Most Englishmen familiar with Claridge Pasha's life and aims will ask--" An exclamation broke from the old man.

In the pause which followed he said: "It was none of my doing.

He went to Egypt against my will." "Ay, so many a man's said that's not wanted to look his own acts straight in the face.

If Our Man had been started different, if he'd started in the path where God A'mighty dropped him, and not in the path Luke Claridge chose, would he have been in Egypt to-day wearing out his life?
He's not making carpets there, he's only beating them." The homely illustration drawn from the business in which he had been interested so many years went home to Claridge's mind.

He shrank back, and sat rigid, his brows drawing over the eyes, till they seemed sunk in caverns of the head.