Near by, village life manifested itself in heavily laden donkeys; in wolfish curs stealing away with refuse into the waste; in women, upright and modest, bearing jars of water on their heads; in evening fires, where the cover of the pot clattered over the boiling mass within; in the voice of the Muezzin calling to prayer.
Returning from Alexandria to Cairo in the special train which Kaid had sent for him, David watched the scene with grave and friendly interest.
There was far, to go before those mud huts of the thousand years would give place to rational modern homes; and as he saw a solitary horseman spread his sheepskin on the ground and kneel to say his evening prayer, as Mahomet had done in his flight between Mecca and Medina, the distance between the Egypt of his desire and the ancient Egypt that moved round him sharply impressed his mind, and the magnitude of his task settled heavily on his spirit.
"But it is the beginning--the beginning," he said aloud to himself, looking out upon the green expanses of dourha and Lucerne, and eyeing lovingly the cotton-fields here and there, the origin of the industrial movement he foresaw--"and some one had to begin.

The rest is as it must be--" There was a touch of Oriental philosophy in his mind--was it not Galilee and the Nazarene, that Oriental source from which Mahomet also drew?
But he added to the "as it must be" the words, "and as God wills." He was alone in the compartment with Lacey, whose natural garrulity had had a severe discipline in the months that had passed since he had asked to be allowed to black David's boots.

He could now sit for an hour silent, talking to himself, carrying on unheard conversations.

Seeing David's mood, he had not spoken twice on this journey, but had made notes in a little "Book of Experience,"-- as once he had done in Mexico.

At last, however, he raised his head, and looked eagerly out of the window as David did, and sniffed.
"The Nile again," he said, and smiled.