceaseless roar between narrow walls of black rock at a

visible incline, while at times the yells of thousands of wondering

natives on the banks lent a strange and thrilling interest to the

scene.

'At low Nile,' says a writer, 'these rapids are wild and desolate

archipelagos, usually at least one or two miles in length, while the

river bank on either side presents a series of broken, precipitous,

and often inaccessible cliffs and rugged spurs. Their sombre and

gloomy appearance is heightened by the colour of the rock, which,

between high and low water-mark, is usually of a jet hue, and in many

places so polished by the long action of the water, that it has the

appearance of being carefully black-leaded. One or two big-winged,

dusky birds may suddenly flap across, with a harsh, uncanny cry, or

some small boy, whose tailor's bills must trouble him little, looks

up from his fish-trap and shrieks for backsheesh; but beyond these,

and the ceaseless rush of the water, sound or sight there is none.'

Many of these islets are submerged at high Nile, creating a number of

cross currents which vary with the depth of the water, and render

navigation difficult to all, and impossible to those who are

unacquainted with each special locality; thus the troops of the

relieving column had before them such a task as even Britons scarcely

ever encountered before; but the Canadians, under Colonel Kennedy, of

the Ontario Militia; the Indians, under the great chief White Eagle,

and the soldiers, all worked splendidly together.

The 3rd of January saw the Staffordshire reach the Bivouac of Handab,

in a wild and rocky spot, and in a position of peril between two

great bodies of the enemy; but cheerily the soldiers joined in the

queer chorus of a doggerel Canadian boat song adapted to the occasion

by the Indians, who, whilom, had made the poplar groves of the Red

River and Lake Winnipeg echo to it--

'Pulley up the boat, boys, rolley up the sleeve,

Khartoum am a long way to trabbel!

Pulley up the boat, boys, rolley up the sleeve,

Khartoum am a long way to trabbel, I believe!'

CHAPTER LI.

THE MARCH IN THE DESERT.

We have stated that Roland and his comrades were left stationed at a

point where they were menaced by two forces of the enemy.

'These were,' says Colonel Eyre, of the Staffordshire, in his

'Diary,' 'the tribes whose people murdered poor Colonel Stewart.

They are entrenched twenty-three miles in front of us up the river,

and sent word that they were to fight. They have a large force on

the Berber Road, forty miles on our flank; they were here two days

ago, and took all the camels in the district. We are encamped on a

wild desert, with ridges of rocky hills about two miles inland. We

have pitched our tents.'

There we shall leave them for a time, and look back to Korti, where

some boats of troops arrived from Hannek, twenty-three miles lower

down the Nile, and in one of these, tugging manfully at an oar, came

the rescued Malcolm Skene!

His disappearance many weeks before--nearly three months now--was

well known to the troops; hence--though in that fierce warfare, a

human life, more or less lost or saved, mattered little--his sudden

appearance in camp, when he reported himself at the headquarter tent,

did make a little stir for a time; and thus he was the hero of the

hour; but great and forward movements were in progress now, and there

was not much time to waste on anyone or anything else.

Though he had missed his corps, the Staffordshire, by about

twenty-four hours, it was with a source of intense satisfaction that

he found himself among his own countrymen again--once more with the

troops and ready for active service of any kind.

One thought was fully prominent in his mind, never again would he be

taken alive by the Soudanese.

A horse, harness, and arms, belonging to some of the killed or

drowned, were speedily provided for him, and, by order of the General

commanding, he was attached to the personal staff--_pro tem._--of Sir

Herbert Stewart, as his great knowledge of the country and of Arabic

might prove of good service.

Considering the treachery of Hassan Abdullah, his long detention in

the zereba of the Sheikh Moussa, and what his too probable end would

have been after the deportation of Zebehr Pasha, with the recent

close and deadly struggle he had for life in the grasp of Girolamo,

and how nearly he escaped recapture and slaughter, Malcolm Skene had

now a personal and somewhat rancorous animosity to the Soudanese.

Now that he had not perished in the desert, in the river, by Arab

hands, or in any fashion as his troublesome presentiment had led him

to expect when he left Cairo guided by that rascal Hassan on his

lonely mission to Dayr-el-Syrian, he felt a curious sense of

mortification, compunction, almost of regret, concerning the very

tender and loving letter of farewell he had written to Hester Maule;

and began to think it would be somewhat remarkable and awkward

if--after all--he should again meet her face to face in society.

Then again, as often before, he seemed to see in fancy the

conservatory at Earlshaugh, with its long and faintly lit vistas of

flowers, rare exotics, with feathery acacias and orange trees and

azaleas overhead; the gleam of the moonshine on the adjacent lakelet;

the tall slender figure and soft dark eyes of Hester; and to his

vivid imagination her words and his own came back to him, with the

nervous expression of her sad and parted lips as she forbade him ever

to hope, and yet gave him no reason why!

How long, long ago, it seemed since then! Yet he often fancied

himself saying to her:

'Is the answer you gave me then still the same, dear Hester?'

Well--well--that was over and done with, as yet, and ere dawn came in

on the 29th of December he was roused by the bugles sounding 'the

assembly' for the advance.

Lord Wolseley's orders were now that General Earle, with an Infantry

Brigade (including the Black Watch and Staffordshire), was to punish

the Monassir tribe for the murder of Colonel Donald Stewart; while

the Mounted Infantry and Guards Camel Corps, under Sir Herbert

Stewart, were to advance on a march of exploration to Gakdul, a

distance of ninety miles, with a convoy of camels laden with

stores--a route between the deserts of Bayuda and Ababdeh.

A little after 3 a.m. on the 29th of December, the cavalry scouts,

under Major Kitchener, with some Arab guides, moved off, and then

Lord Wolseley gave his orders for the column to get into motion, and

strike straight off across the pebble-strewn desert, towards the

distant horizon, which was indicated only by a dark, opaque, and

undulating line, against which a mimosa tuft stood up, and above

which the rays of the yet unrisen sun were faintly crimsoning the

then hazy sky, which otherwise as yet was totally dark.

To Sir Herbert Stewart the final orders were brought by Malcolm

Skene, his new aide-de-camp.

'You are to advance, sir, in column of companies, with an interval of

thirty paces between each, the Guards Camel Corps and Engineers in

front, the convoy and baggage next, then the Artillery and Mounted

Infantry, the Hussars to form the advance and rear guards.'

Malcolm saluted, reined back his horse, and betook him to the

inevitable cigarette, while the camels ceased to grunt, and stalked

off to the posts assigned them, and the column began to move, so as

to be in readiness to form a hollow square at a moment's notice.

To Malcolm Skene, even to him who had recently seen so much, it was

indeed a strange sight to watch the departing camels, with their

long, slender necks stretched out like those of ostriches, and their

legs, four thousand pairs in number, gliding along in military order,

silently, softly, noiselessly, like a mighty column of phantoms,

beast and rider, until the light, rising dust of the desert blended

all, soldiers, camels, convoy, artillery, and baggage, into one gray,

uniform mass, which ere long seemed to fade out, to pass away from

the eyes of those who remained behind in the camp.

In case of an attack the Guards were to form square, echeloned on the

left front of the column; the Mounted Infantry were to do the same on

the right rear; but the column was so great in length that it was

feared their fire would scarcely protect the entire line unless the

usually swift enemy were seen approaching in time to get the baggage

and convoy closed up; for, broad though the front of this strange

column, it was fully a mile long, and would have proved very unwieldy

to handle in case of a sudden onslaught. Thus on the march it

frequently halted, dismounted, and, for practice, prepared to meet

the enemy, and was so formed that if the latter got among the camels

they would be exposed to an enfilading fire from two faces each way.

After a halt nine miles distant from Korti, and as many to the left

of the Wady Makattem, the march was resumed under a peculiarly

brilliant moonlight--one so bright that few present had ever seen

anything like it before.

Not a cloud was visible in the far expanse of the firmament; there

were millions upon millions of stars sparkling, but their brightness

paled almost out in the brilliance of the moon. There were no leaves

to shine in the dew, but showers of diamonds seemed to gem the yellow

pebbles of the desert; and had birds been there, they might have sung

as if a new day had dawned; yet how all unlike the warm glow of an

Egyptian day was the icy splendour of the moonlight that mingled in

one quarter with the coming redness of the east.

Every sword-blade, every rifle-barrel, every buckle and stirrup-iron,

glinted out in light, while the figures of every camel and horse,

soldier, and artillery-wheel were clearly defined as at noonday; and

no sound broke the stillness save the shrill voices of the Somali

camel-drivers.

It was soon after this that Major Barrow, when scouting with some

Hussars, came upon a solitary messenger, bearer of a tiny scrap of

paper, no larger than a postage stamp--one of the last missives from

Gordon, dated 14th December, he being then shut up in Khartoum.

The moonlight faded; the red dawn came in, and still the march of the

column went on; in front a dreary, sandy, and waterless desert;

behind, the narrow streak of green that indicated the course of the

Nile; and now our officers began to say to each other that 'if the

camel corps alone was from the first deemed sufficient to relieve

Khartoum, then why, at such enormous expense, exertion, and toil,

were 3,000 infantry brought blundering up the Nile? And anon, if

they were not sufficient, surely there was infinite danger in

exposing the corps, unsupported, to the contingency of an

overwhelming attack by the united forces of the Mahdi.'

It was found that there were wells, however, at Hamboka, El Howeiyat,

and elsewhere, far apart, and that so far as water was concerned the

practicability of the desert route to Metemneh was proved by the

march to Gakdul; after reaching which Sir Herbert Stewart retraced

his steps to Korti; where two days afterwards, about noon, a cloud of

dust seen rising in the distance, almost to the welkin, announced the

return of his column, looming large and darkly out of the mirage of

the desert, in forms that were strange, distorted, and gigantic,

after leaving twenty broken-down camels to die, abandoned in the

awful waste.

Just as Stewart came, the sound of Scottish pipes on the Nile

announced the arrival of the Black Watch in their boats off Korti.

All round the world have our bagpipes sounded, but never before so

far into the heart of the Dark Continent.

On Thursday, the 8th of January, the second advance through the

desert began, and the natives looked upon the troops as doomed men.

Three armies, larger and better equipped, had departed on the same

errand to 'smash up' the Mahdi, but had been cut off nearly to a man,

and their unburied skeletons were strewn all over the country.

All the officers in Sir Herbert Stewart's column were strangers to

Malcolm Skene, but such is the influence of service together,

_camaraderie_ and companionship in danger and suffering, that even in

these days of general muddle and 'scratch' formations, he felt

already quite like an old friend with the staff and many others.

The pebble-strewn desert was glistening in the moonlight, when the

column _en route_ for Khartoum, _viâ_ Gubat and Metemneh, marched off

at two in the morning, and ever and anon the bugle rang out on the

ambient air, sounding 'halt,' that the stragglers in the rear might

close up, and then the long array continued to glide like a phantom

army, or a mass of moving shadows, across the waste.

Three hours afterwards, there stole upon one quarter of the horizon a

lurid gleam--the herald of the coming day; then the bugles struck up

a Scottish quick-step--the silence was broken, and the men began to

talk cheerily, and 'chaff' each other, though already enduring that

parched sensation in the mouth, peculiar to all who traverse the

deserts that border on the Nile--a parched feeling for which liquor,

curious to say, is almost useless, and often increases the

torture--and all, particularly the marching infantry, in defiance of

orders, drank from their water-bottles surreptitiously, even when it

was announced that seventy more miles had to be covered ere a proper

supply could be obtained from wells.

Those at Hamboka, forty-seven miles from Korti, were found full of

dry sand--destroyed by the horsemen of the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil,

who was in that quarter; those at El Howieyat, eight miles further

on, were in nearly the same condition, and already the soldiers were

becoming maddened by thirst.

Day had passed, and again the weary march was resumed in the dark.

