"Only the deserted!" He looked out to where the Nile lost itself in the northern distance.

"I asked Nahoum for one thousand men, I asked England for the word which would send them.

I asked for a thousand, but even two hundred would turn the scale--the sign that the Inglesi had behind him Cairo and London.

Twenty weeks, and nothing comes!" He got to his feet slowly and walked up and down the room for a moment, glancing out occasionally towards the clump of palms which marked the disappearance of the Nile into the desert beyond his vision.

At intervals a cannon-shot crashed upon the rarefied air, as scores of thousands had done for months past, torturing to ear and sense and nerve.