With Kitchener in the Soudan : a story of Atbara and Omdurman

"A month later. I have not written for some time, because there has been nothing special to put down. All the little details of the life here can be told to my dear wife, if I should ever see her again, but they are not of sufficient interest to write down. I have been living at the Emir's house ever since. I do not know what special office I am supposed to occupy in his household—that is, what office the people in general think that I hold. In fact, I am his guest, and an honoured one. When he goes out I ride beside him and Abu, who has now sufficiently recovered to sit his horse. i consider myself as medical attendant in ordinary to him and his family. I have given up all practice in the town— in the first place because I do not wish to make enemies of the two doctors, who really seem very good fellows, and I am glad to find that they have performed two or three operations successfully; and in the second place, were I to go about trying to cure the sick, people would get so interested in me that I should be continually questioned as to how I attained my marvellous skill. Happily, though no doubt they must have felt somewhat jealous at my success with Abu, I have been able to do the hakims some service, put fees into their pockets, and at the same time benefited poor people here. I have told them that, just as I recognized the bottle of chloroform, so I have recognized some of the bottles from which the white hakims used to give powder to sick people.For instance,' I said,you see this bottle, which is of a different shape from the others. It is full of a white, feathery-looking powder. They used to give this to people suffering from fever—about as much as you could put on your nail for men and women, and half as much for children. They used to put it in a little water, and stir it up, and give it to them night and morning. They call it kena, or something like that. It did a great deal of good, and generally drove away the fever. This other bottle they also used a good deal. They put a little of its contents in water and it made a lotion for weak and sore eyes. They called it zing. They saw I was a careful man, and I often made the eye-wash and put the other white powder up into little packets when they were busy, as fever and ophthalmia are the two most common complaints among the natives.'

"The hakims were immensely pleased, and both told me afterwards that both these medicines had done wonders. I told them that I thought there were some more bottles of these medicines in the chest, and that when they had finished those I had now given them I would look out for the others. I had, in fact, carried off a bottle both of quinine and zinc powder for my own use, and with the latter I greatly benefited several of the Emir's children and grand-children, all of whom were suffering from ophthalmia, or from sore eyes that would speedily have developed that disease if they had not been attended to. I had only performed one operation, which was essentially a minor one. Abu told me that his wife, of whom he was very fond, was suffering very great pain from a tooth—could I cure her?

"I said that without seeing the tooth I could not do anything, and he at once said:As it is for her good, Mudil, I will bring her into this room, and she shall unveil so that you can examine the tooth.' She was quite a girl, and for an Arab very good-looking. She and the Emir's wife were continually sending me out choice bits from their dinner, but I had not before seen her face. She was evidently a good deal confused at thus unveiling before a man, but Abu said:It is with my permission that you unveil, therefore there can be no harm in it. Besides, has not Mudil saved my life, and so become my brother?' He opened her mouth; the tooth was far back and broken, and the gum was greatly swelled.

"' It is very bad,' I said to Abu.It would hurt her terribly if I were to try and take it out, but if she will take the sleeping medicine I gave you I think that I could do it.'

"' Then she shall take it,' he said at once.It is not unpleasant; on the contrary, I dreamt a pleasant dream while you were taking off my arm. Please do it at once.'

"I at once fetched the chloroform, the inhaler, and a pair of forceps which looked well suited for the purpose, and probably were intended for it. I then told her to lie down on the angareb, which I placed close to the window.

"Now, Abu,' I said,directly she has gone off to sleep you must force her mouth open and put the handle of your dagger between her teeth. It will not hurt her at all. But I cannot get at the tooth unless the mouth is open, and we cannot open it until she is asleep, for the whole side of her face is swollen and the jaw almost stiff.'

" The chloroform took effect very quickly. Her husband had some difficulty in forcing the mouth open. When he had once done so, I took a firm hold of the tooth and wrenched it out.

" 'You can withdraw the dagger,' I said, 'and then lift her up and let her rinse her mouth well with the warm water I brought in. She will have little pain afterwards, though of course it will take some little time before the swelling goes down.'

" Then I went out and left them together. In a few minutes Abu came out.

"She has no pain,' he said.She could hardly believe, when she came round, that the tooth was out. It is a relief indeed. She has cried day and night for the past three days.'

"' Tell her that for the rest of the day she had better keep quiet and go to sleep if possible, which I have no doubt she will do, as she must be worn out with the pain she has been suffering.'

"' I begin to see, Mudil, that we are very ignorant. We can fight, but that is all we are good for. How much better it would be if, instead of regarding j-ou white men as enemies, we could get some of you to live here and teach us the wonderful things that you know!'

" 'Truly it would be better,' I said. 'It all depends upon yourselves. You have a great country. If you would but treat the poor people here well, and live in peace Avith other tribes, and send word down to Cairo that you desire above all things white hakims and others who would teach you, to come up and settle among you, assuredly they would come. There are thousands of white men and women working in India, and China, and other countries, content to do good, not looking for high pay, but content to live poorly. The difficulty is not in getting men willing to heal and to teach, but to persuade those whom they would benefit to allow them to do the work.'

" Abu shook his head.

" 'That is it,' he said. 'I would rather be able to do such things as you do, than be one of the most famous soldiers of the Mahdi; but I could never persuade others. They say that the Mahdi himself, although he is hostile to the Turks, and would conquer Egypt, would willingly befriend white men. But even he, powerful as he is, cannot go against the feelings of his emirs. Must we always be ignorant? Must we always be fighting ? I can see no way out of it. Can you, Mudil?'

"' I can see but one way,' I said,and that may seem to you impossible, because you know nothing of the strength of England. We have, as you know, easily beaten the Egyptian army, and we are now protectors of Egypt. If you invade that country, as the Mahdi has already threatened to do, it is Ave who will defend it; and if there is no other way of obtaining peace, we shall some day send an army to recover the Soudan. You will fight, and you will fight desperately, but you have no idea of the force that will advance against you. You know how Osman Digna's tribes on the Red Sea have been defeated, not by the superior courage of our men, but by our superior arms. And so it will be here. It may be many years before it comes about, but if you insist on war that is what will come. Then, when we have taken the Soudan, there will come peace, and the peasant will till his soil in safety; those who desire to be taught will be taught; great canals from the Nile will irrigate the soil, and the desert will become fruitful.'

"'You really think that would come of it?' Abu asked earnestly.

"I do, indeed, Abu. "We have conquered many brave peoples, far more numerous than yours; and those who were our bitterest enemies now see how they have benefited by it. Certainly England would not undertake the cost of such an expedition lightly, but if she is driven to it by your advance against Egypt she will assuredly do so. Your people—I mean the Baggaras and their allies—would suffer terribly; but the people whom you have conquered, whose villages you have burned, whose women you have carried off, would rejoice.'

"We would fight,' Abu said passionately.

"Certainly you would fight, and fight gallantly, but it would not avail you. Besides, Abu, you would be fighting for that ignorance you have just regretted, and against the teaching and progress you have wished for.'

"It is hard,' Abu said quietly.

"It is hard, but it has been the fate of all people who have resisted the advance of knowledge and civilization. Those who accept civilization as the people of India—of whom there are many more than in all Africa — have accepted it, are prosperous. In America and other great countries far beyond the seas the native Indians opposed it, but in vain; and now a great white race inhabit the land, and there is but a handful left of those who opposed them.'

"These things are hard to understand. If, as you say, your people come here some day to fight against us, I shall fight. If my people are defeated, and I am still alive, I shall say it is the will of Allah; let us make the best of it, and try to learn to be like those who have conquered us. I own to you that I am sick of bloodshed—not of blood shed in battle, but the blood of peaceful villagers; and though I grieve for my own people, I should feel that it was for the good of the land that the white men had become the masters.'

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST PAGE

KHARTOUM, September 3rd, 1884. — It is a long time since I made my last entry. I could put no date to it then, and till yesterday could hardly even have named the month. I am back again among friends, but I can hardly say

that I am safer here than I was at El Obeid. I have not written, because there was nothing to write. One day was like another, and as my paper was finished, and there were no incidents in my life, I let the matter slide. Again and again I contemplated attempting to make my way to this town, but the difficulties would be enormous. There were the dangers of the desert, the absence of wells, the enormous probability of losing my way, and, most of all, the chance that before I reached Khartoum it would have been captured. The Emir had been expecting news of its fall for months. There had been several fights, in some of which they had been victorious; in others, even according to their own accounts, they had been worsted. Traitors in the town kept them well informed of the state of supplies; they declared that these were almost exhausted, and that the garrison must surrender; indeed, several of the commanders of bodies of troops had offered to surrender posts held by them. So I had put aside all hope of escape, and decided not to make any attempt until after Khartoum fell, when the Dervishes boasted they would march down and conquer Egypt to the sea.

"They had already taken Berber; Dongola was at their mercy. I thought the best chance would be to go down with them as far as they went, and then to slip away. In this way I should shorten the journey I should have to traverse alone, and being on the river bank, could at least always obtain water. Besides, I might possibly secure some small native boat, and with the help of the current get down to Assouan before the Dervishes could arrive there. This I should have attempted, but three weeks ago an order came from the Mahdi to El Khatim, ordering him to send to Omdurman five hundred well-armed men, who were to be commanded by his son Abu. Khatim was to remain at El Obeid with the main body of his force until further orders. Abu came to me at once with the news.

"You will take me with you, Abu,' I exclaimed.This is the chance I have been hoping for. Once within a day's journey of Khartoum I could slip away at night, and it would be very hard if I could not manage to cross the Nile into Khartoum.'

"'I will take you if you wish it,' he said. 'The danger will be very great, not in going with me, but in making your way into Khartoum.'

"It does not seem to me that it would be so,' I said. • I should strike the river four or five miles above the town, cut a bundle of rushes, swim out to the middle of the river, drift down till I was close to the town, and then swim across.'

"So be it,' he said.It is your will, not mine.' Khatim came to me afterwards and advised me to stay, but I said that it might be years before I had another chance to escape, and that whatever risk there was I would prefer running it.

" 'Then we shall see you no more,' he said, 'for Khartoum will assuredly fall and you will be killed.'

"' If you were a prisoner in the hands of the white soldiers, Emir,' I said,I am sure that you would run any risk if there was a chance of getting home again. So it is with me. I have a wife and child in Cairo. Her heart must be sick with pain at the thought of my death. I will risk anything to get back as soon as possible. If I reach Khartoum and it is afterwards captured, I can disguise myself and appear as I now am, hide for a while, and then find out where Abu is and join him again. But perhaps when he sees that no further resistance can be made, General Gordon will embark on one of his steamers and go down the river, knowing that it would be better for the people of the town that the Mahdi should enter without opposition, in which case you would scarcely do harm to the peaceful portion of the population, or to the troops who had laid down their arms.'

"Very well,' the Emir said. 'Abu has told me that he has tried to dissuade you, but that you will go. We owe you a great debt of gratitude for all that you have done for us, and therefore I will not try to dissuade you. I trust Allah will protect you.'

" And so we started the next morning. I rode by the side of Abu, and as all knew that I was the hakim who had taken off his arm, none wondered. The journey was made without any incident worth recording. Abu did not hurry. We made a long march between each of the wells, and then halted for a clay. So we journeyed until we made our last halt before arriving at Omdurman.

" 'You are still determined to go?' Abu said to me.

"I shall leave to-night, my friend.'

"'I shall not forget all that you have told me about your people, hakim. Should any white man fall into my hands I will spare him for your sake. These are evil times, and I regret all that has passed. I believe that the Mahdi is a prophet, but I fear that in many things he has misunderstood the visions and orders he received. I see that evil rather than good has fallen upon the land, and that though we loved not the rule of the Egyptians we were all better off under it than we are now. We pass through ruined villages and see the skeletons of many people. We know that where the water-wheels formerly spread the water from the rivers over the fields, is now a desert, and that, except the fighting men, the people perish from hunger. All this is bad. I see that if we enter Egypt we shall be like a flight of locusts, we shall eat up the country and leave a desert behind us. Surely this cannot be according to the wishes of Allah, who is all-merciful. You have taught me much in your talks with me, and I do not see things as I used to. So much do I feel it, that in my heart I could almost wish that your countrymen should come here and establish peace and order. The Mohamedans of India, you tell me, are well content with their rulers; men may exercise their religion and their customs without hindrance; they know that the strong cannot prey upon the weak, and each man reaps what he has sown in peace. You tell me that India was like the Soudan before you went there—that there were great conquerors, constant wars, and the peasants starved while the robbers grew rich; and that under your rule peace and contentment were restored. I would that it could be so here. But it seems to me impossible that we should be conquered by people so far away.'

" 'I hope that it will be so, Abu; and I think that if the great and good white general, Governor Gordon, is murdered at Khartoum, the people of my country will never rest until his death has been avenged.'

"You had better take your horse,' he said.If you were to go on foot it would be seen that there was a horse without a rider, and there would be a search for you; but if you and your horse are missing it will be supposed that you have ridden on to Omdurman to give notice of our coming, and none will think more of the matter.'

"As soon as the camp was asleep I said good-bye to Abu, and took my horse by the reins and led him into the desert half a mile away, then I mounted and rode fast. The stars were guide enough, and in three hours I reached the Nile. I took off the horse's saddle and bridle and left him to himself, then I crept out and cut a bundle of rushes, and swam into the stream with them. After floating down the river for an hour I saw the light of a few fires on the right bank, and guessed that this was a Dervish force beleaguering Khartoum from that side. I drifted on for another hour, drawing closer and closer to the shore until I could see walls and forts; then I stripped off my Dervish frock and swam ashore. I had, during the time we had been on the journey, abstained from staining my skin under my garments, in order that I might be recognized as a white man as soon as I bared my arms.

" I lay down till it was broad daylight, and then walked up to the foot of a redoubt. There were shouts of surprise from the black soldiers there as I approached. I shouted to them in Arabic that I was an Englishman, and two or three of them at once ran down the slope and aided me to climb it. I was taken, at my request, to General Gordon, who was surprised indeed when I told him that I was a survivor of Hicks's force and had been living nine months at El Obeid.

"'You are heartily welcome, sir,' he said; 'but I fear that you have come into an even greater danger than you have left, for our position here is well-nigh desperate. For months I have been praying for aid from England, and my last news was that it was just setting out, so I fear there is no hope that it will reach me in time. The government of England will have to answer before God for their desertion of me, and of the poor people here whom they sent me to protect from the Mahdi. For myself I am content. I have done my duty as far as lay in my power, but I had a right to rely upon receiving support from those who sent me. I am in the hands of God. But for the many thousands who trusted in me and remained here I feel very deeply. Now the first thing is to provide you with clothes. I am expecting Colonel Stewart here every minute, and he will see that you are made comfortable.'