At the well of Abu Haifa, eighty miles from Korti, the scene that

ensued was exciting and painful--even terrible. The orders were that

the fighting men were to be first supplied; and, held back by the

bayonet's point, the wretched camp-followers, Somali camel-drivers,

and others frantically tore up the warm sand with their hands in the

hope that a little water might collect therein, and when it did so,

they stooped and lapped it up like thirsty cats or dogs. Others

failed to achieve this, and with their mouths cracked, their entrails

shrivelled, their flashing eyes wild and hollow, they rolled about

with frenzy at their hearts, and blasphemy on their lips. There was

no reasoning with them--they could no longer reason.

Even the resolute British soldier could scarcely be restrained by

habitual discipline from throwing the latter aside, and joining in

the throng that surged around the so-called well--a mere stony hole

in the desert sand--while in the background were maddened horses, and

even the ever-patient camels, plunging, struggling, unmanageable, and

fighting desperately with their masters for a drop of that precious

liquid.

In the struggle here Malcolm Skene, as an officer, got his

water-bottle filled among the earliest, having ridden forward, and

with a sigh that was somewhat of a prayer he was about to take a deep

draught therefrom, when the wan face, the haggard eyes, and parched

lips of a young soldier of the 2nd Sussex caught his eye. Too weak

to struggle, perhaps too well-bred, if breeding could be remembered

in that hour of madness, or so despairing as to be careless, he had

made no effort to procure water, or if he did so, had failed.

Skene's heart smote him.

'Drink, my man,' said he, proffering his water-bottle, 'and then I

shall.'

'Oh, may God bless you, sir,' murmured the poor infantry lad

fervently, as he drank, and returned the bottle with a salute.

Gakdul--hemmed in by lofty and stupendous precipices of bare

rock--was reached on the 12th January, when, amid cheers and

rejoicings, a plentiful supply of water was obtained, after which

preparations were made for the march to Metemneh, where it was known

that thousands were gathering to bar our way to Khartoum. Yet

Stewart's total strength was only 1,607 men of all ranks, encumbered

by 304 camp followers, and 2,380 camels and horses. The halt of two

days at Gakdul did wonders in restoring the energies of men and

cattle.

There Malcolm Skene's knowledge of Arabic was frequently in

requisition. As yet the leaders of this advanced column were utterly

without any trustworthy intelligence as to the movements of the

Mahdi's army, for bands of prowling robbers and the Bedouins of the

Sheikh Moussa infested every route in front and rear, keeping

carefully out of sight by day-time, but swooping down on the camping

grounds by night in the hope of finding abandoned spoil--perhaps sick

or wounded men to torture and slay.

Sir Herbert Stewart arrived on the 16th of January within a few miles

of the now famous wells of Abu Klea, after a waterless march of

forty-three miles from those of El Faar, and already even the poor

camels had become so reduced in physique that as many as thirty

dropped down to die in one day; but the troops reached a line of

black sandstone ridges lying westward of Abu Klea, and a squadron of

Hussars, whose horses were suffering most severely from want of

water, cantered forward to inspect the country, and Malcolm Skene

rode with them.

At mid-day they found the enemy in a valley, where long and reedy

grass was waving in the hot breeze--a place studded by several

camel-thorns and acacias. The Arab centre occupied a long and gentle

slope, like the glacis of an earthwork.

Led by a Sheikh, about 200 mounted men advanced resolutely and in

tolerable order, opening fire with their Remingtons on the Hussars.

In their leader, Malcolm, through his field-glass, recognised the

Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, who alone of all his band wore a suit of

that mail armour of the Middle Ages, which is thus described by

Colonel Colborne, who says 'it was in the Soudan' he first saw it, to

his amazement: 'Whether original or a copy of it, it was undoubtedly

the dress of the Crusaders. The hauberk was fastened round the body

by the belt, and formed a complete covering from head to foot. The

long and double-edged sword was worn between the leg and saddle.'

Moussa wore a flat-topped helmet with a plume, and tippet of Darfour

mail; his horse's head was cased in steel, and covered by a quilt

thick enough to turn a spear; but, save their bodies, which were clad

in Mahdi shirts, his followers were naked--with their dark,

bronze-like legs and arms bare.

Under their fire the reconnoitring force of Hussars fell back, an

operation viewed by Sir Herbert Stewart and his staff from the summit

of a lofty hill composed entirely of black and shining rock, from

whence he could see the whole country for miles, and from where he

ordered a general advance.

By difficult defiles, and in serious distress owing to the want of

water, the troops advanced in steady and splendid order, the line

being led by the Brigade Major, David, Earl of Airlie, of the 10th

Hussars--one of a grand old historic race--round whose Castle of

Cortachy a spectre drummer is said to beat when fate is nigh--and he

had brought the whole into the valley by half-past two o'clock; then

Sir Herbert, having ascertained from Skene's report that the wells of

Abu Klea were too far in rear of the Arab position to be accessible

that night, resolved to fortify the ground he occupied, a ridge

rising gently from the Wady, but broken before it reached the hills,

while close in rear of it was a grassy hollow, wherein the baggage

animals were picketed.

Hasty parapets of stones, gathered from the ground whereon the troops

lay, were constructed along the front of the position, flanked by

_abattis_ of thorny mimosa, while the great hill of black rock

referred to was occupied by a party of signallers, who built thereon

a redoubt; while a mile in its rear, on the brow of a precipice,

another fortlet was formed as a rallying point in case of a reverse.

With his staff and a few Hussars Sir Herbert now rode to the front,

and saw, as the ruddy sun began to set and cast long shadows over the

swelling uplands of the scenery, the enemy in their thousands taking

possession of a lofty hill sixteen hundred paces distant on his

right--a position from whence they could completely enfilade his

lines. Thus ere darkness fell they secured the range, and from that

time no one could reckon on twenty minutes' sound sleep.

Prior to that a couple of shells were thrown among them, exploding

with brilliant glares and loud crashes, on which they retired a

little or sank down, leaving two great white banners floating out

against the starry sky-line.

All night long they 'potted' away with their Remingtons, keeping up a

desultory, but most harassing, fire, their long range and trajectory

placing every point in danger, and some of their bullets fell

whizzing downwards through the air upon the sleepers.

Many men were wounded, and many camels, too, and all night long,

while their rifle shots flashed redly out of the darkness, they

maintained a horrible din on their one-headed war drums, making the

hours hideous.

All through the dark and moonless night these savage sounds rose and

swelled upon the dewy air, and formed a fitting accompaniment to the

wail of their pestering bullets as they swept over the silent British

bivouac.

CHAPTER LII.

THE PRESENTIMENT FULFILLED.

So passed the night.

On the morning of the 17th of January, early, and without blast of

bugle or beat of drum, a frugal breakfast--the last meal that many

were to have in this world--was served round, and had been barely

partaken of, when the Arab skirmishers came swarming over the low

hills on our right flank, and opened fire with their Remingtons at

eleven hundred yards' range.

With a succession of dreadful crashes, our shrapnel shell exploded

among them, tearing many to pieces and putting the rest to flight;

and after more than one attempt to lure the enemy from their position

had failed, at 7 a.m. Sir Herbert Stewart began his preparations to

advance, and drive them from the wells of Abu Klea.

Meanwhile the army of the Mahdi had been continually appearing and

disappearing in front, their many-coloured pennons streaming out on

the passing breeze, their long sword-blades and spear-heads flashing

brightly in the red rays of the uprising sun, while the thunder of

their battle-drums and their savage wild cries loaded the morning air.

Five ranks deep, four thousand of them deployed in irregular lines

along a hollow in our front, led by mounted sheikhs and dervishes,

clad in richly-embroidered Mahdi camises, and posted at intervals of

twenty-five yards apart--conspicuous among them Moussa Abu Hagil, in

his Darfour shirt of mail.

They were posted on strong ground westward of the wells, which our

soldiers, sorely athirst, were full of anxiety to reach; and as the

camels were mostly to be left in the rear, they were knee-haltered,

and their stores and saddles used to strengthen the parapets of the

detached fortlets.

In the fighting square which now advanced were only one hundred

camels for carrying litters, stores, water, and spare ammunition.

The Heavies on this eventful morning were led by Colonel Talbot; the

Guards by Colonel Boscawen; the gallant Barrow led the Mounted

Infantry, and Lord Beresford the slender Naval Brigade.

Men were being knocked over now on every hand, and among the first

who fell was Lord St. Vincent, of the 17th Lancers, who received a

wound that proved mortal. Under Barrow the Mounted Infantry went

darting forward, and the Arab skirmishers fell back before them,

vanishing into the long wavy grass from amid which the smoke of their

rifles spirted up. Skene had the spike of his helmet carried away by

one ball; his bridle hand sharply grazed by another, but he bound his

handkerchief about the wound and rode on.

By this time nearly an hour had elapsed since the zereba and its

fortlets had been left in the rear, and only two miles of ground had

been covered, and all the while our troops had been under a fire from

the sable warriors on the hill slopes.

'Halt!' was now sounded by the bugles, and the faces of the square

were redressed and post was to be taken on a slope, which the enemy

would have to ascend when attacking.

Their total strength was now estimated at 14,000 men!

Our dead men were left where they fell; but frequent were the halts

for picking up the wounded. Yet steady as if on parade in a home

barrack square, our little band advanced, over stony crests, through

dry water-courses, like some hugh machine, compact and slow, firm and

regular, amid the storm of bullets poured into it from the front,

from the flanks, and eventually from the rear.

At first the enemy swarmed in dark masses all along our front, and

for two or three miles on either flank groups of their horsemen, with

floating garments and glittering spears, could be seen watching the

advance of the hollow square from black peaks of splintered rock.

'There was no avenue of retreat now for us,' wrote one, 'and no one

thought of such a thing. "Let us do or die!" (in the words of

Bruce's war song) was the emotion of all; and Colonel Barrow, C.B.,

with his "handful" of Hussars, became engaged about the same time as

the square.'

He maintained a carbine fire, while General Stewart, with his

personal staff, including Major Wardrop, the Earl of Airlie, and

Captains Skene and Rhodes, galloped from point to point, keeping all

in readiness to repulse a sudden charge; but, with all their bravery,

it was a trial for our Heavy Dragoons to march on foot and fight with

infantry rifles and bayonets--weapons to which they were totally

unaccustomed.

The keen, yet dreamy sense of imminent peril--the chances of sudden

death, with the spasmodic tightness of the chest that emotion

sometimes causes, had passed from Malcolm Skene now completely; he

'felt cool as a cucumber,' yet instinct with the fierce desire to

close with, to grapple, and to spur among the enemy _sabre à la

main_; and he forgot even the smarting of his wounded bridle hand as

the troops moved onward.

A few minutes after ten o'clock, when the leading face of the square

had won the crest of a gentle slope on the other side of a hollow, a

column of the enemy, about 5,000 strong, was seen echeloned in two

long lines on the left, or opposite that face which was formed by the

mounted infantry and heavy cavalry, and looking as if they meant to

come on now.

They were still marshalled, as stated, by sheikhs and dervishes on

horseback, and, with all their banners rustling in the wind, the

battle-drums thundering, and their shrill cries of 'Allah! Allah!'

loading the air, they advanced quickly, brandishing their flashing

spears and two-handed swords. Abu Saleh, Ameer of Metemneh, led the

right; Moussa Abu Hagil led the centre; and Mahommed Khuz, Ameer of

Berber, who had soon to retire wounded, led the left, and our

skirmishers came racing towards the square.

Strange to say, our fire as yet seemed to have little effect upon the

foe; very few were falling, and the untouched began to believe that

the spells of Osman Digna and the promises of the Mahdi had rendered

their bodies shot-proof; and when within three hundred yards of the

square they began to rush over the undulating ground like a vast wave

of black surf. Now the Gardner gun was brought into action; but when

most required, and at a moment full of peril, the wretched Government

ammunition failed to act--the cartridges stuck ere the third round

was fired; the human waves of Arabs came rolling down upon the

square, leaping and yelling over their dead and wounded, never

reeling nor wavering under the close sheets of lead that tore through

them now.