"' I shall be glad to place myself at your disposal, sir,' I said. 'I speak Arabic fluently, and shall be ready to perform any service of which I may be capable.'

"I thank you,' he said,and will avail myself of your offer if I see any occasion; but at present we have rather to suffer than to do. We have occasional fights, but of late the attacks have been feeble, and I think that the Mahdi depends upon hunger rather than force to obtain possession of this town. This evening I will ask you to tell me your stoty. Colonel Stewart will show you a room. There is only one other white man—Mr. Power—here. We live together as one family, of which you will now be a member.'

" I felt strange when I came to put on my European clothes. Mr. Power, who tells me he has been here for some years as correspondent of the Times, has this afternoon taken me round the defences and into the workshops. I think the place can resist any attacks if the troops remain faithful, but of this there is a doubt. A good many of the Soudanese have already been sent away. As Gordon said at dinner this evening, if he had but a score of English officers he would be perfectly confident that he could resist any enemy save starvation.

"September 12th. —It has been settled that Colonel Stewart and Mr. Power are to go down the river in the Abbas, and I am to go with them. The General proposed it to me. I said that I could not think of leaving him here by himself, so he said kindly:I thank you, Mr. Hilliard, but you could do no good here, and would only be throwing away your life. We can hold on to the end of the year, though the pinch will be very severe; but I think we can make the stores last till then. But by the end of December our last crust will have been eaten, and the end will have come. It will be a satisfaction to me to know that I have done my best, and fail only because of the miserable delays and hesitation of government.' So it is settled that I am going. The gun-boats are to escort us for some distance. Were it not for Gordon I should feel delighted at the prospect. It is horrible to leave him—one of the noblest Englishmen!—alone to his fate. My only consolation is, that if I remained I could not avert it, but should only be a sharer in it.

"September 18th. —We left Khartoum on the 14th and came down without any serious trouble until this morning, when the boat struck on a rock in the cataract opposite a village called Hebbeh. A hole has been knocked in her bottom, and there is not a shadow of hope of getting her off. Numbers of the natives have gathered on the shore. I have advised that we should disregard their invitations to land, but that, as there would be no animosity against the black crew, they would be safe; and that we three whites should take the ship's boat and four of the crew, put provisions for a week on board, and make our way down the river. Colonel Stewart, however, feels convinced that the people can be trusted, and that we had better land and place ourselves under the protection of the sheik. He does not know the Arabs as well as I do. However, as he has determined to go ashore, I can do nothing. I consider it unlikely in the extreme that there will be any additions to this journal. If at any time in the future this should fall into the hands of any of my countrymen, I pray that they will send it down to my dear wife, Mrs. Hilliard, whom, I pray, God may bless and comfort, care of the Manager of the Bank, Cairo."

CHAPTEE XX

A MOMENTOUS COMMUNICATION

GREGORY had, after finishing the record, sat without moving until the dinner-hour. It was a relief to him to know that his father had not spent the last years of his life as he had feared, as a miserable slave—ill-treated, reviled, insulted, perhaps chained and beaten by some brutal taskmaster; but had been in a position where, save that he was an exile, kept from his home and wife, his lot had not been unbearable. He knew more of him than he had ever known before. It was* as a husband that his mother had always spoken of him; but here he saw that he was daring, full of resource, quick to grasp any opportunity, hopeful and yet patient, longing eagerly to rejoin his wife, and yet content to wait until the chances should be all in his favour. He was unaffectedly glad thus to know him, to be able in future to think of him as one of whom he would have been proud, who would assuredly have won his way to distinction.

It was not so that he had before thought of him. His mother had said that he was of good family, and that it was on account of his marriage with her that he had quarrelled with his relations. It had always seemed strange to him that he should have been content to take, as she had told him, an altogether subordinate position in a mercantile house in Alexandria. She had accounted for his knowledge of Arabic by the fact that he had been for two years exploring the temples and tombs of Egypt with a learned professor; but surely, as a man of good family, he could have found something to do in England instead of coming out to take so humble a post in Egypt. Gregory knew nothing of the difficulty that a young man in England has in obtaining an appointment of any kind or of fighting his way single-handed. Influence went for much in Egypt, and it seemed to him that even if his father had quarrelled with his own people there must have been many ways open to him of maintaining himself honourably. Therefore he had always thought that although he might have been all that his mother described him—the tenderest and most loving of husbands, a gentleman, and estimable in all respects—his father must have been wanting in energy and ambition, deficient in the qualities that would fit him to fight his own battle, and content to gain a mere competence instead of struggling hard to make his way up the ladder.

He had accounted for his going up as interpreter with Hicks Pasha by the fact that his work with the contractor was at an end, and that he saw no other opening for himself. He now understood how mistaken he had been in his estimate of his father's character, and wondered even more than before why he should have taken that humble post at Alexandria. His mother had certainly told him again and again that he had done so simply because the doctors had said that she could not live in England; but surely in all the wide empire of England there must be innumerable posts that a gentleman could obtain. Perhaps he should understand it better some day; at present it seemed unaccountable to him. He felt sure that, had he lived, his father would have made a name for himself, and that it was in that hope, and not of the pay that he would receive as an interpreter, that he had gone up with Hicks, and that had he not died at that little village by the Nile he would assuredly have done so, for the narrative he had left behind him would in itself, if published, have shown what stuff there was in him. It was hard that fate should have snatched him away just when it had seemed that his trials were over, that he was on the point of being reunited to his wife. Still, it was a consolation to know he had died suddenly, as one falls in battle, not as a slave worn out by grief and suffering.

As he left his hut he said to Zaki, " I shall not want you again this evening, but mind, we must be on the move at daylight."

"You did not say whether we were to take the horses, master; but I suppose you will do sol"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that we are going to have camels; they are to be put on board for us to-night. They are fast camels, and as the distance from the point where we shall land to the Atbara will not be more than seventy or eighty miles, we shall be able to do it in a day."

"That will be very good, master; camels are much bettei than horses for the desert. I have got everything else ready."

After dinner was over, the party broke up quickly, as many of the officers had preparations to make. Gregory went off to the tent of the officer with whom he was best acquainted in the Soudanese regiment.

" I thought that I would come and have a chat with you if you happened to be in."

" I shall be very glad, but I bar Fashoda; one is quite sick of the name."

"No, it was not Fashoda that I was going to talk to you about; I want to ask you something about England. I know really nothing about it, for I was born in Alexandria shortly after my parents came out from England. Is it easy for anyone who has been well educated, and who is a gentleman, to get employment there? I mean some sort of appointment, say, in India or the West Indies."

" Easy! My dear Hilliard, the camel in the eye of a needle is a joke to it. If a fellow is eighteen and has had a first-rate education and a good private coach, that is, a tutor, he may pass through his examination either for the army, or the civil service, or the Indian service. There are about five hundred go up to each examination, and seventy or eighty at the outside get in; the other four hundred or so are chucked. Some examinations are for fellows under nineteen, others are open for a year or two longer. Suppose, finally, you don't get in; that is to say, when you are two-and-twenty, your chance of getting any appointment whatever in the public service is at an end."

"Then interest has nothing to do with it?"

"Well, yes. There are a few berths in the Foreign Office, for example, in which a man has to get a nomination before going in for the exam.; but of course the age limit tells there as well as in any other."

"And if a man fails altogether what is there open to him?"

The other shrugged his shoulders. "Well, as far as I know, if he hasn't capital he can emigrate, that is what numbers of fellows do. If he has interest he can get a commission in the militia, and from that possibly into the line, or he can enlist as a private for the same object. There is a third alternative, he can hang himself. Of course, if he happens to have a relation in the city he can get a clerkship, but that alternative, I should say, is worse than the third."

"But I suppose he might be a doctor, a clergyman, or a lawyer?"

" I don't know much about those matters, but I do know that it takes about five years' grinding, and what is calledwalking the hospitals', that is, going round the wards with the surgeons, before one is licensed to kill. I think, but I am not sure, that three years at the bar would admit you to practice, and usually another seven or eight years are spent before you earn a penny. As for the Church, you have to go through the university or one of the places we call training colleges; and when at last you are ordained you may reckon, unless you have great family interest, on remaining a curate, with perhaps one hundred or one hundred and fifty pounds per annum for eighteen or twenty years."

" And no amount of energy will enable a man of, say, four-and-twenty, without a profession, to obtain a post on which he could live with some degree of comfort?"

" I don't think energy would have anything to do with it. You cannot drop into a merchant's office and say 'I want a

snug berth out in China', orI should like an agency in Mesopotamia'. If you have luck, anything is possible; if you haven't luck, you ought to fall back on my three alternatives—emigrate, enlist, or hang yourself. Of course you can sponge on your friends for a year or two if you are mean enough to do so, but there is an end to that sort of thing in time. May I ask why you put the question, Hilliard? You have really a splendid opening here; you are surely not going to be foolish enough to chuck it, with the idea of returning to England and taking anything that may turn up?"

"No, I am not so foolish as that. I have had, as you say, luck—extraordinary luck, and I have quite made up my mind to stay in the service. No, I am really asking you because I know so little of England that I wondered how men who had a fair education but no family interest did get on."

" They very rarely do get on," the other said. " Of course if they are inventive geniuses they may discover something— an engine, for example, that will do twice the work with half the consumption of fuel that any other engine will do; or, if chemically inclined, they may discover something that will revolutionize dyeing, for example: but not one man in a thousand is a genius, and as a rule the man you are speaking of, the ordinary public-school and varsity man, if he has no interest and is not bent upon entering the army, even as a private, emigrates if he hasn't sufficient income to live upon at home."

"Thank you! I had no idea it was so difficult to make a living in England, or to obtain employment, for a well-educated man of two- or three-and-twenty."

" My dear Hilliard, that is the problem that is exercising the minds of the whole of the middle class of England with sons growing up. Of course men of business can take their sons into their own offices and train them to their own profession; but after all, if a man has four or five sons he cannot take them all into his office with a view to partnership. He may take one, but the others have to make their own way somehow."

They chatted now upon the war, the dates upon which the various regiments would go down, and the chance of the Khalifa collecting another army and trying conclusions with the invaders again. At last Gregory got up and went back to his hut. He could now understand why his father, having quarrelled with his family, might have found himself obliged to take the first post that was offered, however humble, in order to obtain the advantage of a warm climate for his wife.

" He must have felt it awfully," he mused. " If he had been the sort of man I had always thought him, he could have settled down to the life. But now I know him better I can understand that it must have been terrible for him, and he would be glad to exchange it for the interpretership, where he would have some chance of distinguishing himself, or at any rate of taking part in exciting events. I will open that packet, but from what my mother said I do not think it will be of any interest to me now. I fancy, by what she said, that it contained simply my father's instructions as to what she was to do in the event of his death during the campaign. I don't see what else it can be."

He drew the curtains he had rigged up at the doorway and window to keep out insects, lighted his lantern, and then, sitting down on the ground by his bed, opened the packet his mother had given him. The outer cover was in her handwriting.

My dearest boy,

I have, as I told you, kept the enclosed packet, which is not to be opened until I have certain news of your father's death. This news I trust you will some day obtain. As you see, the enclosed packet is directed to me. I do not think that you will find in it anything of importance to yourself. It probably contains only directions and advice for my guidance in case I should determine to return to England. I have been the less anxious to open it because I have been convinced that it is so; for of course I know the circumstances

of his family, and there could be nothing new that he could write to me on that score.

I have told you that he quarrelled with his father because he chose to marry me. As you have heard from me, I ivas the daughter of a clergyman, and at his death took a post as governess. Your father fell in love with me. He was the son of the Hon. James Hartley, who was brother to the Earl of Langdale. Your father had an elder h'other. Mr. Hartley was a man of the type now happily less common than it was twenty years ago. He had but a younger brother's poi'tion and a small estate that had belonged to his mother, but he was as proud as if he had been a peer of the realm and oivner of a county. I do not know exactly what the law of England is — whether at the death of his brother your grandfather woidd have inherited the title or not.

I never talked on this subject with your father, who very seldom alluded to matters at home. He had also two sisters. As he was clever and had already gained some reputation by his explorations in Egypt, and toas, moreover, an exceptionally handsome man — at least I thought so — your grandfather made up his mind that he would make a very good marriage. When he learned of your father's affection for me he ivas absolutely furious, told his son that he never wished to see him again, arid spoke of me in a manner that Gh-egory resented, and as a result they quarrelled.

Your father left the house never to enter it again. I would have released him from his promise, but he would not hear of it, and we were married. He had written for magazines and newspapers on Egyptian subjects, and thought that he coidd make a living for us both with his pen; but unhappily he found that great numbers of men were trying to do the same, and that although his papers on Egyptian discoveries had always been accepted, it was quite another thing when he came to write on general subjects.

We had a hard time of it, but we were very happy nevertheless.

Then came the time when my health began to give way. I had a ( M 917 \ x

terrible cough, and the doctor said that I must have a change to a warmer climate. We were very poor then — so poor that we had only a few shillings left, and lived in one room. Your father saw an advertisement for a man to go out to the branch of a London firm at Alexandria. Without saying a word to me he went and obtained it, thanks to his knowledge of Arabic. He was getting on well in the firm when the bombardment of Alexandria took place. The offices and stores of his employers were burned, and as it would take many months before they could be rebuilt the employees were ordered home, but any who chose to stay were permitted to do so, and received three months' pay. Your father saw that there would be many chances when the country settled down, and so took a post under a contractor of meat for the army. We moved to Cairo. Shortly after our arrival there he was, as he thought, fortunate in obtaining the appointment of an interpreter with Hicks Pasha. I did not try to dissuade him. Everyone supposed that the Egyptian troops would easily defeat the Dervishes. There was some danger, of course; but it seemed to me r as it did to him, that this opening would lead to better things, and that when the rebellion was put down he would be able to obtain some good civil appointment in the Soudan.

It was not the thought of his pay as interpreter thai iveighed in the slightest with either of us. I was anxious above all things that he shoidd be restored to a position where he could associate with gentlemen as one of themselves, and could again take his real name.

Gregory started as he read this. He had never had an idea that the name he bore was not rightly his own, and even the statement of his grandfather's name had not struck him as affecting himself.

Your father had an honourable pride in his name, which was an old one, and when he took the post at Alexandria, which was little above that of an ordinary office messenger, he did not care that he should be recognized or that one of his name shoidd be known to be

occupying such a station. He did not change his name, he simply dropped the surname. His full name was Gregory Hilliard Hartley. He had always intended, when he had made a position for himself, to recur to it, and of course it will be open to you to do so also; but I know that it would have been his wish that you, like him, shoidd not do so unless you had made such a position for yourself that you ivould be a credit to it.