Like fiends let loose they came surging and swooping on, their

burnished weapons flashing, and their black brawny forms standing

boldly out in the glow of the sunshine, unchecked by the hailstorm of

bullets, spearing the horsemen around the useless Gardner gun, and

fighting hand to hand, Abu Saleh and the Sheikh Moussa leading them

on, and then it was that the gallant Colonel Burnaby, of the Blues,

fell like the hero he was.

The wild and high desire to do something that might win him a name,

and make, perhaps, Hester Maule proud of him, welled up in the heart

of Malcolm Skene, even at that terrible crisis, and he spurred his

horse forward a few paces, just as Burnaby had done, to succour some

of the skirmishers, who, borne back by the Arab charge, had failed to

reach the protection of the square, which was formed in the grand old

British fashion, shoulder to shoulder like a living wall.

By one trenchant, back-handed stroke of his sword, he nearly swept

the head off the yelling Arab, thereby saving from the latter's spear

a Foot Guardsman, who had stumbled ere he could reach the square; but

now Skene was furiously charged by another, who bore the standard of

Sheikh Moussa.

Grasping his spear by his bridle hand, he ran his sword fairly

through the Arab, who fell backward in a heap over his horse's

crupper, and then Skene tore from his dying grip the banner, which

was of green silk--the holy colour--edged with red, and bore a verse

of the Koran in gold (for it was a gift from the Mahdi), and,

regaining the shelter of the square, threw his trophy at the foot of

the General.

'This shall go to the Queen--in your name, Captain Skene!' said the

latter.

'The Queen--no, sir--but to a girl in Scotland, I hope, whether I

live or not!' replied Malcolm.

It was sent to the Queen at Windsor eventually, however, for Malcolm,

now, when the square, recoiling before the dreadful rush, had receded

about a hundred yards, and the Arabs were charging our men breast

high, and the Heavies, instead of remaining steady as infantry would

have done, true to their cavalry instincts were springing forward to

close with the foe, once more dashed to the front in headlong

fashion, and found himself beyond the face of the square, opposed to

a tribe of Ghazis, who were brandishing their spears, hurling

javelins, and hewing right and left with their two-handed swords--all

swarthy negroes from Kordofan, and copper-coloured Arabs of the

Bayuda Desert with long, straight, floating hair.

Heedless of death--nay, rather courting it as the path to

paradise--with weapons levelled or uplifted, they came forward, with

blood pouring from their bullet wounds in many instances, some

staggering under these till they dropped and died within five paces

of the square, while the others rushed on, and the fight became hand

to hand, the bayonet meeting the Arab spear. On our side there was

not much shouting as yet, only a brief cry, an oath, or a short

exclamation of prayer or agony as a soldier fell down in his place,

and all the valour of the Heavies became unavailing, when their

formation was broken, when the foe mingled with them, and they were

driven back upon the Naval Brigade, with its still useless Gardner

gun, upon the right of the Sussex Regiment, which strove to close up

the gap.

Then it was that Skene found himself opposed to Moussa Abu Hagil,

whose horse had been shot under him, and who, half-blinded by his own

blood streaming from a bullet-wound from which his Darfour helmet

failed to save him, fought like a wild animal, slashing about with

his double-edged sword, which broke in his hand, and then using his

spear.

Dashing at Skene with a demoniac yell, he levelled the long blade of

the weapon at his throat. Parrying the thrust by a circular sweep of

his sword, Skene checked his horse and reined it backwards; but the

length of Skeikh Moussa's spear, nearly ten feet, put it out of his

power to return with proper interest the fury of the attack. Twice

at least his sword touched the Arab, thus making him, if more wary,

all the more eager and fierce, and there was a grim and defiant smile

on Skene's face as he fenced with Moussa and parried his thrusts; but

now he was attacked by others when scarcely his horse's length from

the face of the square.

One wounded him in the right shoulder; Skene turned in his saddle and

clove him down. At that moment a soldier--the young lad of the 2nd

Sussex to whom he gave his water-bottle at the well of Abu Haifa--ran

from the ranks and attacked another assailant of Skene, but perished

under twenty spears, and ere the latter could deliver one blow again,

he was dragged from his saddle, covered with wounds in the neck and

face--ghastly wounds from which the blood was streaming--'each a

death to nature,' and literally hewn to pieces.

So thus, eventually, was his strange presentiment fulfilled!

Meanwhile the Ghazis had forced their way so far into the square that

one was actually slain in the act of firing the battery ammunition.

Despite the great efforts of a gallant Captain Verner and others,

'the Heavies were being massacred; and after the fall of Burnaby,

whom Sir William Cumming, of the Scots Guards, tried to save, Verner

was beaten down, but his life (it is recorded) was saved by Major

Carmichael, of the Irish Lancers, whose dead body fell across him, as

well as those of three Ghazis.'

The Earl of Airlie and Lord Beresford, fighting sword in hand, were

both wounded, and so furious was the inrush of the Arabs, that many

of them reached the heart of the square, where they slew the maimed

and dying in the litters, and rushed hither and thither, with shrill

yells, streaming hair, and flashing eyes, until they were all shot

down or bayoneted to death.

Fighting for life and vengeance, and half maddened to find that their

cartridges jammed hard and fast after the third shot, our

soldiers--in some instances placed back to back--fought on the summit

of a mound surrounded by thousands upon thousands of dark-skinned

spearmen and swordsmen, hurling their strength on what were

originally the left and rear faces of the square, till, with all its

defects, our fire became so deadly and withering, that they began to

waver, recoil, and eventually fly, while the triumphant cheers of our

men rent the welkin.

Away went the Arabs streaming in full flight towards Berber,

Metemneh, and the road to Khartoum, followed by Barrow and his

Hussars cutting them down like ripened grain, and followed, to the

screaming, plunging, and crashing fire of the screw guns which now

came into action and pursuit with shot and shell.

So the field and the walls of Abu Klea were won, but dearly, as we

had 135 other ranks killed, and above 200 wounded, including camel

drivers and other camp followers.

The former were buried by the men of the 19th Hussars. Earth to

earth--dust to dust--ashes to ashes; three carbine volleys rang above

them in farewell, and all was over; while the native slain were left

in their thousands to the birds of the air.

The column reached the city of Abu Klea in the evening, and then,

parched and choked with thirst after the heat and toil and fierce

excitement of the past night and day, all enjoyed the supreme luxury

of the cold water from the fifty springs or more that bubbled in the

Wady. Round these, men, horses, and camels gathered to quench their

thirst, that amounted to agony, by deep and repeated draughts, while

fires were lighted and a meal prepared.

Next followed the battle of Gubat and the futile expedition of Sir

Charles Wilson, both of which are somewhat apart from our story.

The death of Colonel Burnaby, of the Blues, created a profound

sensation in London society, where he was a great favourite; but

there were many more than he to sorrow for.

Skene's fall made a deep impression among the Staffordshire, as he

was greatly beloved by the soldiers.

'Poor Malcolm--killed at last!' said Roland, when the tidings came up

the river to the bivouac at Hamdab. He should never see his brown,

dark eyes again; feel the firm clasp of his friendly hand, or hear

his cheery voice say--'Well, Roland--old fellow!'

'But it may be my turn next,' thought he.

'Poor Malcolm!' said Jack Elliot; 'I have known him nurse the sick,

bury the dead, sit for hours playing with a soldier's ailing child,

and once he swam a mile and more to save a poor dog from drowning.

And as he spoke, sometimes a tearless sob shook Elliot's sturdy

frame, and Roland knew that with his friend Malcolm

'All was ended now--the hope, the fear, and the sorrow;

All the aching of the heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing;

All the dull, deep pain and constant anguish of patience--

His love and his life had ended together!'

CHAPTER LIII

A HOMEWARD GLANCE.

The action of one human being on another, by subtle means, it has

been said, is as effective as the action of light on the air: that

under the influence of Hawkey Sharpe and certain new circumstances,

Annot Drummond had visibly deteriorated already.

Her high-flown ideas and undoubtedly better breeding had caused her

to experience many a shock when in the daily and hourly society of

her husband, with all his vulgar and horsey ways, and he was

certainly far below that young lady's high-pitched expectations and

her love of externals.

Her life at Earlshaugh had at first been getting quite like a story,

she thought, and a perplexingly interesting story, too, with the high

game she had to play for--a game in manoeuvres worthy of Machiavelli

himself.

Annot, we know, was not tall; but her slight figure was prettily

rounded. She carried herself well, though too quick and impulsive in

her movements for real dignity, and as Maude had said, she never

could conceive her at the head of a household, or taking a place in

society. Now, as the wife of 'a cad' like Hawkey Sharpe, the latter

was not to be thought of.

Her pretty ways and glittering golden hair, which had misled better

men than the wretched Sharpe, were palling even upon him, now; and

her studied artlessness had given place to a bearing born of vanity

and her own success and ambition, the sequel of which she was yet to

learn, but withal she was not yet lady of Earlshaugh. But, as a

writer says of a similar character, 'a self-love, that demon who

besets alike the learned philosopher with his own pet theories; the

statesman with his pet political hobbies; the man of wealth with his

own aggrandisement; and the man of toil with his own pet

prejudices--that insidious demon had entire hold now of this silly

little girl's heart, and closed it to anything higher.'

Married now, and safe in position as she thought herself, Annot was

no longer the coaxing and cooing little creature she had been to

Hawkey Sharpe; and rough and selfish though he was, a flash of her

eyes, or a curl of her lip cowed him at times. She treated him as

one for whom she was bound to entertain a certain amount of marital

affection, but no respect whatever, and when she contrasted him with

Roland Lindsay and other men she had known, even poor, weak Bob

Hoyle, her manner became one of contempt and, occasionally, disgust.

But she had preferred the _couleur d'or_ to the _couleur de rose_ in

matrimony, and had now, as Hawkey said, 'to ride the ford as she

found it.'

'Men like Roland,' said Annot to Mrs. Lindsay when discussing her

whilom lover, 'especially military men, see a good deal of life, and

experience teaches them how passing a love affair may be.'

'You mean----' began Mrs. Lindsay, scarcely knowing what to say.

'I mean that he must have played with fire pretty often,' said Annot,

laughing, but not pleasantly, 'and will forget me as he must have

forgotten others. I suppose our likes and dislikes in this world are

based upon the point that somebody likes or dislikes ourselves.'

Hawkey Sharpe's debts and demands since his marriage had exhausted

the patience if not quite the finances of his sister: and now the

bill, erewhile referred to--the racing debt--was falling inexorably

due, and how to meet it, or be stigmatised as a 'welsher' on every

course in the country, became a source of some anxiety to that

gentleman.

To meet his other requirements, all the fine timber in the King's

Wood was gone--a clean sweep had been made from King James's Thorn to

the Joug Tree, that bears an iron collar, in which for centuries the

offenders on the domains of Earlshaugh had suffered durance, and the

once finely foliaged hill now looked bare and strange; and for angry

remarks thereat, Willie Wardlaw, the gardener, and Gavin Fowler, the

head gamekeeper, aged dependants on the house of Earlshaugh, as their

fathers had been before them, had been summarily dismissed by Mr.

Hawkey Sharpe.

A well-known firm of shipbuilders on the Clyde had offered for the

wood, and to the former the most attractive part of the transaction,

in addition to the good price, was the fact that the money was paid

down at once but it was far from satisfying the wants of Mr. Hawkey

Sharpe.

'You know I disliked having that timber sold--that I hated the mere

thought of having it cut!' said Deborah to him reproachfully, as she

looked from the window into the sunshine.

'Why?' he asked sulkily; 'what the devil was the use of it?'

'It was the favourite feature in the landscape----'

'Of whom?'

'My dead husband.'

'Bosh!' exclaimed Hawkey, who thought this was (what, to do her

justice, it was not) 'twaddle.'

They were together in his sanctum, or 'den,' which passed

occasionally as his office; though the table, like the mantelpiece,

was strewed with pipes, their ashes were everywhere, and the air was

generally redolent of somewhat coarse tobacco smoke.

Having a favour to ask, he had, in his own fashion, been screwing his

courage to the sticking-point.

'You have been imbibing--drinking again?' said his pale sister,

eyeing him contemptuously with her cold, glittering stare.

'"I take a little wine for my stomach's sake and other infirmities,"

as we find in 1st Timothy,' said he with a twinkle in his shifty eyes.

'The devil can quote Scripture, so well may you.'

'That is severe, Deb,' said he, filling his pipe.

'Come to the point.'

'Well, Deb, dear, would it be convenient to you to--to lend me a

couple of thousand pounds for a few weeks? I have hinted of this

from time to time.'

'Two thousand pounds! Not only inconvenient, but impossible,' said

she, twisting her rings about in nervous anger.

'Why, Deb?'

'I have not even a fifty-pound note in the house.'

'But plenty lying idle at your banker's.'

'Not the sum you seek to borrow just now. Borrow! Why not be

candid, and ask for it out and out? Two thousand----'

'I must have the money, I tell you,' he said, with sudden temper,

'or--or----'

'What?'

'Be disgraced--that is all,' he replied, sullenly lighting his huge

briar-root.

'Well, you must find it without my aid,' said she, coldly and

sullenly too.

'Could you not raise it on some of your useless jewels? Come, now,

dear old Deb, don't be too hard upon a fellow.'

Anger made her pale cheek suffuse at this cool suggestion, and she

became very much agitated.

'Now, don't cut up this way. It is your heart again, of course; but

keep quiet, and let nothing trouble you,' said he, puffing

vigorously. 'You have a lot of the Lindsay jewels that are too

old-fashioned for even you to wear.'

'But not to bequeath.'

'To Annot?' said he, brightening a little.

'I am sick of you and your Annot,' exclaimed Mrs. Lindsay, now all

aflame with anger, and trembling violently.

'Sorry to hear it,' said he, somewhat mockingly. 'We have not yet

quite got over our spooning.'

'Don't use that horrid, vulgar phrase, Hawkey.'

'Vulgar! How?'

'One no doubt derived from the gipsies, when two used one horn spoon.

Annot, with all her apparent amiable imbecility, is a remarkably

acute young woman.'

'She is--and does credit to my taste, Deb.'

'One whom it is impossible to dislike, I admit.'

'Of course.'

'And also quite impossible to love.'

'Oh, come now, poor Annot!' said Hawkey, with a kind of mock

deprecation; and then to gain favour he said, 'I do wish, dear Deb,

that you would see the doctor again--about yourself.'

'I have seen him; the old story, he can do nothing but order me to

avoid all agitation, yet you have not given me much chance of that

lately.'

'But just once again, Deb--about this money----'

'Another word on the subject and we part for ever!' she exclaimed,

and giving him a glance--stony as the stare of Medusa--one such as he

had never before seen in her small, keen, and steely-gray eyes, she

flung away and left him.

He gnashed his teeth, smashed his pipe on the floor, then lit a huge

regalia to soothe his susceptibilities, and thought about _how_ the

money was to be raised. He knew his sister had thousands idle in the

bank, and have it he should at all hazards!

He had meant, too, if successful, and he found her pliable, to have

spoken to her again about making her will; but certainly the present

did not seem a favourable occasion to do so.

'Deb will be getting her palpitation of the heart, nervous attacks,

low spirits, and the devil only knows all what more, on the head of

this!' he muttered with a malediction.

Hawkey had watched her retire through the deep old doorway (under the

lintel of which tall Cardinal Beatoun had whilom stooped his head)

and disappear along the stately corridor beyond. Then he dropped

into an easy-chair--stirred the fire restlessly and impatiently, and

drained his glass, only to refill it--his face the while fraught with

rage and mischief.

He drew a letter or two from a drawer--they were from his sister--and

he proceeded to study her signature with much artistic acumen and

curiosity.

'Needs must when the devil drives!' said he, grinding his teeth and

biting his spiky nails; 'I have done it--and that she'll know in

time!'

Done what?

That the reader will know in time too.

CHAPTER LIV.

THE LONG-SUSPENDED SWORD.

Sorrow is said to make people sometimes, to a certain extent,

selfish; thus sorrow in her own little secluded home was, ere long,

to render Hester, for a space at least, less thoughtful of the grief

which affected her cousin Maude.

Hester was somewhat changed, and knew within herself that it was so.

She found that her daily thoughts ran more anxiously and tenderly

upon her father, and about his fast-failing health, than on any other

subject now.

She lost even a naturally feminine interest in her own beauty. Who

was there to care for it? she thought.

So on Sundays she sat in her pew, in the kirk on the wooded hill, and

there listened to the preacher's voice blending with the rustle of

the trees and the cawing of the rooks in the ruined fane close by;

but with an emotion in her heart never known before--that of feeling

that ere long she would have a greater need of some one to lean

on--of something to cling to in the coming loneliness that her heart

foreboded to be near now.

At last there came a day she was never to forget--a day that told her

desolation was at hand.

Seated in his Singapore chair at breakfast one morning, her father

suddenly grew deadly pale; a spasm convulsed his features; his

coffee-cup fell from his nerveless hand; and he gazed at her with all

the terror and anguish in his eyes which he saw in her own.

'Papa--papa!' she exclaimed, and sprang to his side. He gazed at her

wildly, vacantly, and muttered something about 'the Jhansi bullet.'

Then she heard him distinctly articulate her name.

'Hester--my own darling--you here?' he said, with an effort; 'how

sweet you look in that white robe. I always loved you in it, dear.'

'My dress is rose-coloured--a morning wrapper, papa,' said Hester, as

the little hope that gathered in her heart passed away.

'So white--so pure--just like your marriage-dress, Hester! But you

wore it the first day I saw you, long ago--long ago--at Earlshaugh,

when you stood in the Red Drawing-room--and gave me a bouquet of

violets from your breast. My own Hester!'

'Oh, papa--papa!' moaned the poor girl in dire distress, for she knew

he spoke not of her but of her mother, who had reposed for years

under the trees in the old kirkyard on the hill; and a choking sob of

dismay escaped her.

It was a stroke of paralysis that had fallen upon the Indian veteran,

and he was borne to his bed, which he never left alive.

Hour after hour did Maude hang over him, listening to his fevered

breathing, and futile moanings, which no medical skill could repress

or soothe; and the long day, and the terrible night--every minute

seemed an age--passed on, and still the pallid girl watched there in

the hopeless agony of looking for death and not for life.

That long night--one of the earliest of winter--was at last on its

way towards morning.

All was still in the glen of the Esk save the murmur of the mountain

stream and the rustle of the leaves in the shrubberies without, and

there was a strange loneliness, a solemnity, in Hester's mind as she

thought of Merlwood in its solitariness, with death and life, time

and eternity, so nigh each other under its roof; and the ceaseless

ticking of an antique clock in the hall fell like strokes of thunder

on her brain, till she stopped it, lest the sound might disturb the

invalid.

And in that time of supreme anxiety and sorrow the lonely girl

thought of her only kinsman, Roland Lindsay--the friend of her

childhood and early girlhood--the merry, handsome, dark-haired

fellow, who taught her to ride and row and fish, and whom she loved

still with a soft yet passionate affection, that was strong as in the

old days, for all that had come and gone between them.

Would he ever return--return to her and be as he had been

before--before Annot Drummond came?

Another and a fatal stroke came speedily and mercifully; the

long-suspended sword had fallen at last, and the old soldier was

summoned to his last home!

A few days after saw Hester prostrate in her own bed and in the hands

of the doctors, her rich dark-brown hair shorn short from her

throbbing temples, feverish and faint, with dim eyes and pallid lips

that murmured unconsciously of past times, of the distant and the

dead--of her parents, of camps and cantonments far away; of little

brothers and sisters who were in heaven; of green meadows, of garden

flowers and summer evenings, when she and Roland had rambled

together; and then of Egypt and the war in the deserts by the Nile.

After a time, when the early days of February came, when the

mellow-voiced merle and the speckle-breasted mavis were heard in the

woods by the Esk; when the silver-edged gowans starred the grassy

banks, and the newly-dug earth gave forth a refreshing odour, and

everywhere there were pleasant and hopeful signs that the dreary

reign of winter was nearly over, Hester became conscious of her

surroundings, but at first only partially so.

'Maude,' said she, in a weak voice to a watcher, 'dear Maude--are you

there?'

'Yes,' replied the cousin, drawing the sick girl's head upon her

bosom. 'Oh, Hester--my poor darling, how ill you have been!'

'Ill--I ill? I thought it was papa,' she said, with dilated eyes.

'Is he well now?'

'Yes,' replied Maude, in a choking voice, 'well--very well; but drink

this, dearest.'

'Where is papa--can I see him? Will you or the doctor take me to

him?'

'He is not here,' began the perplexed Maude.

'Not here; where then?'

'You must wait, Hester, till you are well and strong--well and

strong; you must not speak or think--but eat.'

Then a feeble smile that made Maude's tender heart ache stole over

Hester's pale face.

'Where _is_ papa?' the latter exclaimed suddenly, with a shrill ring

of hysterics in her voice. 'Ah--I know--I remember now,' she added,

with a smile, 'he is dead--dead!'

'Born again, rather say, my darling,' whispered poor Maude, choked

with tears, as she nestled Hester's face in her neck.

'Dead--dead; and I am alone in the world!' moaned Hester, as a hot

shower of tears relieved her, and she turned her face to the wall,

while convulsive sobs shook her shoulders.

In time she was able to leave her bed--to feel herself well, if

weak--deplorably weak, and knew that she had resolutely and

inexorably to face the world of life.

A pile of letters occupied her, luckily, for a time--letters that

were sad if soothing--all full of sympathy, tenderness, and sincere

regret, profound esteem, and so forth, for the brave old man who was

gone; even there was one from Annot, but none from Roland or Jack.

Where were they? Far away, alas! where postal arrangements were

vague and most uncertain.

We have said that Hester had the world to face. Her father's pay and

pension died with him, and suddenly the girl was all but penniless.

Her father had been unable to put away any money for her. People

thought he might and ought to have managed better; but so it was.

Sir Henry's Indian relics, his treasured household gods, such as the

tulwar of the Amazonian Ranee of Jhansi, who fought and died as a

trooper when Tantia Topee strove to save the lost cause, all of which

had to Hester a halo of love and superstition of the heart about

them, were brought to the auctioneer's hammer inexorably, and with

the money realised therefrom she thought to look about for some such

situation or employment as might become one in her unfortunate

position.

As the relics went, her conscience smote her now, for the

recollection of how often she had grown weary over the oft repeated

Indian reminiscences of the poor old man, who lived in the past quite

as much, if not more, than in the present. What would she not give

to hear his voice once again! And she remembered now how fond he was

of quoting the words of 'The Ancient Brahmin':

'Happy is he who endeth the business of his life before his death....

Avoid not death, for it is a weakness; fear it not, for thou

understandest not what it is; all thou certainly knowest is, that it

putteth an end to thy sorrows. Think not the longest life the

happiest; that which is best employed doth the man most honour, and

himself shall rejoice after death in the advantages of it.'

Like other girls who are imaginative and impressionable, she had

built her _châteaux en Espagne_, innocent edifices enough, and

romantic too, but now they had crumbled away, leaving not one stone

upon another. Her future seemed fixed irrevocably; no idle dreams

could be there, but a life that would, too probably, be blank and

dreary even unto the end.