On starting, your father left me to decide whether I should go home. I imagine that the packet merely contains his views on that subject. He knew what mine were. I would rather have begged my bread than have gone back to ask for alms of the man who treated his son so cruelly. It is probable that by this time the old man is dead; but I should object as much to have to appeal to my husband's brother, a character I disliked. Although he knew that his father's means were small, he was extravagant to the last degree, and the old man was weak enough to keep himself in perpetual difficulties to satisfy his son. Your father looked for no pecuniary assistance from his brother, but the latter might at least have come to see him or written kindly to him when he was in London. As your father was writing in his own name for magazines, his address could be easily found out by anyone who wanted to know it.

He never sent one single word to him, and I should object quite as much to appeal to him as to the old man. As to the sisters, who were younger than my husband, they were nice girls; but even if your grandfather is dead, and has, as no doubt would be the case, left what he had between them, it certainly would not amount to much. Your father has told me that the old man had mortgaged the estate up to the hilt to pay his brother's debts, and that when it came to be sold, as it pvbably would be at his death, there would be very little left for the girls. Therefore, certainly I could not go and ask them to support us. My hope is, my dear boy, that you may be able to make your way here in the same manner as your father was doing when he fell, and that some day you may attain to an honourable position, in

which you will be able, if you visit England, to call upon your aunts, not as one who has anything to ask of them, but as a relative of whom they need not feel in any way ashamed. I feel that my end is very near, Gregory. I hope to say all that I have to say to you before it comes, but I may not have an oppmiunity, and in that case some time may elapse before you read this, and it will come to you as a, voice from the grave. I am not in any way wishing to bind you to any course of action, but only to explain fully your position to you and to tell you my thoughts. God bless you, my dear boy, prosper and keep you! I know enough of you to be sure that, whatever your course may be, you will bear yourself as a true gentleman, worthy of your father and of the name you bear.

Your loving Mother.

Gregory sat for some time before opening the other enclosure. It contained an open envelope, on which was written " To my Wife ", and three others, also unfastened, addressed respectively, "The Hon. James Hartley, King's Lawn, Tavistock, Devon"; the second, "G. Hilliard Hartley, Esq., The Albany, Piccadilly, London"; the third, "Miss Hartley", the address being the same as that of her father. He first opened the one to his mother.

My dearest Wife,

I hope that you will never read these lines, but that I shall return to you safe and sound —I am writing this in case it should be otherwise — and that you will never have occasion to read these instructions, or rather I should say this advice, for it is no more than that. We did talk the matter over, but you were so wholly averse from any idea of ever appealing to my father or family, however sore the straits to which you might be reduced, that I could not urge the matter upon you; and yet, although I sympathize most thoroughly with your feelings, I think that in case of dire necessity you should &o so, and at least afford my father the opportunity of making

up for his treatment of myself The small sum that I left in your hands must soon be exhausted. If I am killed you will perhaps obtain a small pension, but this assuredly would not be sufficient to maintain you and the boy in comfort. I know that you said at the time that possibly you could add to it by teaching. Should this be so you may be able to remain in Egypt, and when the boy grows up he will obtain employment of some sort here.

But should you be unsuccessful in this direction, I do not see what you could do. Were you to go to England with the child, what chance would you liave of obtaining employment there without friends or references? I am frightened at the prospect. I know that were you alone you would do anything rather than apply to my people, but you have the child to think of, and, painful as it would be to you, it yet seems to me the best thing that could be done. At any rate I enclose you three letters to my brother, father, and sisters. I have no legal claim on any of them, but I certainly have a moral claim on my brother. It is he who has impoverished the estate, so that even had I not quarrelled with my father there could never, after provision had been made for my sisters, have been anything to come to me.

I do not ask you to humiliate yourself by delivering these letters personally. I would advise you to post them from Cairo, enclosing in each a note saying how I fell, and that you are fulfilling my instructions by sending the letter I wrote before leaving you. It may be that you will receive no reply. In that case, whatever happens to you and the child, you will have nothing to reproach yourself for. Possibly my father may have succeeded to the title, and if for no other reason, he may then be willing to grant you an allowance on condition that you do not return to England, as he would know that it would be nothing short of a scandal that the wife of one of his sons was trying to earn her bread in this country. Above all, dear, I ask you not to destroy these letters. You may at first scorn the idea of appealing for help, but the time might come, as it came to us in London, when you feel that fate is too strong for you, and that you can struggle no longer. Then you might regret, for the sake of the child, that you had not sent these letters.

It is a terrible responsibility that I am leaving you. I well know that you will do all, dear, that it is possible for you to do to avoid the necessity for sending these letters. That I quite approve, if you can struggle on. God strengthen you to do it! It is only if you fail that I say send them. My father may by this time regret that he drove me from home; he may be really anxious to find me, and at least it is right that he should have the opportunity of making what amends he can. From my sisters I knoiv that you can have little but sympathy, but that I feel sure they will give you, and even sympathy is a great deal to one who has no friends. I feel it sorely that I should have naught to leave you but my name and this counsel. Earnestly I hope and pray that it may never be needed.

Yours till death,

GREGORY HILLIARD HARTLEY.

Gregory then opened the letter to his grandfather.

Dear Father,

You will not receive this letter till after my death. I leave it behind me while I go up with General Hicks to the Soudan. It will not be sent to you unless I die there. I hope that long ere this you may have felt, as I have done, that we were both someiuhat in the wrong in the quarrel that separated us. You, I think, were hard; I, no doubt, was hasty. You, I think, assumed more than was your right in demanding that I shoidd break a promise that I had given to a lady against ivhom nothing coidd be said save that she was undowered. Had I, like Geoffrey, been drawing large sums of money from you, you would necessarily have felt yourself in a position to have a very strong voice in so important a matter. But the very moderate allowance I received while at the university was never increased. I do not think it is too much to say that for every penny I have got from you Geoffrey has received a guinea.

However, that is past and gone. I have been fighting my own battle, and was on my way to obtaining a good position. Until I did so I dropped our surname. I did not wish that it should be known that one of our family was working in an almost menial position in Egypt. I have now obtained the post of interpreter on the staff of General Hicks, and if he is successful in crushing the rebellion I shall be certain of good permanent employment, when I can resume my name. The fact that you receive this letter will be a proof that I have fallen in battle, or by disease. I now, as a dying prayer, beg you to receive my wife and boy, or if that cannot be, to grant her some small annuity to assist her in her struggle ivith the world.

Except for her sake I do not regret my marriage. She has borne the hardships through which we have passed nobly and without a murmur. She has been the best of wives to me, and has proved herself a noble woman in every respect. I leave the matter in your hands, Father, feeling assured that from your sense of justice alone, if not for the affection you once bore me, you will befriend my wife. As I know that the Earl ivas in feeble health when I left England, you may by this time have come into the title, in which case you will be able, without in any way inconveniencing yourself, to settle an annuity upon my wife sufficient to keep her in comfort. I can promise, in her name, that in that case you will never be troubled in any way by her, and she will probably take up her residence permanently in Egypt, as she is not strong and the warm climate is essential to her.

The letter to his brother was shorter:—

My dear Geoffrey,

I am going up with General Hicks to the Soudan. If you receive this letter, it will be because I have died there. I leave behind one my wife and a boy. I know that at present you are scarcely likely to be able to do much for them pecuniarily, but as you will some day — possibly not a very distant one — inherit the title and estate, you will then be able to do so without hurting yourself. We have never seen much of each other. You left school before I began it, and you left Oxford two years before I went up to Cambridge. You have never been at home much since, and I was two years in Egypt, and Imve now been about the same time here. I charge my wife to send you this, and I trust that for my sake you will help her. She does not think of returning to England. Life is not expensive in this country; even an allowance of a hundred a year would enable her to remain here. If you can afford double that, do so for my sake; but at any rate I feel that I can rely upon you to do at least that much when you come into the title. Had I lived I should never have troubled anyone at home, but as I shall be no longer able to earn a living for her and the boy, I trust that you will not think it out of the way for me to ask for what ivould have been a very small younger brother's allowance had I remained at home.

The letter to his sisters was in a different strain:— My dear Flossie and Janet,

I am quite sure that you, like myself, felt deeply grieved over our separation, and I can guess that you will have done what you could with our father to bring about a reconciliation. When you receive this, dears, I shall have gone. I am about to start on an expedition that is certain to be dangerous, and which may be fated, and I have left this with my wife to send you if she has sure news of my death. I have had hard times. I see my way now, and I hope that I shall ere long receive a good official appointment out here. Still, it is as well to prepare for the worst; and if you receive this letter the worst has come. As I have only just begun to rise again in the world, I have been able to make no provision for my wife. I know that you liked her, and that you ivould by no means have disapproved of the step I took. If our father has not come into the title when you receive this, your pocket-money will be only sufficient for your own wants; therefore I am not asking for help in that way, but only that you will write to her an affectionate letter. She is without friends, and will fight her battle as best she can. She is a woman in a thousand, and worthy of the affection and esteem of any man on earth. There is a boy, too — another Gregory Hilliard Hartley. She will be alone in the world with him, and a letter from you would be very precious to her. Probably by the same post as you receive this our father will also get one requesting more substantial assistance, but with that you have nothing to do. I am only asking that you will let her know there are at least two people in the world who take an interest in her and my boy.

Your affectionate Brother.

There was yet another envelope, with no address upon it. It contained two documents: one was a copy of the certificate of marriage between Gregory Hilliard Hartley and Anne Forsyth at St. Paul's Church, Plymouth, with the names of two witnesses and the signature of the officiating minister; the other was a copy of the register of the birth at Alexandria of Gregory Hilliard, son of Gregory Hilliard Hartley and Anne, his wife. A third was a copy of the register of baptism of Gregory Hilliard Hartley, the son of Gregory Hilliard and Anne Hartley, at the Protestant Church, Alexandria.

"I will write some day to my aunts," Gregory said, as he replaced the letters in the envelopes. " The others will never go; still, I may as well keep them. So I am either grandson or nephew of an earl. I can't say that I am dazzled by the honour. I should like to know my aunts, but as for the other two I would not go across the street to make their acquaintance."

He carefully stowed the letters away in his portmanteau, and then lay down for a few hours' sleep.

"The day is breaking, master," Zaki said, laying his hand upon Gregory's shoulder.

" All right, Zaki! While you get the water boiling I shall run down to the river and have a bathe, and shall be ready for my cocoa in twenty minutes."

"Are we going to put on those Dervish dresses at once, master? They came yesterday evening."

"No; I sha'n't change till we get to the place where we land."

As soon as he had breakfasted he told Zaki to carry his portmanteau, bed, and other belongings to the house that served as a store for General Hunter's staff. He waited until his return, and then told him to take the two rifles, the packets of ammunition, the spears, and the Dervish dresses down to the steamer. Then he joined the General, who was just starting with his staff to superintend the embarkation.

Three steamers were going up, and each towed a barge, in which the greater part of the troops were to be stowed, and in the stern of one of these knelt two camels.

"There are your nags, Mr. Hilliard," the General said. " There is an attendant with each. They will manage them better than strangers, and without them we might have a job in getting the animals ashore. Of course I shall take the drivers on with us. The sheik told me the camels are two of the fastest he has ever had. He has sent saddles with them and water-skins. The latter you will probably not want if all goes well; still, it is better to take them."

" I shall assuredly do so, sir. They may be useful to us on the ride, and though I suppose the camels would do well enough without them, it is always well to be provided, when one goes on an expedition, for any emergency that may occur."

An hour later the steamer started. The river was still full and the current rapid, and they did not move more than five miles an hour against it. At the villages they passed the people flocked down to the banks with cries of welcome and the waving of flags. They felt now that their deliverance was accomplished, and that they were free from the tyranny that had for so many years oppressed them. The banks were for the most part low, and save at these villages the journey was a monotonous one. The steamers kept on their way till nightfall, and then anchored.

They started again at daybreak. At breakfast General Hunter said:

" I think that in another two hours we shall be pretty well due west of El Fasher, so you had better presently get into your Dervish dress. You have got some iodine from the doctor, have you not?"

"Yes."

"You had better stain yourself all over, and take a good supply in case you have to do it again."

Gregory went below and had his head shaved by one of the Soudanese, then re-stained himself from head to foot and put on the Dervish attire—loose trousers and a long smock with six large square patches arranged in two lines in front; a white turban and a pair of shoes completed the costume. The officers laughed as he came on deck again.

"You look an out-and-out Dervish, Hilliard," one of them said. " It is lucky that there are none of the Lancers scouting about. They would hardly give you time to explain, especially with that rifle and spear."

Presently they came to a spot where the water was deep up to the bank, which was some six feet above its level. The barge with the camels was brought up alongside. It had no bulwark, and as the deck was level with the land, the camels were, with a good deal of pressing on the part of their drivers, and pushing by as many Soudanese as could come near enough to them, got ashore.

None of the Soudanese recognized Gregory, and looked greatly surprised at the sudden appearance of two Dervishes among them. As soon as the camels were landed, Gregory and Zaki mounted them.

"You had better keep if anything to the south of east,"

General Hunter's last instructions had been. " Unless Parsons has been greatly delayed they should be two or three days' march farther up the river, and every mile you strike the stream behind him is so much time lost."

He waved his hand to them and wished them farewell as they started, and his staff shouted their wishes for a safe journey. The black soldiers, seeing that, whoever these Dervishes might be, they were well known to the General and his officers, raised a cheer, to which Zaki, who had hitherto kept in the background, waved his rifle in reply. As his face was familiar to numbers of the Soudanese, they now recognized him and cheered more heartily than before, laughing like school-boys at the transformation.

CHAPTER XXI

GEDAREH

ABDUL AZIM was right about the camels," Gregory said, as soon as they were fairly off. " I have never ridden on one like this before. What a difference there is between them and the ordinary camel! It is not only that they go twice as fast, but the motion is so pleasant and easy."

" Yes, master, these are riding camels of good breed. They cost twenty times as much as the others. They think nothing of keeping up this rate for twelve hours without a stop."

" If they do that we shall be near the Atbara before it is dark. It is ten o'clock now, and if General Hunter's map is right we have only about eighty miles to go, and I should think they are trotting seven miles an hour."

They carried their rifles slung behind them and across the shoulders rather than upright, as was the Arab fashion. The spears were held in their right hands.

"We must see if we can't fasten the spears in some other way, Zaki; we should find them a nuisance if we held them in our hands all the way. I should say it would be easy to fasten them across the saddle in front of us. If we see horsemen in the distance we can take them into our hands."

" I think, master, it would be easier to fasten them behind the saddles, where there is more width, and rings on the saddle on both sides."

A short halt was made, and the spears fixed. Gregory then looked at his compass.