We cannot be in the world and grieve at all times; but yet one may

feel a sorrow for ever.

'I shall go and earn my living, Maude--be a governess, or something,'

she said, as her plans began to mature. 'It cannot be difficult to

teach little children; though I always hated my own lessons, I know,

even when helped by--Roland.'

'Nonsense, Hester!' exclaimed Maude; 'you shall live with me and--and

Jack, if he ever returns, and all is well. You are too pretty to be

a governess; no wise matron would have you.'

'Why?'

'Because all the grown sons and brothers would be falling in love

with you. So you must stay with me.'

But Hester was resolute.

To the many letters of the former--letters agonising in

tenor--addressed to Jack Elliot and to her brother Roland, no answer

ever came, while weeks became months; for many difficulties just then

attended the correspondence of the troops that were on the arduous

expedition for the relief of Khartoum.

Thus, amid all the sorrows of Hester, how keen and great was the

anxiety of Maude!

Jack, her husband--if he _was_ her husband--was now face to face with

the enemy--those terrible Soudanese--and might perish in the field,

by drowning, or by fever, before she could ever have elucidated the

mystery, the cloud, the horrible barrier that had come between them.

At times the emotions that shook the tender form of Maude were

terrible, since the night of that woman's visit, when the iron seemed

to enter her soul; and there descended upon her a darkness through

which there had come no gleam of light.

The past and the future seemed all absorbed in the blank misery of

the present, and as if her life was to be one career of abiding

shame, emptiness, and misery, as a dishonoured wife--if wife she was

at all!

Hawkey Sharpe had inflicted the revengeful blow; the woman, his

degraded tool, had disappeared, and her story remained undisproved as

yet. Jack, as we have said, might perish in Egypt, and the truth or

the falsehood of that odious story would then be buried in his grave!

The pretty villa near the Grange Loan--the wood-shaded Loan that led

of old to St. Giles's Grange--she now went near no more; it was

torture to go back there--her home it never could be. Turn which way

she would, her haggard eyes rested on some reminder of Jack's love or

his presence there--their mutual household Lares: her piano, Jack's

carefully selected gift; the music on the stand, chosen by him, and

with his name and 'love' inscribed to her, just as she had left it;

books, statuettes--pretty nothings, alas!

Her mind now pointed to no definite course; she felt like a

rudderless ship drifting through dark and stormy waters before a

cruel blast; in all, her being there was no distinct resolution as

yet what to do or whither to turn.

Yet, calm as she seemed outwardly, there was in her tortured heart a

passionate longing for peace, and peace meant, perhaps, death!

And all this undeserved agony was but the result of a most artful but

pitiful and vulgar vengeance!

Whether born of thoughts caused by recent stirring news from the seat

of war, we know not; but one night Hester woke from a dream of

Roland--after a feverish and sleep-haunted doze--haunted as if by the

spiritual presence of one who--bodily, at least--was far away.

Waking with a start, she heard a familiar and firm step upon the

staircase, and then a door opened--the door of that room which Roland

had always occupied when at Merlwood.

'Roland--Roland!' she cried in terror, and then roused Maude.

There was, of course, no response, but a sound seemed to pass into

that identical room; she fancied she heard steps--his familiar steps

moving about, but as if he trod softly--cautiously.

Terror seized her, and her heart seemed to die within her breast.

She sprang from bed, clasped Maude's hand, and went softly,

mechanically to the room. It was empty, and the cold light of the

waning moon flooded it from end to end, making it seem alike lone and

ghostly.

Her imagination had played her false; but she was painfully haunted

by the memory of that dream and the palpable sounds that, after

waking, had followed it; and hourly, in her true spirit of Scottish

superstition, expected to hear of fatal tidings from the seat of

war--like her who, of old, had watched by the Weird Yett of

Earlshaugh.

Like poor Malcolm Skene was she, too, to have her presentiment--her

prevision of sorrow to come?

It almost seemed so.

But her thoughts now clung persistently to the hero of her girlish

days; he had behaved faithlessly, uncertainly to her, she thought;

yet, perhaps, he might come back to her some day, if God spared him,

and then he would find the old and tender love awaiting him still.

Yet Roland might come home and marry _someone else_! No man, she had

heard, went through life remembering and regretting one woman for

ever. Was it indeed so?

But after the night of her strange dream the morning papers contained

the brief, yet terrible, telegram stating that a battle had been

fought at a place called Kirbekan, by General Earle's column (of

which the Staffordshire formed a part), but that no details thereof

had come to hand.

The recent calamity she had undergone rendered Hester's heart

apprehensive that she might soon have to undergo another.

And ere the lengthened news of the battle did come, she and Maude had

left Edinburgh, as they anticipated, perhaps for ever.

CHAPTER LV.

WITH GENERAL EARLE's COLUMN.

While the column of Brigadier Sir Herbert Stewart was toiling amid

thirst and other sufferings across the vast waste of the Bayuda

Desert, and gaining the well-fought battles of Abu Klea and Abu Kru,

the column of Brigadier Earle had gone by boats up the Nile to avenge

the cruel assassination of Gordon's comrade and coadjutor, Colonel

Donald Stewart, on Suliman Wad Gamr and the somewhat ubiquitous

Moussa Abu Hagil with all their people.

The succession of cataracts rendered the General's progress very

slow; thus the 4th of January found his advanced force, the gallant

South Staffordshire, only encamped at Hamdab, as we have stated a few

chapters back.

Suliman, on being joined by Moussa a few days after Abu Klea, had

fallen back from Berti, thus rendering it necessary for General Earle

to push on in pursuit, through a rocky, broken, and savage country,

bad for all military operations, and altogether impracticable for

cavalry.

On the river the Rahami cataract proved one of great danger and

difficulty, and severe indeed was the labour of getting up the boats.

There the bed of Old Nile is broken up by black and splintered rocks,

between which it rushes in snowy foam with mighty force and volume.

The boats had to be tracked up the entire distance, often with many

sharp turns to avoid sunken rocks in the chasms; and, as a large

number of men were required for each boat, the column, comprising the

Staffordshire, the Black Watch, a squadron of Hussars, and the

Egyptian camel corps, with two guns, had work enough and to spare.

'The perils and difficulties,' we are told, 'were quite as great as

any hitherto encountered on the passage up the Nile. For the last

six miles below Birti the river takes an acute angle, and then as

sharply resumes its former course. The Royal Highlanders were first

up; but after they got their boats through, another channel was

discovered on the western side of the stream, and as it turned out to

be less difficult, the succeeding regiments were enabled to come up

more quickly.

Roland's regiment remained in a few days encamped at Hamdab. 'We are

now leading the whole army,' says its Colonel, the gallant and

ill-fated Eyre, in his 'Diary,' 'and are the first British troops

that have ever been up the Nile.'

On the 6th of January there was a sand-storm from dawn till sunset;

it covered the unfortunate troops, who seemed to be in a dark cloud

for the whole day. Around them for a hundred miles the country was

all rocks, and yet bore traces of once having a vast population.

At Hamdab the river teemed with wild geese--beautiful gray birds,

with scarlet breasts and gold wings. Dick Mostyn shot one, which

Roland's soldier servant prepared for their repast in a stew, that

was duly enjoyed in the latter's quarters--a hut made of palm

branches and long dhurra grass; while their comrade Wilton, when

scouting on Berber road, captured a couple of Arabs, who gave the

column a false alarm by tidings of an attack at daybreak, thus

keeping all under arms till the sun rose.

The 18th was Sunday, when Colonel Eyre read prayers on parade, and

three days after came tidings of the battle of Abu Klea, the death of

Burnaby, after all his hair-breadth escapes, and of many other brave

men.

'Poor Malcolm--poor Malcolm!' said Roland; 'what dire news this will

be for his old mother at Dunnimarle. This event gives you your

company in the corps----'

'Don't speak of it!' interrupted Mostyn, with something like a groan;

'I would to Heaven that poor Skene had never given me such a chance.'

The last days of January saw Earle's column making a sweep with fire

and sword of the district in which poor Colonel Stewart and his

companions had been murdered; and on the 2nd of February it had

reached a country beyond all conception or description wild, and

quite uninhabited.

The sufferings of Earle's troops were considerably severe now. The

faces and the knees of the Highlanders were skinned by the chill air

at night and the burning sun by day; while, in addition, there were

insects in the sand, so minute as to be almost invisible, yet they

got into the men's ragged clothing, and bit hands and feet so that

they were painfully swollen.

On the 9th of February Earle's column reached Kirbekan, near the

island of Dulka, seventy miles above Merawi, which is a peninsular

district of Southern Nubia, and the enemy, above 2,000 strong, led by

Moussa Abu Hagil, Ali Wad Aussein, and other warlike Sheikhs, and

chiefly composed of the guilty Monnassir tribe, some Robatats and a

force of Dervishes from Berber, were known to be in position at no

great distance; thus a battle was imminent.

Ere it took place Roland Lindsay and his friend Elliot were destined

to hear some startling news from home. At this time all papers and

parcels for the column got no further than Dongola, but a few letters

from the rear were brought up, and the mail-bag contained one of

importance for Roland, and several for his friend Dick Mostyn.

Lounging on the grass, under a mimosa tree, with a cigarette between

his teeth, and with just the same lazy, _debonnair_ bearing with

which he had taken in many a girl at home in pleasant England, lay

Dick Mostyn reading his missives. Some he perused with a quiet,

_insouciant_ smile; they were evidently from some of the girls in

question. Others he tore into small shreds and scattered on the

breeze; they were duns. How pleasant it was to dispose of them thus

on the bank of the Nile!

Roland, a little way apart, was perusing his solitary letter.

It was from Mr. M'Wadsett, the W.S., dated several weeks back, from

'Thistle Court, Thistle Street, Edinburgh' (how well Roland

remembered the gloomy place under the shadow of St. Andrew's Church,

and the purpose of his last visit there!); and it proved quite a

narrative, and one of the deepest interest to him.

His uncle, Sir Harry, was dead, and his daughter Hester was going

forth into the world as a companion or governess. (Dead! thought

Roland; poor old Sir Harry!--and Hester, alone now--oh, how he longed

to be with her--to comfort and protect her!)

But to be a governess--a companion--where, and to whom? His heart

felt wrung, and he mentally rehearsed all he had heard or read--but

not seen--of how such dependents were too often treated by the

prosperous and the _parvenu_; obliged to conform to rules made by

others, to perform a hundred petty duties by hands never before

soiled by toil; to never complain, however ill or weary she might

feel; to stumble with brats through wearisome scales on an old piano;

to be banished when visitors came, and endure endless, though often

unnecessary affronts. He uttered a malediction, lit a cigar, and

betook him again to his letter.

'About seeking a situation, I know there is nothing else left for the

poor girl to do,' continued the writer; 'but I besought her to wait a

little--to make my house her home, if she chose, for a time; but she

told me that she did not mind work or poverty. I replied that she

knew nothing of either, but a sad smile and a resolute glance were my

only answer.'

The old man's love of himself, his upbraiding words when they last

parted, and his own unkind treatment (to say the least of it) of

Hester, all came surging back on Roland's memory now.

'I shall not readily forget Miss Maule's passionate outburst of grief

and pain on leaving Merlwood,' continued the old Writer to the

Signet; 'but all there seemed for the time to be sacred to the

hallowed memories of her father, her mother, and her past childhood!

'And next I have to relate something more startling still--the sudden

death of your stepmother, and to congratulate you on being now the

true and undoubted _Laird of Earlshaugh_.

'Actuated, I know not precisely by what sentiment--whether by just

indignation at the character of her brother, or by remorse for your

false position with regard to the property--Mrs. Lindsay, as an act

of reparation, and to preclude all legal action on the part of any

heir of her own or of her brother, Hawkey Sharpe, that might crop up,

by a will drawn out and prepared by myself, duly recorded at Her

Majesty's General Register House, Edinburgh, has left the entire

estate to you, precisely and in all entirety as it was left to her.