"We must make for that rise two or three miles away. I see exactly the point we must aim for. When we get there we must look at the compass again."

They kept steadily on for six hours. They had seen no human figure since they started.

" We will stop here for half an hour," Gregory said. " Give the animals a drink of water and a handful or two of grain."

" I don't think they will want water, master. They had as much as they could drink before starting, and they are accustomed to drink when their work is over."

"Very well; at any rate we will take something."

They opened one of the water-skins, and poured some of the contents into a gourd; then, sitting down in the shadow of the camels, they ate some dates and bread. They had only brought native food with them, so that if captured and examined there should be nothing to show that they had been in contact with Europeans. Gregory had even left his revolver behind him, as, being armed with so good a weapon as a Remington, it was hardly likely that it would be needed, and if found upon them it would be accepted as a proof that he was in the employment of the infidels.

It was dusk when they arrived at the bank of the river. No incident had marked the journey, nor had they seen any sign that Dervishes were in the neighbourhood. The Atbara was in full flood, and was rushing down at six or seven miles an hour.

" Colonel Parsons must have had great difficulty in crossing,

Zaki. He is hardly likely to have brought any boats across trom Kassala. I don't know whether he has any guns with him, but if he has I don't think he can have crossed, even if they made rafts enough to carry them."

They kept along the bank until they reached a spot where the river had overflowed. Here the camels drank their fill. A little grain was given to them, and then they were turned loose to browse on the bushes.

" There is no fear of their straying, I suppose, Zaki?"

"No, master; they are always turned loose at night. As there are plenty of bushes here they will not go far."

After another meal they both lay down to sleep, and as soon as it was light Zaki fetched in the camels and they continued their journey. In an hour they arrived at a village. The people were already astir, and looked with evident apprehension at the seeming Dervishes.

"Has a party of infidels passed along here?" Gregory asked the village sheik, who came out and salaamed humbly.

" Yes, my lord, a party of soldiers with some white officers came through here three days ago."

" How many were there of them ?"

" There must have been more than a thousand of them."

"Many more?"

"Not many; perhaps a hundred more. Your servant did not count them."

" Had they any cannon with them? "

" No, my lord; they were all on foot. They all carried guns, but there were no mounted men or cannon."

" Where is Fadil and his army that they thus allowed so small a force to march along unmolested ?"

"They say that he is still near the Nile. Two of his scouts were here the day before the Turks came along. They stayed here for some hours, but as they said nothing about the Turks coming from Kassala, I suppose they did not know they had crossed the river."

" Well, we must go on and see where they are. They must be mad to come with so small a force when they must have known that Fadil has a large army. They will never go back again."

Without further talk Gregory rode farther on. At each village through which they passed they had some news of the passage of Colonel Parsons' command. The camels had been resting from the time when Omdurman was taken, and having been well fed that morning Gregory did not hesitate to press them. The troops would not march above twenty-five miles a day, and two days would take them to Mugatta, so that if they halted there but for a day he should be able to overtake them that night. The character of the country was now greatly changed; the bush was thick and high, and a passage through it would be very difficult for mounted men. There was no fear, therefore, that they would turn off before arriving at Mugatta, from which place there would probably be a track of some sort to Gedareh. It was but a thirty-mile ride, and on arriving near the village Gregory saw that a considerable number of men were assembled there. He checked his camel.

" What do you make them out to be, Zaki? Your eyes are better than mine. They may be Colonel Parsons' force, and on the other hand they may be Dervishes who have closed in behind him to cut off his retreat."

" They are not Dervishes, master," Zaki said, after a long, steady look; " they have not white turbans. Some of their clothes are light, and some dark, but all have dark caps like those the Soudanese troops wear."

"That is good enough, Zaki. We will turn our robes inside out so as to hide the patches, as otherwise we might have a hot reception."

When they were a quarter of a mile from the village several men started out from the bushes, rifle in hand. They were all in Egyptian uniform. "We are friends!" Gregory shouted in Arabic. "I am an officer of the Khedive, and have come from Omdurman with a message to your commander,"

A native officer, one of the party, at once saluted. "You will find the bey in the village, bimbashi."

" How long have you been here?"

" We came in yesterday, and I hear that we shall start tomorrow, but I know not whether that is so."

"Are there any Dervishes about?"

" Yes; forty of them yesterday afternoon, coming from Gedareh and ignorant that we were here, rode in among our outposts on that hill to the west. Three of them were killed and three made prisoners; the rest rode away."

With a word of thanks Gregory rode on. He dismounted when he reached the village, and was directed to a neighbou^ , -ing hut. Here Colonel Parsons and the six Avhite officers with him were assembled. A native soldier was on sentry at the door.

"I want to speak to Parsons Bey." The Colonel, hearing the words, came to the door. " Colonel Parsons," Gregory said in English, "I am Major Hilliard of the Egyptian army, and have the honour to be the bearer of a message to you from General Rundle, now in command at Omdurman."

" You are well disguised indeed, sir," the Colonel said with a smile, as he held out his hand. " I should never have taken you for anything but a native. Where did you spring from! You can never have ridden, much less walked, across the desert from Omdurman?"

"No, sir; I was landed from one of the gun-boats in which General Hunter, with fifteen hundred Soudanese troops, is ascending the Blue Nile to prevent Fadil from crossing and joining the Khalifa."

"Have you a written dispatch?"

" It was thought better that I should carry nothing, so that even the strictest search would not show that I was a messenger."

"Is your message of a private character?"

"No, sir, I think not."

"Then will you come in?"

Gregory followed Colonel Parsons into the hut, which con tained but one room. " Gentlemen," the former said with a smile, "allow me to introduce Bimbashi Hilliard, who is the bearer of a message to me from General Rundle, now in command at Omdurman. Major Hilliard, these are Captain Mac-Kerrel, commanding four hundred and fifty men of the 16th Egyptians; Captain Wilkinson, an equal number of the Arab battalion; Major Lawson, who has under his command three hundred and seventy Arab irregulars; Captain the Hon. H. Ruthven, who has under him eighty camel-men; also Captain Fleming of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who is at once our medical officer and in command of the baggage column; and Captain Dwyer. They are all, like yourself, officers in the Egyptian army, and rank, like yourself, as Bimbashis. Now, sir, will you deliver your message to me?"

" It is of a somewhat grave character, sir, but General Rundle thought it very important that you should be acquainted with the last news. The Sirdar has gone up the White Nile with some of the gun-boats and the 11th Soudanese. He deemed it necessary to go himself, because a body of foreign troops—believed to be French—have established themselves at Fashoda."

An exclamation of surprise broke from all the officers.

" In the next place, sir, Fadil, who had arrived with his force within forty miles of Khartoum, has retired up the banks of the Blue Nile on hearing of the defeat of the Khalifa. Major-general Hunter has therefore gone up that river with three gun-boats and another Soudanese battalion to prevent him, if possible, from crossing it and joining the Khalifa, who is reported to be collecting the remains of his defeated army. It is possible—indeed the General thinks it is probable—that Fadil, if unable to cross, may return with his army to Gedareh. It is to warn you of this possibility that he sent me here. Gedareh is reported to be a defensible position, and therefore he thinks that if you capture it, it would be advisable to maintain yourself there until reinforcements can be sent to you, either from the Blue Nile or the Atbara. The place, it seems, is well supplied with provisions and stores, and in the event of Fadil opposing you, it would be far safer for you to defend it than to be attacked in the open or during a retreat."

" It is certainly important news, Mr. Hilliard. Hitherto we have supposed that Fadil had joined the Khalifa before the fight at Omdurman, and there was therefore no fear of his reappearing here. We know very little of the force at Gedareh. We took some prisoners yesterday, but their accounts are very conflicting; still, there is every reason to believe that the garrison is not strong. Certainly, as General Rundle says, we should be in a much better position there than if we were attacked in the open. No doubt the Arabs who got off in the skirmish yesterday carried the news there, and probably some of them would go direct to Fadil, and if he came down upon us here with his eight thousand men our position would be a desperate one. It cost us four days to cross the river at El Fasher, and would take us as much to build boats and recross here, and before that time he might be upon us. It is evident, gentlemen, that we have only the choice of these alternatives —either to march at once against Gedareh or to retreat immediately, crossing the river here or at El Fasher. As to remaining here, of course it is out of the question."

The consultation was a short one. All the officers were in favour of pushing forward, pointing out that, as only the 16th Egyptians could be considered as fairly disciplined, the troops would lose heart if they retired, and could not be relied upon to keep steady if attacked by a largely superior force, while at present they would probably fight bravely. The Arab battalion had been raised by the Italians, and were at present full of confidence, as they had defeated the Mahdists who had been besieging Kassala. The Arab irregulars had of course the fighting instincts of their race, and would assault an enemy bravely; but in a defensive battle against greatly superior numbers, could scarcely be expected to stand well. As for the eighty camel-men, they were all Soudanese soldiers discharged from the army for old age and physical unfitness; they could be relied upon to fight, but small in number as they were, could but have little effect on the issue of a battle. All therefore agreed that, having come thus far, the safest as well as the most honourable course would be to endeavour to fight the enemy in a strong position.

Although it may be said that success justified it, no wilder enterprise was ever undertaken than that of sending thirteen hundred only partly disciplined men into the heart of the enemy's country. Omdurman and Atbara, to say nothing of previous campaigns, had shown how desperately the Dervishes fought, and the order for the garrison of Kassala to undertake it can only have been given under an entire misconception of the circumstances, and of the strength of the army under Fadil that they would almost certainly be called upon to encounter. This was the more probable, as all the women and the property of his soldiers had been left at Gedareh when he marched away, and his men would therefore naturally wish to go there before they made any endeavour to join the Khalifa.

Such, indeed, was the fact. Fadil concealed from them the news of the disaster at Omdurman for some days, and when it became known he had difficulty in restraining his troops from marching straight for Gedareh.

"Do you go on with us, Mr. Hilliard?" Colonel Parsons asked, when they had decided to start for Gedareh.

" Yes, sir. My instructions are to go on with you, and if the town is besieged, to endeavour to get through their lines and carry the news to General Hunter if I can ascertain his whereabouts; if not, to make straight for Omdurman. I have two fast camels which I shall leave here, and return for them with my black boy when we start."

"We shall be glad to have you with us," the Colonel said; " every white officer is worth a couple of hundred men."

As they sat and chatted Gregory asked how the force had crossed the Atbara.

" It was a big job," Colonel Parsons said. " The river was wider than the Thames below London Bridge, and running something like seven miles an hour. We brought with us some barrels to construct a raft. When this was built it supported the ten men who started on it, but they were, in spite of their efforts, carried ten miles clown the stream, and it was not until five hours after they embarked that they managed to land. The raft did not get back from its journey till the next afternoon, being towed along the opposite bank by the men. It was evident that this would not do. The Egyptian soldiers then took the matter in hand. They made frameworks with the wood of the mimosa scrub, and covered these with tarpaulins which we had fortunately brought with us. They turned out one boat a day capable of carrying two tons, and six days after we reached the river we all got across.

" The delay was a terrible nuisance at the time, but it has enabled you to come up here and warn us about Fadil. Fortunately no Dervishes came along while we were crossing, and indeed we learned from the prisoners we took yesterday that the fact that a force from Kassala had crossed the river was entirely unknown, so no harm was done."

The sheik of the little village took charge of Gregory's camels. Some stores were also left there under a small guard, as it was advisable to reduce the transport to the smallest possible amount. The next morning the start was made. The bush was so thick that it was necessary to march in single file. In the evening the force halted in a comparatively open country. The camel-men reconnoitred the ground for some little distance round, and saw no signs of the enemy; they camped, however, in the form of a square, and lay with their arms beside them in readiness to resist an attack.

The night passed quietly, and at early dawn they moved forward again. At six o'clock the camel-men exchanged a few shots with the Dervish scouts, who fell back at once. At eight a village was sighted, and the force advanced upon it in fighting order. It was found, however, to have been deserted, except by a few old people. These, on being questioned, said that the Emir Saadalla, who commanded, had but tAvo hundred rifles and six hundred spearmen, and had received orders from Fadil to surrender. Subsequent events showed that they had been carefully tutored as to the reply to be given. The force halted here, as Gedareh was still twelve miles away, and it was thought better that if there was fighting, they should be fresh. At midnight a deserter from the Dervishes came in with the grave news that the Emir had three thousand five hundred men, and was awaiting them two miles outside the town. There was another informal council of war, but all agreed that a retreat through this difficult country would bring about the total annihilation of the force, and that there was nothing to do but to fight.

Early in the morning they started again. For the first two hours the road led through grass so high that even the men on camels could not see above it. They pushed on till eight o'clock, when they reached a small knoll. At the foot of this they halted, and Colonel Parsons and the officers ascended it to reconnoitre. They saw at once that the deserter's news was true: a mile away four lines of Dervishes, marching in excellent order, were making their way towards them. Colonel Parsons considered that their numbers could not be less than four thousand, and at once decided to occupy a saddle-back hill half a mile away, and the troops were hurried across. The Dervishes also quickened their movements, but were too late to prevent the hill from being seized. The Arab battalion had been leading, followed by the Egyptians, while the irregulars, divided into two bodies under Arab chiefs, guarded the hospital and baggage.

The Dervishes at once advanced to the attack of the hill, and the column wheeled into line to meet it. Even on the crest of the hill the grass was breast-high, but it did not impede the view of the advancing lines of the Dervishes. Into these a heavy and destructive fire was at once poured. The enemy, however, pushed on, firing in return; but being somewhat out of breath from the rapidity with which they have marched, and seeing nothing of the defenders of the hill save their heads, they inflicted far less loss than they were themselves suffering. The fight was continuing when Colonel Parsons saw that a force of about three hundred Dervishes had worked round the back of the hill with the intention of falling upon the baggage. He at once sent one of the Arab sheiks to warn Captain Fleming, who from his position was unable to see the approaching foe. Colonel Parsons had asked Gregory to take up his position with the baggage, as he foresaw that, with their vastly greater numbers, it was likely that the Dervishes might sweep round and attack it.

Scarcely had the messenger arrived with the news, when the Dervishes came rushing on through the high grass. In spite of the shouts of Doctor Fleming and Gregory, the escort of one hundred and twenty irregular Arabs stationed at this point at once broke and fled. Happily a portion of the camel corps, with its commander, Captain Ruthven, a militia officer, was close at hand. Though he had but thirty-four of these old soldiers with him, he rushed forward to meet the enemy. Doctor Fleming and Gregory joined him, and, all cheering to encourage the Soudanese, made a determined stand. Gregory and Zaki kept up a steady fire with their Remingtons, and picked off several of the most determined of their assailants. The fight, however, was too unequal; the Dervishes got in behind them and cut off the rear portion of the transport, and the little band, fighting obstinately, fell back with their faces to the foe towards the main body.

One of the native officers of the Soudanese fell. Captain Ruthven, a very powerful man, ran back and lifted the wounded soldier and made his way towards his friends. So closely pressed Avas he by the Dervishes that three times he had to lay his burden down and defend himself with his revolver, while Gregory and Zaki aided his retreat by turning their fire upon his assailants. For this splendid act of bravery Captain Ruthven afterwards received the Victoria Cross. Flushed by their success, the Dervishes pushed on. Fortunately at this time the main force of the Dervishes was beginning to waver, unable to withstand the steady fire of the defenders of the hill, and as they drew back a little the Egyptian and Arab battalions rushed forward.

Shaken as they were, the Dervishes were unable to resist the attack, and broke and fled, pursued by the Arab battalion. The Egyptians, however, obeyed the orders of Captain MacKerrel and, halting, faced about to encounter the attack from the rear. Their volleys caused the Dervishes to hesitate, and Captain Ruthven and his party reached the summit of the hill in safety. The enemy, however, maintained a heavy fire for a few minutes, but the volleys of the Egyptians at a distance of only a hundred yards were so deadly that they soon took to flight. The first shot had been fired at half-past eight. At ten the whole Dervish force was scattered in headlong rout. Had Colonel Parsons possessed a cavalry force the enemy would have been completely cut up; as it was, pursuit was out of the question. The force therefore advanced in good order to Gedareh. Here a Dervish Emir, who had been left in charge when the rest of the garrison moved out, surrendered at once with the two hundred black riflemen under him. He had long been suspected of disloyalty by the Khalifa, and at once declared his hatred of Mahdism, declaring that though he had not dared to declare himself openly, he had always been friendly to Egyptian rule.

The men with him at once fraternized with the Arabs of Colonel Parsons' force, and were formally received into their ranks. The Emir showed his sincerity by giving them all the information in his power as to Fadil's position and movements, and by pointing out the most defensible positions. None of the British officers had been wounded, but fifty-one of the men had been killed and eighty wounded. Five hundred of the Dervishes were left dead upon the field, including four Emirs. Not a moment was lost in preparing for defence, for it was certain that Fadil, on hearing the news, would at once march to retake the town. The position was naturally a strong one. Standing on rising ground was Fadil's house, surrounded by a brick wall twelve feet high. Here the Egyptian battalion and camel corps were placed, with the hospital and two brass guns which had been found there. A hundred yards away was another enclosure with a five-foot wall, and two hundred yards away a smaller one. The Arab battalion was stationed to the rear of this in a square enclosure with a brick wall twelve feet high, in which was situated a well.

These four buildings were so placed that the fire from each covered the approaches to the other. Two hundred yards from the well enclosure was a fortified house surrounded by a high wall. As the latter would need too many men for its defence, the wall was pulled down and a detachment placed in the house. No time was lost. The whole force was at once employed in pulling down huts, clearing the ground of the high grass, and forming a zareba round the town. The greatest cause for anxiety was ammunition. A large proportion of that carried in the pouches had been expended during the battle, and the next morning Colonel Parsons, with a small force, hurried back to Mugatta to fetch up the reserve ammunition, which had been left there under a guard. He returned with it three days later. An abundant supply of provisions had been found in Gedareh, for here were the magazines not only of the four thousand men of the garrison and the women who had been left there, but sufficient for Fadil's army on their return. There were three or four wells and a good supply of water.

The ammunition arrived just in time, for on the following morning Captain Ruthven's camel-men brought in news that Fadil was close at hand. At half-past eight the Dervishes began the attack on three sides of the defences. Sheltered by the long grass they were able to make their Avay to within three hundred yards of the dwellings occupied by the troops. But the intervening ground had all been cleared, and though time after time thejr made rushes forward, they were unable to withstand the withering fire to which they were exposed.

After an hour's vain efforts their musketry fire ceased, but half an hour later strong reinforcements came up and the attack recommenced. This was accompanied with no greater success than the first attack, and Fadil retired to a palm-grove two miles away. Of the defenders five men were killed, and Captain Dwyer and thirteen men wounded.

For two days Fadil endeavoured to persuade his troops to make another attack, but although they surrounded the town and maintained a scattered fire they could not be brought to attempt another assault, having lost over five hundred men in the two attacks the first day. He then fell back eight miles.

Three days later Colonel Parsons said to Gregory: " I think the time has come, Mr. Hilliard, when I must apply for reinforcements. I am convinced that we can repel all attacks, but we are virtually prisoners here. Were we to endeavour to retreat, Fadil would probably annihilate us. Our men hava behaved admirably; but it is one thing to fight well when you are advancing, and another to be firm in retreat. But our most serious enemy at present is fever. Already the stink of the unburied bodies of the Dervishes is overpowering, and every day it will become worse. Dr. Fleming reports to me that he has a great many sick on his hands, and that he fears the conditions that surround us will bring about an epidemic; therefore I have decided to send to General Rundle for a reinforcement that will enable us to move out to attack Fadil."

"Very well, sir, I will start at once."

"I will write my dispatch, it will be ready for you to carry in an hour's time. You had better pick out a couple of good donkeys from those we captured here. As it is only nine o'clock you will be able to get to Mugatta this evening. I don't think there is any fear of your being interfered with by the Dervishes. We may be sure that Fadil is not allowing his men to roam over the country, for there can be little doubt that a good many of them would desert as soon as they got fairly beyond his camp."

"I don't think there is any fear of that, sir; and as my camels will have had ten days' rest, I should have very little fear of being overtaken even if they did sight us."

" We are off again, Zaki," Gregory said. " We will go down to the yard where the animals we captured are kept, and choose a couple of good donkeys. I am to carry a dispatch to Omdurman, and as time is precious we will make a straight line across the desert; it will save us fifty or sixty miles."

"I am glad to be gone, master; the smells here are as bad as they were at Omdurman when we went in there."

" Yes, I am very glad to be off too."

An hour later they started, and arrived at Mugatta at eight o'clock in the evening. The native with whom the camels had been left had taken good care of them, and after rewarding him and taking a meal Gregory determined to start at once. The stars were bright, and there was quite light enough for the camels to travel. The water was emptied from the skins and filled again. They had brought with them sufficient food for four days' travel, and a sack of grain for the camels. An hour after arriving at the village they again started.

"We will follow the river bank till we get past the country where the bushes are so thick, and then strike west by north. I saw by Colonel Parsons' map that that is about the line we should take."

They left the river before they reached El Fasher, and continued their journey all night and onward till the sun was well up; then they watered the camels (they had this time brought with them a large half-gourd for the purpose), ate a good meal themselves, and after placing two piles of grain before the camels, lay down and slept until five o'clock in the afternoon.

" We ought to be opposite Omdurman to-morrow morning. I expect we shall strike the river to-night. I have kept our course rather to the west of the direct line, on purpose; it would be very awkward if we were to miss it. I believe the compass is right, and I have struck a match every hour to look at it; but a very slight deviation would make a big difference at the end of a hundred and fifty miles."

It was just midnight when they saw the river before them.

" We can't go wrong now, Zaki."

"That is a comfort. How many miles are we above its junction with the White Nile?"

" I don't know."

They rode steadily on, and day was just breaking when he exclaimed: " There are some buildings opposite. That must be Khartoum. We shall be opposite Omdurman in another hour."

Soon after six o'clock they rode down to the river bank opposite the town, and in answer to their signals a large native boat was rowed across to them. After some trouble the camels were got on boai'd, and in a quarter of an hour they landed.

"Take the camels up to my house, Zaki; I must go and report myself at head-quarters."

General Eundle had not yet gone out, and on Gregory sending in his name he was at once admitted.

"So you are back, Mr. Hilliard!" the General said. "I am heartily glad to see you, for it Avas a very hazardous mission that you undertook. What news have you?"

" This is Colonel Parsons' report."

Before reading the long report the General said, " Tell me in a few words what happened."

" I overtook Colonel Parsons at Mugatta on the third morning after leaving. We were attacked by nearly four thousand Dervishes five miles from Gedareh. After a sharp fight they were defeated, and we occupied the town without resistance. Four days later Fadil came up with his army and attacked the town, but was driven off with a loss of five hundred men. He is now eight miles from the town. The place is unhealthy, and although it can be defended, Colonel Parsons has asked for reinforcements to enable him to attack Fadil."

"That is good news indeed. We have all been extremely anxious, for there was no doubt that Colonel Parsons' force was wholly inadequate for the purpose. How long is it since you left?"

" About forty-six hours, sir."

"Indeed! that seems almost impossible, Mr. Hilliard."

" We started at eleven o'clock in the morning, sir, and rode on donkeys to Mugatta, where I had left my camels; arrived there at eight, and started an hour later on the camels. We rode till nine o'clock the next day, halted till five, and have just arrived here. The camels were excellent beasts, and travelled a good six miles an hour. I did not press them, as I knew that if we arrived opposite the town at night, Ave should have difficulty in getting across the river."

" It was a great ride, a great achievement! You must be hungry as well as tired. I will tell my man to get you some breakfast at once. You can eat it while I read this dispatch. Then I may have a few questions to ask you. After that you had better turn in till evening."

Gregory enjoyed his breakfast with the luxuries of tinned fruit after his rough fare for the past fortnight. When he went to the General's room again the latter said:

" Colonel Parsons' dispatches are very full, and I think I quite understand the situation. No praise is too high for the conduct of his officers and troops. All seemed to have behaved equally well, and he mentions the gallant part you took in the defence of the baggage with Captain Kuthven and the doctor, and only some thirty-four soldiers of the camel corps. Now I will not detain you longer. I hope you will dine with me this evening; I should like to hear more of the affair."

Eeturning to his hut, Gregory found that Zaki had already got his bed and other things from the store, and he was just about to boil the kettle.

"I have breakfasted, Zaki. Here is a dollar. Go to one of those big shops and buy anything you like, and have a good meal. Then you had better take the camels across to Azim's camp. I shall not want you then till evening."

No time was lost. Three battalions and a half of Soudanese were sent up the Blue Nile in steamers, and the garrisons stationed at several points on the river were also taken on board. Three companies of camel corps marched along the bank and arrived at Abu Haraz, a hundred and thirty miles up the river, in fifty-six hours after starting. Five hundred baggage camels were also sent up. As the distance from Gedareh to this point was a hundred miles, and as water was only to be found at one point, it was necessary to carry up a supply for the troops. Colonel Collinson, who was in command, pushed forward at once with the 12th Soudanese and the camel corps. When Fadil heard of their approach he made a night attack on Gedareh. This, however, was easily repulsed by the garrison. He then broke up his camp and marched away, intending to cross the Blue Nile and join the Khalifa.

His troops were greatly demoralized by their failures, and in spite of the precautions he took, the Darfur Sheik, with five hundred of his men, succeeded in effecting his escape, and at once joined us actively in the further operations against Fadil. As there was no further danger the Soudanese marched back again and joined the other battalions, the garrisons on the river were re-established, and part of the force returned to Omdurman. The Sirdar had returned from Fashoda before Gregory came back, and had left almost immediately for Cairo. On the day after Gregory's return he had a sharp attack of fever, the result partly of the evil smells at Gedareh, heightened by the fact that the present was the fever season in the Blue Nile country.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CROWNING VICTORY

IT was eight Aveeks before he recovered, and even then the doctor said that he was not fit for any exertion. He learned that on the 22nd of October, Colonel Lewis, with two companies of the camel corps and three squadrons of Lancers, had started from Omdurman to visit the various villages between the White and Blue Niles, to restore order, and proclaim that the authority of the Khedive was established there. On the 7th of November, following the Blue Nile up, he reached Karkoj, but a short distance below the point at which the navigation of the river ceased. He had come in contact with a portion of Fadil's force, but nothing could be done in the thick undergrowth in which the latter was lurking, and he therefore remained waiting for the next move on the part of the Dervish commander, while the gun-boats patrolled the Blue river up to Rosaires. Six weeks passed. His force and all the garrisons on the river suffered severely from heat, thirty per cent of the troops being down together. The cavalry had suffered particularly heavily. Of the four hundred and sixty men, ten had died and four hundred and twenty were reported unfit for duty a month after their arrival at Karkoj ; while of the thirty white officers on the Blue Nile, only two escaped an attack of fever.

At the end of the month Colonel Lewis was joined by the Darfur Sheik and three hundred and fifty of his men. He had had many skirmishes with Dervish parties scouring the country for food, and his arrival was very welcome.

Gregory was recommended to take a river trip to recover his health, and left on a steamer going up with stores and some small reinforcements to Colonel Lewis. They arrived at Karkoj on the 14th of December, and learned that the little garrison at Rosaires had been attacked by the Dervishes. The fifty fever-stricken men who formed the garrison would have had no chance of resisting the attack, but fortunately they had that very morning been reinforced by two hundred men of the 10th Soudanese and two Maxims, and the Dervishes were repulsed with considerable loss. Two companies of the same battalion had reinforced Colonel Lewis, who marched, on the day after receiving the news, to Rosaires. The gunboat went uj) to that point and remained there for some daj T s. Gregory went ashore as soon as the boat arrived, and saw Colonel Lewis, to "whom he was well known.

"I am supposed to be on sick leave, sir, but I feel quite strong now, and shall be glad to join you if you will have me."

" I can have no possible objection, Mr. Hilliard. I know that you did good service with Colonel Parsons, and it is quite possible that we shall find ourselves in as tight a place as he was. So many of our white officers have been sent down with fever that I am very short-handed, and shall be glad if you will temporarily serve as my assistant."

On the 20th the news came that Fadil was crossing the river at Dakhila, twenty miles farther to the south. He himself had crossed, and the women and children had been taken over on a raft. On the 22nd the Darfur Sheik was sent off up the west bank to harass the Dervishes who had already crossed. On the 24th two gun-boats arrived with two hundred more men of the 10th Soudanese and a small detachment of the 9th. On the following day the little force started at five in the afternoon, and at eleven at night halted at a little village. At three in the morning they again advanced, and at eight o'clock came in contact with the Dervish outposts. Colonel Lewis had already learned that instead of half the Dervish force having crossed only one division had done so, and that he had by far the greater part of Fadil's army opposed to him. It was a serious matter to attack some four or five thousand men with so small a force at his disposal, for he had but half the 10th Soudanese, a handful of the 9 th, and two Maxim guns. As to the Darfur irregulars, no great reliance could be placed upon them.