'She sent a message when she did this. It was simply: "When my time

comes, and I feel assured that it is not far off now, and that I

shall not see him again, he will know that I have done my best."

'There must have been an emotion of remorse in her mind, as I now

know that for some days before the demise of your worthy father, he

eagerly urged that you should be telegraphed for, and more than once

expressed a vehement desire to see _me_, his legal adviser, but in

vain, as Mrs. Lindsay number two and her brother Hawkey barred the

way; so the first will in the former's favour remained unaltered.

'Since you last left home, Mr. Hawkey forged his sister's name to a

cheque for £2,000 to cover a bill or racing debt. It duly came to

hand. Mrs. Lindsay looked at the document, and knew in an instant

that her name had been used, and, remembering the amount of Hawkey's

demand on her, knew also that she had been shamefully and cruelly

deceived.

'The sequence of the numbers in her cheque-book showed by the absence

of the counterfoil where one had been abstracted--that for the £2,000

payable to bearer. In her rage she repudiated it, and the law took

its course.

'The nameless horror that is the sure precursor of coming evil took

possession of her, and then it was that she executed in your favour

the will referred to, instigated thereto not a little by Hawkey's

incessant and annoying references to her secret ailment--disease of

the heart.

'To me she seemed to have changed very much latterly. Her tall, thin

figure had lost somewhat of its erectness, and her cold, steel-like

eyes (you remember them?) were sunken and dimmed.

'Her illness took a sudden and fatal turn at the time that rascal

Hawkey was arrested; and she was found that evening by Mrs. Drugget,

the housekeeper, and old Funnell, the butler, dead in the Red

Drawing-room. Thus her strange faintnesses and continued pallor were

fully accounted for by the faculty then.

'When she was dead Mr. Hawkey was disposed to snap his fingers,

believing himself the lord of everything; but the will prepared by me

precluded that, and he was forthwith lodged by order of the

Procurator-Fiscal in the Tolbooth of Cupar, where he can hear, but

not see, the flow of the Eden.

'His wife, the late Miss Annot Drummond, on seeing him depart with a

pair of handcuffs on, displayed but small emotions of regard or

sorrow, but a great deal of indignation, despair, and shame. She

trod to and fro upon the floor of her room during the long watches of

the entire succeeding night, tore her golden hair, and beat her

little hands against the wall in the fury and agony of her passion

and disappointment to find herself mated to a criminal; and now she

has betaken herself to her somewhat faded maternal home in South

Belgravia, where I do not suppose we shall care to follow her.'

'So, I am Earlshaugh again!' thought Roland with pardonable

exultation. His old ancestral home was his once more. But a battle

was to be fought on the morrow. Should he survive it--escape? He

hoped so now; life was certainly more valuable than it seemed to him

before that mail-bag came up the Nile.

Roland could not feel much regret for the extinguisher which Fate had

put upon the usurpers of his patrimony, but he was by nature too

generous not to recall, with some emotions of a gentle kind, how Mrs.

Lindsay had once said to him in a broken voice, when he bade her

farewell, of something she meant to do, 'If it was not too late--too

late!'

And when he had asked her _what_ she referred to, her answer was that

'Time would show.'

And now time had shown. She had certainly, after all, liked the

handsome and _debonnair_ young fellow who had treated her with that

chivalrous deference so pleasant to all women, old or young.

Roland, as he looked up at the luminous Nubian sky, felt for a time a

solemn emotion of awe and thankfulness, curiously blended with

exultant pride; that if he fell in the battle of to-morrow he would

fall, as many of his forefathers had done, a Lindsay of Earlshaugh,

but alas! the last of his race.

'By Jove, there is a postscript--turn the page, Roland!' exclaimed

Jack Elliot, who had been noting the letter, as mutual stock, over

his brother-in-law's shoulder.

'Since writing all the foregoing,' said the postscript, 'I find that

your sister, Mrs. Elliot, appears to have had some news, after

receiving which she and Miss Hester have suddenly left Edinburgh, but

for _where_ or with what intention I am totally unable to discover.'

'News,' muttered Roland; 'what news can they have had?'

Roland, by the field telegraph rearward, _viâ_, Cairo, wired a

message to Mr. M'Wadsett for further intelligence, if he had any to

give, concerning the absentees, but no answer came till long after

the troops had got under arms to engage, and Roland was no longer

there to receive it.

'By Heaven, this infernal coil at home is becoming more entangled!'

exclaimed Jack. 'Were it not for my mother's sake I would hope to be

knocked on the head to-day.'

'Not for poor little Maude's sake?' asked Roland reproachfully.

'God help us both!' sighed Jack.

'To every one who lives strength is given him to do his duty,' said

Roland gravely. 'Do yours, Jack, and no more.'

'To me there seems a dash of sophistry in this advice now; but had

you ever loved as I have done----'

'Had I ever loved! What do you mean?' asked Roland, almost

impatiently. 'But there go the bugles, and we must each to his

company.'

Then each, seizing the other's hand, drew his sword and 'fell in.'

The mystery involving the fate of Maude and the movements of both her

and Hester were a source of intense pain, perplexity, and grief to

the two friends now, even amid the fierce and wild work of that

eventful 10th of February.

CHAPTER LVI.

THE BATTLE OF KIRBEKAN.

On the night before this brilliant encounter the greatest enthusiasm

prevailed in the ranks of General Earle's column at the prospect of a

brush with the enemy at last, after an advance of eighteen most weary

miles, which had occupied them no less than twenty days, such was the

terrible nature of the country to be traversed by stream and desert.

As a fine Scottish ballad has it:

'With painful march across the sand

How few, though strong, they come,

Some thinking of the clover fields

And the happy English home;

And some whose graver features speak

Them children of the North,

Of the golden whin on the Lion Hill

That crouches by the Forth.

''Tis night, and through the desert air

The pibroch's note screams shrill,

Then dies away--the bugle sounds--

Then all is deathly still,

Save now and then a soldier starts

As through the midnight air

A sudden whistle tells him that

The scouts of death are there!'

At half-past five in the morning, after a meagre and hurried

breakfast--the last meal that many were to partake of on earth--the

column got under arms and took its march straight inland over a very

rocky district for more than a mile, while blood-red and fiery the

vast disc of the sun began to appear above the far and hazy horizon.

Of the scene of these operations very little is known. Lepsius, in

his learned work published in 1844, writes of the ruins of Ben Naga,

now called Mesaurat el Kerbegan, lying in a valley of that name, in a

wild and sequestered place, where no living thing is seen but the

hippopotami swimming amid the waters of the Nile.

Taking ground to the left for about half a mile the column struck

upon the caravan track that led to Berber, and then the enemy came in

sight, led by the Sheikhs Moussa Abu Hagil, Ali Wad, Aussein, and

others, holding a rocky position, where their dark heads were only

visible, popping up from time to time as seen by the field-glasses.

It was intended that the Monassir tribe, the murderers of Donald

Stewart and his party, should, if possible, be surrounded and cut

off; but they were found to be entrenched and prepared for a

desperate resistance on lofty ground near the Shukuk Pass on a ridge

of razor-backed hills, commanding a gorge which lies between the

latter and the Nile, and the entrance to which they had closed by a

fort and walls loopholed for musketry.

'The Black Watch and Staffordshire will advance in skirmishing

order!' was the command of General Earle.

Six companies of the Highlanders and four of the latter corps now

extended on both flanks at a run. The Hussars galloped to the right,

while two companies of the Staffordshire, with two guns, were left to

protect the boats in the river, the hospital corps, the stores, and

spare ammunition.

This order was maintained till the companies of skirmishers

gradually, and firing with admirable coolness and precision, worked

their way towards the high rocks in their front. While closing in

with the enemy, whose furious fusillade enveloped the dark ridge in

white smoke, streaked by incessant flashes of red fire, men were

falling down on every hand with cries to God for help or mercy, and

some, it might be, with a fierce and bitter malediction.

There was no time to think, for the next bullet might floor the

thinker: it was the supreme moment which tries the heart of the

bravest; but every officer and man felt that he must do his duty at

all hazards. Bullets sang past, thudded in silvery stars on the

rocks, cut the clothing, or raised clouds of dust; comrades and dear

friends were going down fast, as rifles were tossed up and hands were

lifted heavenward--as, more often, men fell in death, in blood and

agony; but good fortune seemed to protect the untouched, and then

came the clamorous and tiger-like longing to close in, to grapple

with, to get within grasp of the foe!

In this spirit Roland went on, but keeping his skirmishers well in

hand, till they reached the high rocks in front, when they rushed

between or over them; and there Colonel Eyre, a noble, veteran

officer, and remarkably handsome man, who, though a gentleman by

birth, had risen from the ranks in the Crimea--then as now

conspicuous for his bravery--fell at the head of his beloved South

Staffordshire while attacking the second ridge, 'where, behind some

giant boulders, the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil was with his Robatat

tribe--the most determined of the Arab race.'

The good Colonel was pausing for a moment beside two of his wounded

men. 'Colonel Eyre took one of them by the hand,' wrote an officer

whom we are tempted to quote, 'to comfort him a little. A minute

after he turned to me and said: "I am a dead man!" I saw a mark

below his shoulder, and said: "No, you are not." He looked at me for

a second, and said: "Lord, have mercy upon me--God help my poor

wife!" ... He was dead in a minute after he was hit, and did not

appear to suffer, the shock being so great. The bullet entered the

right breast, and came out under the left shoulder.'

Like a roaring wave the infuriated Staffordshire went on, and then

the Robatat tribe were assailed by two companies of the Highlanders,

led by their Colonel and General Earle in person. 'The Black Watch

advanced over rocks and broken ground upon the Koppies,' says Lord

Wolseley's very brief despatch, 'and, after having by their fire in

the coolest manner driven off a rush of the enemy, stormed the

position under a heavy fire.'

But desperate was the struggle prior to this. The Arabs, from the

cover of every rock and boulder, poured in a fire with the most

murderous precision, while our soldiers flung themselves headlong at

any passage or opening they found, no matter how narrow or steep.

Like wild tigers in their lair, the Arabs fought at bay, having

everywhere the advantage of the ground, and inspired by a fury born

of fanaticism and religious rancour, resolute to conquer or die; but

in spite of odds and everything, our soldiers stormed rock after

rock, and fastness after fastness, working their way on by bayonet

and bullet, the Black Watch on the left, the old 38th on the right,

upward and onward, over rocks slippery with dripping blood, over the

groaning, the shrieking, the dying, and the dead.

Here fell Wilton and merry Dick Mostyn, both mortally wounded,

rolling down the rocks to die in agony; and to Roland it was evident

that Jack Elliot was bitterly intent on throwing his life away if he

could, for he rushed, sword in hand, at any loophole in the rocks

from whence a puff of smoke or flash of fire spirted out.

But brilliant as was the rush of the Staffordshire, climbing with

their hands and feet, it was almost surpassed by the advance of the

Highlanders, for in the _élan_ with which they went on every man

seemed as if inspired by the advice of General Brackenbury when he

said: 'Take your heart and throw it among the enemy, as Douglas did

that of King Robert Bruce, and follow it with set teeth determined to

win!'

When General Earle ordered the left half-battalion of the Highlanders

to advance by successive rushes, they went forward with a ringing

cheer and with pipers playing 'The Campbells are coming,' and in

another moment the scarlet coats and green kilts, led by Wauchop of

Niddry, had crowned the ridge, rolling the soldiers of the Mahdi down

the rocks before their bayonets in literal piles that never rose

again, and then it was that Colonel Coveny, one of their most popular

officers, fell.

Roland felt proud of his regiment, the old South Staffordshire, but

when he saw the tartans fluttering on the crest, and heard the pipes

set up their pæan of victory, all his heart went forth to the

Highlanders, who, ere these successive rushes were carried out, had

been attacked by a most resolute band of the enemy, armed with long

spears and trenchant swords, led by a standard-bearer clad in a long

Darfour shirt of mail.

The latter, the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, was shot, and as his body

went rolling down, the holy standard was seized in succession by

three men of resolute valour, who all perished successively in the

same manner. Some of this band now rushed away towards the Nile to

escape the storm of Highland bullets, but were there met by a company

of the Staffordshire and shot down to a man.

Within the koppie stormed by the Highlanders was a stone hut full of

Arabs, who, though surrounded by victorious troops, defiantly refused

to surrender. General Earle, a veteran Crimean officer of the old

49th, or Hertfordshire, now rashly approached it, though warned by a

sergeant of the Black Watch to beware, and was immediately shot dead.

An entrance was found to be impossible, so securely was the door

barricaded. Then the edifice was set on fire by the infuriated

Highlanders, breached by powder, and all the Arabs within it were

shot down or burned alive.

The enemy now fled on all hands, while the chivalrous Buller, with a

squadron of the 19th Hussars, captured the camp three miles in rear

of their position, and Brackenbury, as senior officer, assumed the

command.

Our casualties were eighty-seven of all ranks killed and wounded;

those of the enemy it was impossible to estimate, as only seventeen

were taken alive, but their dead covered all the position, and an

unknown number perished in the Nile.

Untouched, after that terrible conflict of five consecutive hours,

Roland Lindsay and Jack Elliot grasped each other's hands in warmth

and gratitude when they sheathed their swords and felt that their

ghastly work was done.

The subsequent day was devoted to quiet and rest, and on the field,

under a solitary palm tree, the remains of General Earle, Colonels

Eyre, Coveny, and all who had fallen with them, were reverently

interred, without any special mark to attract the attention of the

dwellers in the desert.

After all this, Brigadier Brackenbury was about to march in the

direction of Abu Hammed, when unexpected instructions from the

vacillating British Government reached Lord Wolseley from London, and

the river column was ordered to fall back on the camp at Korti, a

task of no small difficulty; and though a handful of men under Sir

Charles Wilson did reach Khartoum, as we all know, the movement was

achieved too late, and, cruelly betrayed, Gordon had perished in the

midst of his fame.

CHAPTER LVII.

THE SICK CONVOY.

Repeatedly Jack Elliot thanked Heaven that his comrades in the

regiment had not got hold of his wretched story--that he and his

young wife had quarrelled--were actually separated, and that she had

run away from him because of some other woman, as he knew well that

but garbled versions of the comedies or tragedies in the lives of our

friends generally reach us.

The movements of the column were now so abrupt, and, for a time,

undecided, that no telegram in reply to his message reached Roland

from Edinburgh, and ere long he had a new source of anxiety.

Enteric fever, that ailment which proved so fatal to many of our

troops during this disastrous and useless war, fastened upon poor

Jack Elliot, and the column had barely reached the camp at Korti when

he was 'down' with it, as the soldiers phrased it, and very seriously

so--all the more seriously, no doubt, that the tenor of Mr.

M'Wadsett's postscript left such a doubt on his mind as to the plans

and movements of Maude.

His head felt as if weighted with lead--but hot lead; he had an

appalling thirst, and was destitute of all appetite even for

delicacies, and the latter were not plentiful, certainly, in our camp

at Korti.

If he survived, which he thought was almost impossible, he believed

that he could never, never forget what he endured in the so-called

camp there--first, the languor and disinclination for work, duty,

exercise, even for thinking; the pains in his limbs; his dry, brown

tongue, that rattled in his mouth; mental and bodily debility; and

all the other signs of his ailment, produced by exposure, by midnight

dew, and the bad, brackish water of the desert.

Roland--of a hardier nature, perhaps--was unwearying in his care of

him, and thrice daily with his own hands gave him the odious

prescribed draught--hydrochloric acid, tincture of orange, and so

forth, diluted in Nile water--while the once strong, active, and

muscular Jack was weak as a baby.

Roland greatly feared he would die on his hands, and hailed with

intense satisfaction an order by which he was personally detailed to

take a detachment of certain sick and wounded, including Jack Elliot,

down the Nile to Lower Egypt.

In his tent, he was roused from an uneasy dream that he was again

lying at the bottom of the Kelpie's Cleugh at Earlshaugh, by an

orderly sergeant, who brought him this welcome command about dawn,

and noon saw him, with a small flotilla of boats freighted with pain

and suffering, take his leave of the South Staffordshire and begin

his journey down the Nile, _viâ_ New Dongola, the cataracts at

Ambigol and elsewhere, by Wady-Halfa and other points where temporary

hospitals or halting-places were established.

Day by day the boats with their melancholy loads, sometimes by oars,

at others with canvas set, had dropped down the Nile between barren

shores overlooked by wild and sterile mountains, where the sick were

almost stunned occasionally by the harsh yells of the watchful Arabs

echoing from rocks and caves! and, after turning a sharp angle,

Roland suddenly saw the island of Phite, with all its numerous

temples, before his flotilla, and as there was a considerable flood

in the river the cataract there became a source of anxiety to him,

and rather abated the interest with which he might otherwise have

surveyed the scene around him.

'Shellal! Shellal!' (the Cataract! the Cataract!) he heard the yells

of the naked Arabs, who hovered on the banks expecting a catastrophe,

which they would have beheld with savage joy.

The soldiers held their breath and hung on their suspended oars, the

blades of which dripped and flashed like gold in the sheen of the

setting sun; yet the boats glided down the foaming rapid without a

sound other than the rush of the water; then came a sudden calm, an

amazing combination of light and colour on shore, and isle, and

stream, with the rays of the moon, in the blue zenith, conflicting

with those of the sun at the horizon.

'On either side,' wrote one who was there, 'walls of overhanging rock

shut in the river, standing in pious guardianship around the sacred

isle. Beneath their frowning blackness lapped and flowed a shining

expanse of water stained with crimson in the sunset's glow, in which

a line of tall and plumy palms were bending in the wind; to the east,

the Libyan sands poured in a golden stream through every cleft and

fissure in the darkling hills; and overhead, and all about, floated a

splendour of reddening fire. From their station they seemed to look

straight into the very heart of the sunset when all the west had

burst into sudden flames of fire. The freshening wind tossed them in

uncertain rise and fall; the melancholy sound of the distant

cataract, and now and then the cry of some night bird cut sharply

through the stillness of the hour. An immense sense of loneliness

brooded over the empty temples and adjacent isles abandoned by their

forgotten gods, whose sculptured faces gazed mournfully out from the

crumbling walls, then flushed with the supreme splendour of the dying

day.

A few miles further down, the Isle of Flowers, with all its wondrous

vegetation, and the many black rocks of Assouan rising from a medley

of dust, Roman ruins and feathery palms were left astern; and of the

long, long downward journey some 450 miles were mastered, after which

lay nearly the same distance to Cairo.

Often had the boats to pause in their downward way, while the

melancholy duty was performed of burying those whose journey in life

was over, by the river bank, uncoffined, in nameless and unrecorded

graves, where the ibis stalks among the tall reeds, and the scaly

crocodile dozes amid the ooze.

And as the boat in which he lay under an awning glided down the Nile

Jack Elliot was often in a species of stupor, and muttered at times

of his boyish days at the High School of Edinburgh; of the brawling

Tweed when he had been wont to fish at Braidielee; of matches at

Aldershot, and clearing the hurdles in the Long Valley; but he was

most often a boy, a lad again in his fevered dreams, and seeking

birds' nests among the bonnie Lammermuirs, feeling the pleasant

breeze that came over the braes of the Merse, while the sun shone on

the pools and thickets of the Eye and the Leader; but of Maude,

strange to say, or their mysterious separation, no word escaped him,

till he became conscious, and then Roland would hear him muttering as

he kissed her photo:

'Where are you, my darling? Shall I ever look upon your face again?'

And with a wasted and trembling hand he would consign the soft

leather case to the breast of his tattered and faded tunic. He was

so weak, so utterly debilitated that sometimes he shed involuntary

tears--a sight that filled Roland with infinite pity and

commiseration, and a dread each day that he might have to leave Jack,

as he had left others, in a lonely tomb by the river-side.

Jack, poor fellow, was dwelling generally in a land of shadows;

familiar scenes and faces came and receded, and loved voices came and

sank curiously in his ear, while his apparently dying eyes and lips

pled vainly for one kiss of his sunny-haired Maude to sweeten the

bitter draught of that death which seemed so close and nigh.

But he was still struggling between life and eternity, when in the

ruddy haze Roland hailed the purple outlines of the Pyramids in the

Plain of Ghizeh, the ridge of the Jebel Mokattam, the distant

minarets and the magnificent citadel of Cairo.

On reaching the Kasr-el-Nil Barracks, Roland was ordered to be

attached for duty purposes to a regiment quartered there till further

orders, as no more troops were proceeding up the Nile.

Though the battle of Hasheen was to be fought and won, and the

lamentable fiasco of Macneill's zereba to occur at Suakim, the war

was deemed virtually over, as the cause for it had collapsed by

Gordon's betrayal and the fall of Khartoum.

With the general advance of the expedition under Lord Wolseley to

rescue Gordon, our story has only had a certain connection--a mission

undertaken far too late, but during which the mind at home was kept

at fever-heat by news from that burning seat of strife, recording the

sufferings of our soldiers, and the bloody but victorious battles

with the Mahdists, till the dark and terrible tidings came, that just

as Wilson's column was ready to join Gordon, who had sent his

steamers to Metemneh to meet him--Khartoum, after a defence perhaps

unsurpassed in the annals of peril and glory, had fallen by storm and

treachery, and the people of Britain were left to wonder, and in

doubt, whether a stupendous blunder or an unpardonable crime had been

perpetrated.

CHAPTER LVIII.

IN THE SHOUBRAH GARDENS.

Roland lost no time in telegraphing home for news of the missing

ones, but received none; Mr. M'Wadsett was absent from town, so he

and Jack Elliot, who was far from recovery yet, had to take patience

and wait, they scarcely knew for what. One fact was too patent, that

both Hester and Maude had disappeared--one too probably in penury and

the other in an agony of grief and shame. It was not even known,

apparently, whether they were together.

They had vanished, and, save a cheque or two cashed by Jack's

bankers, left no trace of how or when; and a chilling fear crept over

the hearts of both men as to what might have happened--illness,

poverty, unthought-of snares, even death itself.

Meanwhile, 'the shadow, cloaked from head to foot, who keeps the keys

of all the creeds,' was hovering perilously near Jack, for whom

Roland procured quarters in a pleasant house in the beautiful

Shoubrah Road, near Cairo--a broad but shady avenue formed of noble

sycamores, the 'Rotten Row' of the city, and day followed day

somewhat monotonously now, though a letter dated some weeks back from

his legal friend of Thistle Court gave Roland some occasion for

gratifying thought.

'If you can return,' it ran, 'must I remind you that now Earlshaugh

is unoccupied; the land so far neglected, and the tenants well-nigh

forgotten; the rents are accumulating at your bankers', but no good

is done to anyone. Your proper place and position is your own again;

justice has restored your birthright; so come home at once and act

wisely--home, my dear friend, and you shall have such a welcome as

Earlshaugh has not seen since your father came back after the Crimean

War.'

Pondering over this letter and on what the future might have in

store, Roland was one afternoon idling over a cigarette in the

gardens of the Shoubrah Palace, an edifice which rises from the bank

of the Nile. On one side are pleasant glimpses of the latter, with

its palm-clad banks and sparkling villages; on the other a tract of

brilliantly tinted cultivation, and beyond it the golden sands of the

desert, the shifting hillocks they form, and the gray peaks of

several pyramids.