As the force issued from the wood through which they had been marching, they saw the river in front of them. In its midst rose a large island a mile and a quarter long and more than three-quarters of a mile wide. There were clumps of sand-hills upon it. They had learned that the intervening stream was rapid but not deep, while that on the other side of the island was very deep, with a precipitous bank. It was upon this island that Fadil's force was established. The position was a strong one—the sand-hills rose from an almost flat plain a thousand yards away, and this would have to be crossed by the assailants without any shelter whatever. The Dervishes were bound to fight their hardest, as there was no possibility of escape if defeated. At nine o'clock the Soudanese and irregulars lined the bank and opened fire, while the two Maxims came into action. The Dervishes replied briskly, and it was soon evident that at so long a range they could not be driven from their position. Several fords were found, and the irregulars, supported by a company of the 10th, crossed the river and took up a position two hundred yards in advance to cover the passage of the rest. These crossed with some difficulty, for the water was three and a half feet deep, and the current very strong, and they were, moreover, exposed to the fire of Fadil's riflemen from the high cliff on the opposite bank.

Colonel Lewis, determined to turn the left flank of the Dervishes, and kept along the river's edge until he reached the required position, then wheeled the battalion into line and advanced across the bare shingle against the sand-hills. Major Ferguson Avith one company was detached to attack a knoll on the right held by two hundred Dervishes; the remaining four companies under Colonel Mason kept straight on towards the main position. A very heavy fire was concentrated upon them, not only from the sand-hills but from Fadil's riflemen. The Soudanese fell fast, but held on, increasing their pace to a run, until they reached the foot of the first sand-hill, where they lay down in shelter to take breath. A quarter of the force had already fallen, and their doctor, Captain Jennings, remained out in the open, binding up their wounds, although exposed to a continuous fire. This halt was mistaken by the Dervishes, who thought that the courage of the Soudanese was exhausted, and Fadil from the opposite bank sounded the charge on drum and bugle, and the whole Dervish force with banners waving and exultant shouts poured down to annihilate their assailants.

But the Soudanese, led by Colonels Lewis and Mason, who were accompanied by Gregory, leapt to their feet, ran up the low bank behind which they were sheltering, and opened a terrible fire. The Dervishes were already close at hand, and every shot told among them. Astonished at so unlooked-for a reception, and doubtless remembering the heavy loss they had suffered at Gedareh, they speedily broke. Like dogs slipped from their leash the black troops dashed on with triumphant shouts, driving the Dervishes from sand-hill to sand-hill until the latter reached the southern end of the island. Here the Soudanese were joined by the irregulars who had first crossed, and a terrible fire was maintained from the sand-hills upon the crowded mass on the bare sand, cut off from all retreat by the deep river. Some tried to swim across to join their friends on the west bank; a few succeeded in doing so, among them the Emir who had given battle to Colonel Parsons' force near Gedareh.

Many took refuge from the fire by standing in the river up to their necks. Some four hundred succeeded in escaping by a ford to a small island lower down, but they found no cover there, and after suffering heavily from the musketry fire the survivors, three hundred strong, surrendered. Major Ferguson's company, however, was still exposed to a heavy fire turned upon them by the force on the other side of the river; he himself was severely wounded and a third of his men hit. The Maxims were accordingly carried over the river to the island and placed so as to command the west bank, which they soon cleared of the riflemen. Over five hundred Arabs lay dead on the two islands. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-five fighting men surrendered, and several hundred women and children. Fadil, with the force that had escaped, crossed the desert to Rung, on the White Nile, where on the 22nd of January they surrendered to the English gun-boats, their leader, with ten or twelve of his followers only, escaping to join the Khalifa. Our casualties were heavy. Twenty-five non-commissioned officers and men were killed, one British officer, six native officers, and one hundred and seventeen, non-commissioned officers and men wounded of the 10th Soudanese, out of a total strength of five hundred and eleven. The remaining casualties were among the irregulars.

Never was there a better proof of the gallantry of the black regiments of Egypt, for, including the commander and medical officer, there were but five British officers and two British sergeants to direct and lead them.

After the battle of Rosaires there was a lull in the fighting on the east of the White Nile. The whole country had been cleared of the Dervishes, and it was now time for the Sirdar, who had just returned from England, to turn his attention to the Khalifa. The latter was known to be near El Obeid, where he had now collected a force of whose strength very different reports were received. Gregory, whose exertions in the fight and the march through the scrub from Karkoj had brought on a slight return of fever, went down in the gun-boat with the wounded to Omdurman.

Zaki was with him, but as a patient; he had been hit through the leg while charging forward with the Soudanese. At Omdurman Gregory fell into regular work again. So many of the officers of the Egyptian battalions had fallen in battle, or were down with fever, that Colonel Wingate took him as his assistant, and his time was now spent in listening to the stories of tribesmen, who, as soon as the Khalifa's force had passed, had brought in very varying accounts of his strength. Then there were villagers who had complaints to make of robbery, of ill-usage—for this the Arab irregulars, who had been disbanded after the capture of Omdurman, were largely responsible. Besides these there were many petitions by fugitives, who had returned to find their houses occupied and their land seized by others. Gregory was constantly sent off to investigate and decide in these disputes, and was sometimes away for a week at a time. Zaki had recovered rapidly, and as soon as he was able to rise accompanied his master, who obtained valuable assistance from him, as, while Gregory was hearing the stories of witnesses, Zaki went quietly about the villages talking to the old men and women, and frequently obtained evidence that showed that many of the witnesses were perjured, and so enabled his master to give decisions which astonished the people by their justness.

Indeed, the reports of the extraordinary manner in which he seemed able to pick out truth from falsehood, and to decide in favour of the rightful claimant, spread so rapidly from village to village that claimants who came in to Colonel Wingate often requested urgently that the young Bimbashi should be sent out to investigate the matter. " You seem to be attaining the position of a modern Solomon, Hilliard," the Colonel said one day with a smile; "how do you do itl"

Gregory laughed, and told him the manner in which he got at the truth.

" An excellent plan," he said, " and one which it would be well to adopt genei^ally by sending men beforehand to a village. The only objection is, that you could not rely much more upon the reports of your spies than on those of the villagers. The chances are that the claimant who could bid highest would receive their support."

Matters were quiet until the Sirdar returned from England, and determined to make an attempt to capture the Khalifa, whose force was reported not to exceed one thousand men. Two squadrons of Egyptian cavalry and a Soudanese brigade, two Maxims, two mule-guns, and a company of camel corps were placed under the command of Colonel Kitchener. The great difficulty was the lack of water along the route to be traversed. Camels were brought from the Atbara and the Blue Nile, and the whole were collected at Kawa on the White Nile. They started from that point, but the wells were found to be dry, and the force had to retrace its steps and to start afresh from Koli, some forty miles farther up the river.

They endured great hardships, for everything was left behind save the clothes the men and officers stood in, and one hundred rounds of ammunition each, only one pint of water being allowed per head. The country was a desert, covered with interlacing thorn bushes. An eight days' march brought the force to a village which was considered sacred, as it contained the grave of the Khalifa's father and the house where the Khalifa himself had been born. Three days later they reached the abandoned camp of the Khalifa, a wide tract that had been cleared of bush. A great multitude of dwellings constructed of spear-grass stretched away for miles, and at the very lowest compilation it had contained twenty thousand people, of which it was calculated that from eight thousand to ten thousand must have been fighting men, ten times as many as had before been reported to be with the Khalifa.

A reconnaissance showed that a large army was waiting to give battle on a hill which was of great strength, surrounded by deep ravines and pools of water. The position was an anxious one. The total force was about fourteen hundred strong, and a defeat would mean annihilation, while even a victory would scarcely secure the capture of the Khalifa, who with his principal emirs, Osman Digna, El Khatim the Sheik of El Obeid, the Sheik Ed Din, and Fadil, would be able to gallop off if they saw the battle going against them. Colonel Kitchener had the wisdom to decide against risking the destruction of his followers by an assault against so great a force posted in so strong a position. It was a deep mortification to him to have to retreat, and the soldiers were bitterly disappointed, but their commander felt that, brave as the Egyptians and Soudanese had shown themselves, the odds against victory were too great. After a terrible march and great sufferings from thirst and scanty food the force reached Koli on the 5th of February, and were conveyed in steamers down to Omdurman.

After this somewhat unfortunate affair, which naturally added to the prestige of the Khalifa, the months passed uneventfully, but late in October preparations were made for an aflfeck upon a large scale against the Khalifa's camp, and eight thousand men were concentrated at Karla on the White Nile. It was known that the Khalifa was at Gedir, eighty miles away, but after proceeding half the distance it was found that he had marched away, and the column returned, as pursuit through a densely-wooded country would have been impracticable.

The gun-boats had gone up the river with a flying column under Colonel Lewis, to check any of the Khalifa's forces that attempted to establish themselves on the banks. Mounted troops and transport were at once concentrated, and Colonel Wingate was sent up to take command. The force consisted of a brigade of infantry under Colonel Lewis, with the 9th and 13th Soudanese, an irregular Soudanese battalion, a company of the 2nd Egyptians, six companies of camel corps, a squadron of cavalry, a field-battery, six Maxims, and detachments of medical and supply departments, with a camel transport train to carry rations and three days' water—in all, three thousand seven hundred men.

On the afternoon of the 21st of November the column moved forward, and favoured by a bright moonlight made a march of fifteen miles, the cavalry scouting two miles in front, the flanks and rear being covered by the camel corps. Native reports had brought in information that Fadil, who had been raiding the country, was now in the neighbourhood on his way to rejoin the main Dervish army, which was lying near Cadi. The cavalry pushed forward at dawn and found that Fadil had retreated, leaving a quantity of grain behind. A sick Dervish who had remained there said that the Dervishes had moved to a point seven miles away. The cavalry, camel corps, and some of the guns advanced and seized a position within three hundred yards of the Dervish encampment, on which they immediately opened fire.

The rest of the guns were at once pushed forward to reinforce them, and arrived in time to assist them in repulsing a fierce attack of the Dervishes. Owing to the nature of the ground these were able to approach to within sixty yards of

the guns before coming under their fire. They were then mowed down by the guns and Maxims and the musketry fire of the camel corps, to which was added that of the infantry brigade when they arrived. This was too much even for Dervish valour to withstand, and they fled back to their camp. The British force then advanced. They met with but little opposition, and as they entered the camp they saw the enemy in full flight. The infantry followed them for a mile and a half, while the cavalry and camel corps kept up the pursuit for five miles. Fadil's camp, containing a large amount of grain and other stores, fell into the hands of the captors, with a number of prisoners, including women and children, and animals. Four hundred Dervishes had fallen, great numbers had been wounded, while the British casualties amounted to a native officer of the camel corps dangerously wounded, one man killed, and three wounded.

Gregory had accompanied Colonel Wingate and acted as one of his staff-officers. He had of course brought his horse with him. It was an excellent animal, and had been used by him in all his excursions from Omdurman. " That is rather a different affair from the fight on the Atbara, Zaki," he said, when the force gathered in Fadil's camp after the pursuit was relinquished; "the Dervishes fought just as bravely, but in one case they had a strong position to defend, while to-day they took the offensive; it makes all the difference."

" I am glad to have seen some fighting again, master, for it has been dull work stopping ten months in Omdurman with nothing to do but ride about the country and decide upon the villagers' quarrels."

" It has been useful work, Zaki, and I consider nryself very fortunate in being so constantly employed. I was desperately afraid that Colonel Wingate would leave me there, and I was greatly relieved when he told me that I was to come with him. It is a fortunate thing that we have beaten our old enemy, Fadil, here; in the first place, because if the three or four thousand men he had with him had joined the Khalifa it would have given us harder work in to-morrow's fight, and in the next place his arrival, with his followers who have escaped, at the Khalifa's camp is not likely to inspirit the Dervishes there."

Gregory was occupied all the afternoon in examining the prisoners. They affirmed that they had left the former camp three days before with the intention of proceeding to Gedid, where Fadil was to join the Khalifa with captured grain, when the whole Dervish force was to march north. The troops slept during the afternoon, and in the evening set out for Gedid, which they reached at ten o'clock the next morning. A Dervish deserter reported that the Khalifa was encamped seven miles to the south-east. Fortunately, a pool with sufficient water for the whole force was found at Gedid, which was a matter of great importance, for otherwise the expedition must have fallen back.

It was hoped that the Khalifa would now stand at bay, as our occupation of Gedid barred his advance north. Behind him was a waterless and densely-wooded district. The capture of the grain on which he had relied would render it impossible for him to remain long in his present position, and his only chance of extricating himself was to stand and fight.

After twelve hours' rest the troops were roused, and started a few minutes after midnight. The transport was left under a strong guard near the water, with orders to follow four hours later. The cavalry, with two Maxims, moved in advance, and the camel corps on the flanks. The ground was thickly wooded; in many places a way had to be cut for the guns. At three o'clock news was received from the cavalry that the enemy's camp was but three miles distant from the point which the infantry had reached, and that they and the Maxims had halted two miles ahead at the foot of some slightly rising ground, beyond which the scouts had on the previous day discovered the main force of the enemy to be stationed. The infantry continued to advance slowly and cautiously, making as little noise as possible.

It was soon evident, however, that in spite of their caution the enemy were aware of their approach, as there was an outburst of the beating of drums and the blowing of war-horns. This did not last long, but it was enough to show that the Dervishes were not to be taken by surprise. When the infantry reached the spot where the cavalry were halted, the latter's scouts were withdrawn and the infantry pickets thrown out, and the troops then lay down to await daybreak. The officers chatted together in low tones; there were but two hours till dawn, and with the prospect of heavy fighting before them none were inclined to sleep. The question Avas, whether the Dervishes would defend their camp or attack. The result of the battle of Omdurman should have taught them that it was impossible to come to close quarters in the face of the terrible fire of our rifles. Fadil could give his experience at Gedareh, which would teach the same lesson. On the other hand, the storming of the Dervish camp on the Atbara and the fight at Rosaires would both seem to show them that the assault of the Egyptian force was irresistible. As Gregory had been present at all four of these battles he was asked to give his opinion.

" I think that they will attack," he said. " The Dervish leaders rely upon the enthusiasm of their followers, and in almost all the battles we have fought here they have rushed forward to the assault. It was so in all the fights down by the Red Sea; it was so in the attacks on Lord "Wolseley's desert column; it succeeded against Hicks and Baker's forces; and even now they do not seem to have recognized that the Egyptians, whom they once despised, have quite got over their dread of them, and are able to face them steadily."

There was only the faintest light in the sky when firing broke out in front. Everyone leapt to his feet and stood listening intently. Was it merely some Dervish scouts who had come in contact with our pickets, or was it an attacking force? The firing increased in volume, and was evidently approaching. The pickets, then, were being driven in, and the Dervishes were going to attack. The men were ordered to lie down in the position in which they were to fight. In five minutes after the first shot all were ready for action, the pickets had run in, and in the dim light numbers of dark figures could be made out. The guns and Maxims at once spoke out, while the infantry fired volleys. It was still too dark to make out the movements of the enemy, but their reply to our fire came louder and louder on our left, and it was apparent that the intention of the Dervishes was to turn that flank of our position.