The gardens, surpassingly beautiful and purely Oriental in character,

are entered by long and winding walks of impenetrable shade, from

which we emerge on open spaces that team with roses, with gilded

pavilions and painted kiosks. 'Arched walks of orange-trees with the

fruit and flowers hanging over your head lead to fountains,' says a

Jewish writer, 'or to some other garden court, where myrtles border

beds of tulips, and you wander on mosaic walks of polished pebbles; a

vase flashes amid a group of dark cypresses, and you are invited to

repose under a Syrian walnut-tree by a couch or summer-house. The

most striking picture, however, of this charming retreat is a lake

surrounded by light cloisters of white marble, and in the centre a

fountain of crocodiles carved in the same material.'

Lulled by the heat, by the drowsy hum made by the sound of many

carriages filled with harem beauties or European ladies rolling to

and fro on the adjacent Shoubrah Road, with the ceaseless patter of

hoofs, as mounted Cairene dandies and our cavalry officers rode in

the same gay promenade, Roland reclined on a marble seat, lit another

cigarette, and watched the giant flowers of the Egyptian lotus in the

little lake, blue and white, that sink when the sun sets, but open

and rise when it is shining, till suddenly he saw a young lady

appear, who was evidently idling in the gardens like himself.

He could see that she was a European. With one glove drawn off,

showing a hand the pure whiteness of which contrasted with her dark

dress, she was playing with the water of a red marble fountain that

fell sparkling into the lakelet, not ten yards from where he was

seated, unseen by her.

Suddenly his figure, in his undress uniform, caught her eye; she

turned and looked full at him, as if spellbound.

'Roland!' she exclaimed.

'Hester--good heavens, can it be?--Hester, and _here_!' said he.

Hester she was; he sprang to her side, and they took each other's

hands, both for a moment in dumb confusion and bewilderment. At the

moment of this meeting and before recognition, even when hovering

near him, and he had been all unconscious of who the tall and slender

girl in mourning really was, she had been thinking of him, and as she

had often thought--

'I loved Roland all my life--better than my own soul; but such a love

as mine is too often only its own best reward; and many a sore heart

like mine learns that never in this world is it measured to us again

as we have meted it out.'

Thus bitterly had the girl been pondering, when she found herself

suddenly face to face with the subject of her reverie, and, in spite

of herself, a little cloud was blended with the astonishment her eyes

expressed.

'Hester--what mystery is this? And are you not glad to see me?' he

asked impetuously.

'Glad--oh, Roland! glad indeed, and that you escaped that dreadful

day at Kirbekan!' she replied, while her eyes became humid now.

'God bless you, my darling!' he exclaimed, as all his soul seemed

suddenly to go forth to her, and he would have drawn her to him; but

she thought of Annot Drummond, and fell back a pace. 'Hester,' said

he upbraidingly, 'will you not accord me one kiss, darling?'

She grew pale now, for she feared that her welcome had been more

cordial than he had any right to expect; but the circumstances were

peculiar, their place and mode of meeting alike strange and

unexpected; but it was impossible for her not to guess, to read in

his eyes, in fact, all the tender passion of love, esteem, and

kinship that filled his heart for her now.

'How well you are looking, Hester, after all you must have

suffered--some of the old rose's hue is back to your cheek, darling.'

'Don't speak thus, Roland--I--I----' she faltered.

'Why not, Hester? You loved me, I know, even as I loved you.'

'Before that beautiful little hypocrite and adventuress came,' said

she, with quiet bitterness, 'I certainly did love you, Roland----'

'And love me still, Hester?'

'Do I look as if I had let the worm in the bud feed on my damask

cheek?' said she, with a little gasping laugh; 'has my hair grown

thin or white? How vain you are, Cousin Roland!'

'No, Hester' (how he loved to utter her name!); 'though I admit to

having been a hopeless and thoughtless fool--no worse; but, forgive

me, dear Hester; I ask you in the name of your good old father, who

so loved us both, and in memory of our pleasant past at Merlwood.'

She made no answer; but her downcast eyes were full of tears; her

breast was heaving, and her lips were quivering now.

'It ought not to be hard to forgive you, Roland, as you never said,

even in that pleasant past, that you loved me; and yet, perhaps--but

I must go now,' she said, interrupting herself, as she turned round

wearily and vaguely.

'Go where?' he asked. 'But how came you to be here--here in

Cairo--and whither are you going?'

'To where I reside,' she replied, with a soft smile; for, with all

her love for him, and with all her supreme joy at meeting him again

thus safe and sound, and in a manner so unprecedentedly peculiar, she

was not disposed quite to strike her colours and yield at once.

'Reside!' thought Roland, with a flush of anger in his heart; 'as

companion, governess, nursing sister, or--what?'

'To where I reside with Maude,' she added, almost reading his

thoughts.

'Is Maude here, too?'

'Yes; we came together in quest of you and Jack. Oh! where is

he?--well and safe, too, I am sure, or you would not be looking so

bright. Maude left her home under a mistake--the victim of a

conspiracy, hatched, as we know now, by that wretched creature

Sharpe.'

'And she is here--here in Cairo?'

'Yes.'

'This seems miraculous!'

'Come with me to Maude.'

'And then to Jack--to poor Jack, whom the sight of her beloved face

will surely make well and strong again.'

And, as people in a dream, in another minute they were in a cab--for

cabs are now to be had in the city of the Caliphs and the

Mamelukes--and were bowling towards one of the stately squares in the

European quarter through strangely picturesque streets of lofty,

latticed, and painted houses, richly carved as Gothic shrines, where,

by day, the many races that make up the population of Cairo in their

bright and varied costumes throng on foot, on horse or donkey-back;

and where, by night, rope-dancers, conjurers, fire-eaters, and

tumblers, with sellers of fruit, flowers, sherbet, and coffee, make

up a scene of noise and bustle beyond description; and now certainly,

with Hester suddenly conjured up by his side, Roland felt, we say, as

if in a dream wild and sudden as anything in the 'Arabian Nights.'

Does love once born lie dormant to live again?

Judging by his own experience, he thought so, with truth.

More than once when he had gone forth into the world with his

regiment he had almost forgotten the little Hester as she had been to

him, a sweet, piquante, and dainty figure amid the groves of

Merlwood, and in the background of his boyish days; then in his

soldier's life, she would anon flit across the vista of memory,

fondly and pleasantly, till he learned to love her (ere that other

came, that Circe with her cup and the dangerous charm of novelty);

and now all his old passion sprang into existence, holding his heart

in its purity and strength as if it had never wandered from

her--tender, unselfish, and true as his boyish love had been in the

past time; yet just then, by her side, and with her hand within grasp

of his own, he felt his lips but ill unable to express all he thought

and felt, and his fear of--_the refusal_ that might come.

Then he was about to see his dearly-loved sister Maude; but his joy

thereat was clouded by the dread and knowledge that poor Jack's life

was trembling in the balance.

CHAPTER LIX.

CONCLUSION.

The fond white arms of Maude were around Jack, his head was pillowed

on her breast; so the young pair were once more together, and she

had, of course, installed herself as his nurse.

Oh, how haggard, wan, wasted, and changed he was!

He lay quiet, motionless, and happy, if 'weak as a cat,' he said,

with the hum of the great city of Cairo coming faintly through the

latticed windows that overlooked the vast Uzbekyeh Square and its

gardens, whilom a marsh, and now covered with stately trees, under

which are cafés for the sale of coffee, sherbet, and punch, where

bands play in the evenings, and Franks and Turks may be seen with

Europeans in their Nizam dresses, and the Highlander in his white

jacket and tartan kilt.

How delightful it was to have her dear caresses again--to feel her

soft breath on his faded cheek; all seemed so new, so strange, that

he almost feared the delicious spell might break, and he, awaking,

find himself again in his grass hut at Korti, or gliding down the

Nile in the whaleboat of the old Staffordshire, with Arabs to repel,

rocks to avoid, and cataracts to shoot with oar and pole.

'Oh, Jack,' said Maude, for the twentieth time, 'forgive and pardon

me for doubting you; but that woman----'

'A vile plot--backed up by a forged letter! My little Maude, it

would not have borne a moment's investigation!'

'I know--I know now; but I was so terrified--so crushed--so lonely!

And then, think of the days and nights of horror and agony I

underwent. The woman dying of a street accident in the Infirmary of

Edinburgh, signed a confession of her story--that she was the bribed

agent of Sharpe's plot. I wrote all about it, but you never got my

letter.'

'And this was "the startling news" that made you so suddenly leave

Edinburgh?'

'To come here in search of you. Oh, Jack! I was mad to doubt you;

but you would quite pardon me if you knew all I have undergone.

Shall I ever forget the night she came--the night of that aimless

flight south--aimless, save to avoid you--but ending at York? Oh

never, Jack, if I lived a thousand years! I now know that it takes a

great deal to kill some people; yet I think that, but for dear,

affectionate Hester, I could not have lived very long with that awful

and never-ceasing pain gnawing at my heart.'

Jack raised her quivering face between his tremulous hands, and

looked into it fondly and yearningly. How full of affection it

seemed--so softly radiant with shy and lovely blushes, while her eyes

of forget-me-not blue never, even in the past, shone with the

love-light that illumined them now, when sufferings were past and

their memory becoming fainter.

'How long--how long it seems since we separated, and without a

farewell, Jack!'

'A day sometimes seems an age--ay, even a day, when matters of the

heart are concerned.'

'And a minute or two may undo the work of years--yea, of a lifetime.

But you must get well and strong, Jack, for the homeward voyage. In

a few days we shall have you laughing among us again; and you will

see what a careful little nurse I shall prove.'

Jack, withal, feared just then that there was but little laughter

left for him on earth; yet their reunion and the presence of Maude

acted as a wonderful charm upon him, and from her loving little

hands, instead of those of a stolid hospital orderly, he now took his

prescribed 'baby food' as he called it--beef-tea, eggs beat up in

milk, and port wine elixir, with the odious 'diluted hydrochloric

acid, one drachm, and of quinine, eight drachms,' as ordered by the

medical staff.

But he rallied rapidly, though Maude's heart beat painfully when

occasionally a ray of sunshine stole into the room through the

picturesque lattice-wood windows (which in Cairo had not been

superseded by glass) and rested on his face, and she saw how pale and

wan, if peaceful and bright, the latter was now: and then if he spoke

too much, she placed her white hands on his lips, or silenced them

more sweetly but quite as effectually.

Hester, when she first saw Jack Elliot, little imagined that he would

recover so rapidly. She had thought of Maude and then of her own

father.

'Strange it is,' pondered the girl, 'that when one sorrow comes upon

us--a shock unexpectedly--we seem to see the gradual approach of

another, and so realize its bitterness before it becomes an actual

fact. Thus I felt, long before poor papa died, that I should be

alone and penniless in the world.'

'Hester!' exclaimed Roland, softly but upbraidingly, as she said

something of this kind to him.

'Well, Roland,' said Hester, 'no one seemed to care where I went or

what became of me; all the world was indifferent to me; I had lost

all interest and saw no beauty in it.'

He had both her hands in his now, and was gazing into her

white-lidded and long-lashed dark-blue eyes.

Then, as eye met eye, each saw a strange but alluring expression in

the other--the past, the present, and future all mingled and

combined--an expression of a nature deep and indescribable.

We do not mean to rehearse all that Roland said then. If no woman

can without some emotion hear a tale of love, especially if told so

powerfully as Roland was telling it then, we may well believe how

Hester's heart responded; and he held her in his embrace, and kissed

her again and again as a man only kisses the girl he loves, and, more

than all, the one he hopes to make his wife.

So everything is said to come in time to those who wait.

They were together again--together at last--and the outer world and

all other things thereof seemed to glide away from them, leaving only

love and peace and rest behind--love and trust with the radiance of

light!

THE END.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.