Colonel Wingate sent Gregory to order the guns to turn their fire more in that direction, and other officers ordered our right to advance somewhat, while the left were slightly thrown back and pushed farther out. The light was now getting brighter, and heavy bodies of Dervishes, shouting and firing, rushed forward, but they were mown down by grape from our guns, a storm of Maxim bullets, and the steady volleys, of the infantry. They wavered for a moment, and then gradually fell back. The bugles sounded the advance, and with a cheer our whole line moved forward down the gentle slope, quickening their pace as the enemy retired before them, and still keeping up a heavy fire towards the clump of trees that concealed the Dervish camp from sight. The enemy's fire had now died out; at twenty-five minutes past six the "cease fire" was sounded, and as the troops advanced it was evident that resistance was at an end.

As they issued through the trees many Dervishes ran forward and surrendered, and thousands of women and children were found in the camp. Happily none of these had been injured, as a slight swell in the ground had prevented our bullets from falling among them. Numbers of Dervishes who had passed through now turned and surrendered, and the cavalry and camel corps started in pursuit. Gregory had learned from the women that the Emir El Khatim, with a number of his trained men from El Obeid, had passed through the camp in good order, but that none of the other emirs had been seen, and the 9th Soudanese stated that as they advanced they had come upon a number of chiefs lying together, a few hundred yards in advance of our first position. One of the Arab sheiks of the irregulars was sent to examine the spot, and reported that the Khalifa himself and almost all his great emirs lay there dead.

With the Khalifa were AH Wad, Helu, Fadil, two of his brothers, the Mahdi's son, and many other leaders. Behind them lay their dead horses, and one of the men still alive said that the Khalifa, having failed in his attempt to advance over the crest, had endeavoured to turn our position, but seeing his followers crushed by our fire and retiring, and after making an ineffectual attempt to rally them, he recognized that the day was lost, and calling on his emirs to dismount, seated himself on his sheep-skin, as is the custom of Arab chiefs who disdain to surrender. The emirs seated themselves round him, and all met their death unflinchingly, the greater part being mowed down by the volleys fired by our troops as they advanced.

Gregory went up to Colonel Wingate. " I beg your pardon, sir, but I find that Khatim, and probably his son, who were so kind to my father at El Obeid, have retired with a fighting force. Have I your permission to ride forward and call upon them to surrender?"

" Certainly, Mr. Hilliard, there has been bloodshed enough."

Being well mounted, Gregory overtook the cavalry and camel corps before they had gone two miles, as they were delayed by disarming the Dervishes, who were coming in in large numbers. Half a mile away a small body of men were to be seen keeping together, firing occasionally; their leader's flag was flying, and Gregory learned from a native that it was Khatim's. The cavalry were on the point of gathering for a charge as he rode up to the officer in command.

" I have Colonel Wingate's orders, sir, to ride forward and try to persuade the emir to surrender; he does not wish any further loss of life."

"Very well, sir; I am sure we have killed enough of the poor beggars. I hope he will give in."

As Gregory neared the party, which was some five hundred strong, several shots were fired at him; he waved a white handkerchief and the firing ceased. Two emirs rode forward to meet him.

" I have come, sir, from the English General to ask you to surrender. Your cause is lost; the Khalifa is dead, and most of his principal emirs. He is anxious that there should be no further loss of blood."

" We can die, sir, as the others have done," the elder emir, a man of some sixty years old, said sternly.

" But that would not avail your cause, sir. I solicited this mission as I owe much to you."

" How can that be?" the chief asked.

" I am the son of that white man whom you so kindly treated at El Obeid, where he saved the life of your son Abu;" and he bowed to the younger emir.

"Then he escaped?" the latter exclaimed.

" No, sir; he was killed at Hebbeh when the steamer in which he was going down from Khartoum was wrecked there; but I found his journal, in which he told the story of your kindness to him. I can assure you that you shall be well treated if you surrender, and those of your men who wish to do so will be allowed to return to El Obeid. I feel sure that when I tell our General how kindly you acted to the sole white officer who escaped from the battle, you and your son will be treated with the greatest consideration."

" I owe more to your father than he did to me," Abu exclaimed; " he saved my life and did many great services to us. What say you, Father? I am ready to die if you will it; but as the Khalifa is dead and the cause of Mahdism lost, I see no reason, and assuredly no disgrace, in submitting to the will of Allah."

" So be it," Khatim said. " I have never thought of surrendering to the Turks, but as it is the will of Allah I will do so."

He turned to his men. " It is useless to fight further," he said, " the Khalifa is dead. It were better to return to your wives and families than to throw away your lives. Lay down your arms; none will be injured."

It was with evident satisfaction that the Arabs laid musket and spear on the ground. They would have fought to the death had he ordered them, for they greatty loved their old chief, but as it was his order they gladly complied with it, as they saw that they had no chance of resisting the array of cavalry and camel corps gathered less than half a mile away.

"If you will ride back with me," Gregory said to the emir, " I will present you to the General. The men had better follow. I will ride forward and tell the officer commanding the cavalry that you have surrendered, and that the men approaching are unarmed."

He cantered back to the cavalry. " They have all surrendered, sir," he said; "they have laid down their arms at the place where they stood, and are going back to camp to surrender to Colonel Wingate."

" I am glad of it. My orders are to push on another three miles; on our return the camel corps shall collect the arms and bring them in."

Gregory rode back to the emirs, who were slowly crossing the plain, but who halted as the cavalry dashed on. " Now, Emirs," he said, " we can ride quietly back to camp."

" You have not taken our arms," Khatim said.

"No, Emir, it is not for me to ask for them; it is the General to whom you surrender, not me."

" I mourn to hear of the death of your father," Abu said, as they rode in; " he was a good man and a skilful hakim."

" He speaks always in the highest terms of you, Emir, in his journal, and tells how he performed that operation on your left arm which was necessary to save your life, but did so with great doubt, fearing that, never having performed one before, he might fail to save your life."

"I have often wondered what became of him," Abu said.

" I believed that he had got safely into Khartoum, and I enquired about him when we entered. When I found that he was not among the killed I trusted that he might have escaped. I grieve much to hear that he was killed while on his way down."

" Such was the will of Allah," Khatim said. " He preserved him at the battle, He preserved him in the town, He enabled him to reach Khartoum; but it was not His will that he should return to his countrymen. I say with Abu that he was a good man, and while he remained with us was ever ready to use his skill for our benefit. It was Allah's will that his son should after all these years come to us, for assuredly if any other white officer had asked us to surrender I would have refused."

" Many strange things happen by the will of God," Gregory said. " It was wonderful that, sixteen years after his death, I should find my father's journal at Hebbeh and learn the story of his escape after the battle and of his stay with you at El Obeid."

Gregory rode into camp between the two emirs. He paused for a minute and handed over their followers to the officer in charge of the prisoners, and then went to the hut formerly occupied by the Khalifa, where Colonel Wingate had now established himself. Colonel Wingate came to the entrance.

"These are El Khatim and his son Abu, sir. They surrendered on learning that I was the son of the British officer whom they had protected and sheltered for a year after the battle of El Obeid."

The two emirs had withdrawn their swords and pistols from their sashes, and advancing, offered them to the Colonel. The latter did not offer to receive them.

"Keep them," he said, "we can honour brave foes; and you and your followers were ready to fight and die when all seemed lost. Still more do I refuse to receive the weapons of the men who defended an English officer when he was helpless and a fugitive; such an act would alone ensure good treatment at our iiands. Your followers have surrendered?"

"They have all laid down their arms," Khatim said.

"Do you give me your promise that you will no more fight against us?"

"We do," Khatim replied; "we have received our weapons back from you and would assuredly not use them against our conquerors."

"In that case, Emir, you and your son are at liberty to depart, and your men can return with you. There will, I trust, be no more fighting in the land. The Mahdi is dead, his successor proved a false prophet and is dead also. Mahdism is at an end, and now our object will be to restore peace and prosperity to the land. In a short time all the prisoners will be released. Those who choose will" be allowed to enter our service; the rest can return to their homes. We bear no enmity against them; they fought under the orders of their chiefs, and fought bravely and well. When they return I hope they will settle down and cultivate the land, and undo, as far as may be, the injuries they have inflicted upon it.

" I will write an order, Mr. Hilliard, to release at once the men you have brought in; then I will ask you to ride with these emirs to a point where there will be no fear of their falling in with our cavalrj^."

"You are a generous enemy," Khatim said, "and we thank you. We give in our allegiance to the Egyptian government; and henceforth regard ourselves as its servants."

" See, Mr. Hilliard, that the party takes sufficient food with it for their journey to El Obeid."

Colonel Wingate stepped forward and shook hands with the two emirs.

"You are no longer enemies," he said, "and I know that henceforth I shall be able to rely upon your loyalty."

" We are beaten," Khatim said, as they walked away, each leading his horse. "You can fight like men, and we who thought ourselves brave have been driven before } r ou like dust before the wind. And now when you are masters you can forgive as we should never have done, you can treat us as friends; you do not even take our arms, and we can ride into El Obeid with our heads high."

"It will be good for the Soudan," Abu said. "Your father told me often how peace and prosperity would return were you ever to become our masters, and I felt that his words were true. Two hours ago I regretted that Allah had not let me die, so that I should not have lived to see our people conquered; now I am glad. I believe all that he said, and that the Soudan will some day become again a happy country."

Khatim's men were separated from the rest of the prisoners. Six days' supply of grain from the stores found in the camp were handed over to them, together with ten camels with water-skins, and they started at once on their long march. Gregory rode out for a couple of miles with them and then took leave of the two emirs.

"Come to El Obeid," Khatim said, "and you shall be treated as a king. Farewell! and may Allah preserve you!"

So they parted; and Gregory rode back to the camp with a feeling of much happiness that he had been enabled in some way to repay the kindness shown to his dead father.

CHAPTER XXIII

AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY

THE victory had been a decisive one indeed. Three thousand prisoners, great quantities of rifles, swords, grain, and cattle had been captured, together with six thousand women and children. A thousand Dervishes had been killed or wounded; all the most important emirs had been killed, and the Sheik Ed Din, the Khalifa's eldest son and intended successor, was, with twenty-nine other emirs, among the prisoners. Our total loss was four men killed and two officers and twenty-seven men wounded in the action.

" I am much obliged to you, Mr. Hilliard," Colonel Wingate said to him that evening, "for the valuable services you have rendered, and shall have the pleasure of including your name among the officers who have specially distinguished themselves. As it was mentioned by General Rundle and Colonel Parsons—by the former for undertaking the hazardous service of carrying dispatches to the latter, and by Colonel Parsons for gallant conduct in the field—you ought to be sure of promotion when matters are arranged here."

"Thank you very much, sir! May I ask a favour? You know the outline of my story. I have learned by the papers I obtained at Hebbeh, and others which I was charged not to open until I had certain proof of my father's death, that the name under which he was known was an assumed one. He had had a quarrel with his family, and as, when he came out to Egypt, he for a time took a subordinate position, he dropped a portion of his name, intending to resume it when he had done something that even his family could not consider was any discredit to it. I was myself unaware of the fact until, on returning to Omdurman from Hebbeh, I opened those papers. I continued to bear the name by which I am known, but as you are good enough to say that you will mention me in dispatches, I feel that I can now say that my real name is Gregory Hilliard Hartley."

" I quite appreciate your motives in adhering to your former name, Mr. Hartley, and in mentioning your services under your new name I will add a note saying that your name mentioned in former dispatches for distinguished services had been erroneously given as Gregory Hilliard only."

" Thank you very much, sir!"

That evening, when several of the officers were gathered in Colonel Wingate's hut, the latter said, when one of them addressed Gregory as " Hilliard ":

"That is not his full name, Colonel Hickman. For various family reasons, with which he has acquainted me, he has borne it hitherto, but he will in future be known by his entire name, which is Gregory Hilliard Hartley. I may say that the reasons he has given me for not having hitherto used the family name are in my opinion amply sufficient, involving, as they do, no discredit to himself or his father, a brave gentleman who escaped from the massacre of Hicks's force at El Obeid, and finally died with Colonel Stewart at Hebbeh."

" I seem to know the name," Colonel Lewis said. " Gregory Hilliard-Hartley! I have certainly either heard or seen it somewhere. May I ask if your father bore the same Christian names?"

" Yes, sir."

" I have it now!" Colonel Lewis exclaimed a minute or two later. " I have seen it in an advertisement. Ever since I was a boy that name has occasionally been advertised for. Every two or three months it appeared in the Times. I can see it plainly now.Five hundred pounds reward will be given for any information concerning the present abode or death of Gregory Hilliard Hartley, or the whereabouts of his issue, if any. He left England about the year 1881. It is supposed that he went to the United States or to one of the British colonies. Apply to Messrs. Tufton & Sons, solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields.'

"Do you know when your father left England?"

" He certainly left about that time. I am nineteen now, and I know that I was born a few weeks after he came out to Alexandria."

" Then there ought to be something good in store for you," Colonel Wingate said; "people don't offer a reward of five hundred pounds unless something important hangs to it. Of course there may be another of the same name, but it is hardly likely that anyone would bear the two same Christian names as well as surname. Is it indiscreet to ask you if you know anything about your father's family?"

" Not at all, sir. Now that I have taken his name I need have no hesitation in relating what I know of him. Previous to his leaving England he married without his father's consent, and failing to make a living in England he accepted a situation in Alexandria, which he gained, I may say, because he was an excellent Arabic scholar, as he had spent two years in exploring tombs and monuments in Egypt. He was the second son of the Honourable James Hartley, who was brother, and I believe heir, of the Marquis of Langdale, and I should think by this time has succeeded to the title. At his death my father's eldest brother would of course succeed him."

" Then, my dear fellow," Colonel Mahon said, giving him a hearty slap on the shoulder, " allow me to congratulate you. I can tell you that the title has been in abeyance for the past fourteen years. Everyone knows the facts. Your grandfather died before the Marquis. Your uncle succeeded him, lived only three years, and being unmarried, your father became the next Earl, and has been advertised for in vain ever since. As, unhappily, your father is dead also, you are unquestionably the Marquis of Langdale."

Gregory looked round Avith a bewildered air. The news was so absolutely unexpected that he could hardly take it in.

" It seems impossible," he said at last.

"It is not only not impossible, but a fact," the Colonel said. " There is nothing very surprising in it. There were only two lives between your father and the peerage, and as one was that of an old man, the second of a man certainly in the prime of life but unmarried, why, the Jews would have lent money on the chance. I fancy your uncle was a somewhat extravagant man. I remember he kept a lot of race-horses and so on, but he could not have dipped very seriously into the property. At an}' rate there will be fourteen years' accumulations, which will put matters straight. I hope you have got papers that will prove you are your father's son, and that he was brother of the late Earl."

" I think there can be no difficulty about that," Gregory said. " I have letters from both my parents, a copy of their marriage certificate, and of the registers of my birth and baptism. There are some persons in Cairo who knew my father, and a good many who knew my mother."

"Then I should say that it would be quite safe sailing. I don't know, Lewis, whether you are not entitled to that five hundred pounds."

" I am afraid not," the other laughed. " Mr. Hartley, or rather, I should say, the Earl, would have discovered it himself. I only recognized the name, which plenty of people would have done as soon as they saw it in dispatches."

" It will be a great disappointment to someone," Gregory said, " if they have been for fourteen years expecting to come in for this."

" You need not fret about that," another officer said. " The next heir is a distant cousin. He has been trying over and over again to get himself acknowledged, but the courts would not hear of it, and told him that it was no use applying until they had proof of the death of your father. I know all about it, because there was a howling young ass in the regiment from which I exchanged. He was always giving himself airs on the strength of the title he expected to get, and if he is still in the regiment there will be general rejoicings at his downfall."

" Then I have met him," Gregory said. " On the way up he made himself very unpleasant, and I heard from the other officers that he was extremely unpopular. The Major spoke very sharply to him for the offensive tone in which he addressed me; and an officer sitting next to me said that he was terribly puffed by his expectations of obtaining a title shortly, owing to the disappearance of those who stood before him in succession. Some of the officers chaffed him about it then. I remember now that his name was Hartley; but as I had no idea at that time that that was also mine, I never thought anything more about it until now. As he was the only officer Avho has been in any way offensive to me since I left Cairo nearly three years ago, certainly I would rather that he should be the sufferer, if I succeed in proving uvy right to the title, than anyone else."

"I don't think he will suffer except in pride," the officer said. "His father, who was a very distant cousin of the Earl's, had gone into trade and made a considerable fortune, so that the young fellow was a great deal better off than the vast majority of men in the army. It was the airs he gave himself, on the strength of being able to indulge in an expenditure such as no one else in the regiment could attempt—by keeping three or four race-horses in training, and other follies—that had more to do with his unpopularity than his constant talk about the peerage he was so confident of getting."

"Of course you will go home to England at once," Colonel Wingate said. " The war is over now, and it would be rank folly for you to stay here. You have got the address of the lawyers who advertised for you, and have only to go straight to them with your proofs in your hand, and they will take all the necessary steps. I should say that it Avould facilitate matters if, as you go through Cairo, you were to obtain statements or affidavits from some of the people who knew your mother, stating that you are, as you claim to be, her son, and that she was the wife of the gentleman known as Gregory Hilliard, who went up as an interpreter with Hicks. I don't say that this would be necessary at all, for the letters you have would in themselves go far to prove your case. Still, the more proofs you accumulate the less likely there is of any opposition being offered to your claim. Any papers or letters of your mother might contain something that would strengthen the case. It is really a pity, you know, when you have done so well out here, and would be certain to rise to a high post under the administration of the province (which will be taken in hand in earnest now), that you should have to give it all up."

" I scarcely know whether to be pleased or sorry myself, sir. At present I can hardly take in the change that this will make, or appreciate its advantages."

"You will appreciate them soon enough," one of the others laughed. "As long as this war has been going on, one could put up with the heat, and the dust, and the horrible thirst one gets, and the absence of anything decent to drink; but now that it is all over, the idea of settling down here permanently would be horrible except to men—and there are such fellows— who are never happy unless they are at work, to whom work is everything—meat, and drink, and pleasure. It would have to be everything out here, for no one could ever think of marrying and bringing a wife to such a country as this. Women can hardly live in parts of India, but the worst station in India would be a paradise in comparison with the Soudan; though possibly in time Khartoum will be rebuilt, and being situated between two rivers might become a possible place— which is more than any other station in the Soudan can be —for ladies."

" I am not old enough to take those matters into consideration," Gregory laughed. "I am not twenty yet; still, I do think that anyone permanently stationed in the Soudan would have to make up his mind to remain a bachelor."

The next morning the greater portion of the prisoners were allowed to return to their homes. All the grain and other stores found in the camp were divided among the women, who were advised to return to their native villages; but those who had lost their husbands were told that they might accompany the force to the river, and would be taken down to Omdur-man and given assistance for a time, until they could find some means of obtaining a subsistence.

On returning to Khartoum, Colonel Wingate, at Gregory's request, told Lord Kitchener of the discovery that had been made, and said that he wished to return to England at once. The next day the Sirdar sent for Gregory.

" Colonel Wingate has been speaking to me about you," he said, " and I congratulate you on your good fortune. In one respect I am sorry, for you have done so surprisingly well that f had intended to appoint you to a responsible position in the Soudan Civil Service, which is now being formed. Colonel Wingate says that you naturally wish to resign your present post, but I should advise you not to do so. The operation of the law in England is very uncertain. I trust that in your case you will meet with but small difficulty in proving your birth, but there may be some hitch in the matter, some missing link. I will therefore grant you six months' leave of absence. At the end of that time you will see how you stand. If things have gone on well with you, you can then send in your resignation ; if, on the other hand, you find yourself unable to prove your claim, it will still be open to you to return here, and continue the career in which you have begun so well."

"I am greatly obliged to you, sir, for your kindness; and should I fail in proving my claim, I shall gladly avail myself of your offer at the end of the six months."

"Now, Zaki," he said, on returning to the hut, of which he had again taken possession, " we must have one more talk. I have told you about the possible change in my position, and that I was shortly leaving for England. You begged me to take you with me, and I told you that if you decided to go, I would do so. I shall be put in orders to-morrow for six months' leave. If I succeed in proving my claim to a title, which is what you would call here an emirship, I shall not return; if I fail, I shall be back again in six months. Now I want you to think it over seriously before you decide. Everything will be different there from what you are accustomed to. You will have to dress differently, live differently, and be among strangers. It is very cold there in winter, and it is never what you would call hot in summer. It is not that I should not like to have you with me; we have been together now for three years. You saved my life at Atbara, and have always been faithfully devoted to me. It is for your sake, not my own, that I now speak."

" I will go with you, master, if you will take me. I hope never to leave you till I die."

"Very well, Zaki, I am more than willing to take you. If I remain in England you shall always be with me, if you choose to remain. But I shall then be able to give you a sum that will enable you to buy much land and to hire men to work your sakies, to till your land, and to make you what you would call a rich man here, should you wish to return at the end of the six months. If I return, you will, of course, come back with me."

On the following day, after having said good-bye to all his friends, disposed of his horse and belongings, and drawn the arrears of his pay, Gregory took his place in the train, for the railway had now been carried to Khartoum.

Four days later he arrived at Cairo. His first step was to order European clothes for Zaki, and a warm and heavily-lined greatcoat, for it was now the first week in December, and although delightful at Cairo, it would be to the native bitterly cold in England. Then he went to the bank, and Mr. Murray, on hearing the story, made an affidavit at the British resident's affirming that he had for fifteen years known Mrs. Gregory Hilliard, and was aware that she was the widow of Mr. Gregory Hilliard, who joined Hicks Pasha; and that Mr. Gregory Hilliard, now claiming to be Mr. Gregory Hilliard Hartley, was her son. Mr. Gregory Hilliard senior had kept an account at the bank for eighteen months, and had, on leaving, given instructions for Mrs. Hilliard's cheques to be honoured. Mrs. Hilliard had received a pension from the Egyptian government up to the date of her death as his widow, he having fallen in the service of the Khedive. Gregory looked up his old nurse, whom he found comfortable and happy. She also made an affidavit to the effect that she had entered the service of Mrs. Hilliard more than eighteen years before as nurse to Gregory Hilliard, then a child of a year old. She had been in her service until her death, and she could testify that Gregory Hilliard Hartley was the child she had nursed.

After a stay of four days at Cairo, Gregory started for England. Even he, who had heard of London from his mother, was astonished at its noise, extent, and bustle, while Zaki was almost stupefied. He took two rooms at Cannon Street Hotel for himself and servant, and next morning went to the offices of Messrs. Tufton & Sons, the solicitors. He sent in his name as Mr. Gregory Hilliard Hartley. Even in the outer office he heard an exclamation of surprise as the piece of paper on which he had written his name was read. He was at once shown in. Mr. Tufton looked at him with a little surprise.

" I am the son of the gentleman for whom, I understand, you have advertised for a long time."

"If you can prove that you are so, sir," Mr. Tufton said wearily, "you are the Marquis of Langdale—that is to say, if your father is deceased. May I ask, to begin with, how it is that the advertisement has for so many years remained unanswered ?"

"That is easily accounted for, sir. My father, being unable to obtain a situation in England, accepted a very minor appointment in the house of Messrs. Partridge & Co. at Alexandria. This he obtained owing to his knowledge of Arabic. He had been engaged, as you doubtless know, for two years in explorations there. He did not wish it to be known that he had been obliged to accept such a position, so he dropped his surname and went out as Gregory Hilliard. As the firm's establishment at Alexandria was burned during the insurrection there, he went to Cairo and obtained an appointment as interpreter to General Hicks. He escaped when the army of that officer was destroyed at El Obeid, was a prisoner for many months at that town, and then escaped to Khartoum. He came down in the steamer with Colonel Stewart. That steamer was wrecked at Hebbeh, and all on board, with one exception, were massacred. My mother always retained some hope that he might have escaped, from his knowledge of Arabic. She received a small pension from the Egyptian government for the loss of my father, and added to this by teaching in the families of several Turkish functionaries. Three years ago she died, and I obtained, through the kindness of Lord Kitchener, an appointment as interpreter in the Egyptian army. I was present at the fights of Abu Hamed, the Atbara, Omdurman, and the late victory by Colonel Wingate. My name, as Gregory Hilliard, was mentioned in dispatches, and will be mentioned again in that sent by Colonel Wingate, but this time with the addition of Hartley. It was only accidentally, on the night after that battle, that I learned that my father was the heir to the Marquis of Langdale, and I thereupon obtained six months' leave to come here."

"It is a singular story," the lawyer said, "and if supported by proofs there can be no question that you are the Marquis for whom we have been advertising for many years."

" I think that I have ample proof, sir. Here is the certificate of my father's marriage, and the copies of the registers of my birth and baptism. Here is the journal of my father from the time he was taken prisoner till his death; here are his letter to my mother, and letters to his father, brother, and sisters, which were to be forwarded by her should she choose to return to England. Here are two affidavits—the one from a gentleman who has known me from childhood, the other from the woman who nursed me, and who remained with our family till I reached the Soudan. Here also is a letter that I found among my mother's papers, written from Khartoum, in which my father speaks of resuming the name of Hartley if things went well there."

" Then, sir," Mr. Tufton said, " I think I can congratulate you upon obtaining the title; but at the same time I will ask you to leave these papers with me for an hour. I will put everything else aside and go through them. You understand I am not doubting your word, but of course it is necessary to ascertain the exact purport of these letters and documents. If they are as you say, the evidence in favour of your claim would be overwhelming. Of course it is necessary that we should be most cautious. We have for upwards of a hundred years been solicitors to the family, and as such have contested all applications from the junior branch of the family that the title should be declared vacant by the death of the last Marquis, who would be your uncle. We have been the more anxious to do so, as we understand the next claimant is a young man of extravagant habits and in no way worthy to succeed to the title."

"I will return in an hour and a half, sir," Gregory said, rising. "I may say that the contents of this pocket-book, although intensely interesting to myself as a record of my father, do not bear upon the title. They are a simple record of his life from the time when the army of Hicks Pasha was destroyed to the date of his own murder at Hebbeh. The last entry was made before he landed. I mention this as it may save you time in going through the papers."

Gregory went out and spent the time in watching the wonderful flow of traffic and gazing into the shops, and when he returned to the office he was at once shown in. Mr. Tufton rose and shook him warmly by the hand.

" I consider these documents to be absolutely conclusive, my lord," he said. "The letters to your grandfather, uncle, and aunts are conclusive as to his identity, and that of your mother, strengthened by the two affidavits, is equally conclusive as to your being his son. I will take the necessary measures to lay these papers before the court, which has several times had the matter in hand, and to obtain a declaration that you have indisputably proved yourself to be the son of the late Gregory Hilliard Hartley, and therefore entitled to the title and estates, with all accumulations, of the Marquis of Langdale."

" Thank you very much, sir! I will leave the matter entirely in your hands. Can you tell me the address of my aunts I As you will have seen by my father's letter, he believed implicitly in their affection for him."

" Their address is, The Manor House, Wimperton, Tavistock, Devon. They retired there at the accession of their brother to the title. It has been used as a dower house in the family for many years, and pending the search for your father, I obtained permission for them to continue to reside there. I was not obliged to ask for an allowance for them, as they had an income under their mother's marriage-settlement sufficient for them to live there in comfort. I will not give you the letter addressed to them, as I wish to show the original in court; but I will have a copy made for you at once, and I will attest it. Now may I ask how you are situated with regard to money? I have sufficient confidence in the justice of your claim to advance any sum for your immediate wants."

"Thank you, sir! I am in no need of any advance. My mother's savings amounted to five hundred pounds, of which I only drew fifty to buy my outfit when I went up to the Soudan. My pay sufficed for my wants there, and I drew out the remaining four hundred and fifty pounds when I left Cairo, so I am amply provided."

Gregory remained four days in London, obtaining suitable clothes; then, attended by Zaki, he took his place in the Great Western for Tavistock. Zaki had already picked up a good deal of English, and Gregory talked to him only in that language on their way down from the battle-field, so that he could now express himself in simple phrases. Mr. Tufton had on the previous day written, at Gregory's request, to his aunts, saying that the son of their brother had called upon him and given him proofs, which he considered incontestable, of his identity and of the death of his father. He was the bearer of a letter from his father to them, and proposed delivering it the next day in person. He agreed with Gregory that it was advisable to send down this letter, as otherwise the ladies might doubt whether he was really what he claimed to be, as his father's letter might very well have come into the hands of a third person.

He went down by the night-mail to Tavistock, put up at an hotel, and after breakfast drove over to the Manor House, and sent in a card which he had had printed in town. He was shown into a room where the two ladies were waiting for him. They had been some four or five years younger than his father, a fact of which he was not aware, and instead of being elderly women, as he expected, he found by their appearance they were scarcely entering middle age. They were evidently much agitated.

" I have come down without waiting for an invitation," he said. "I was anxious to deliver my father's letter to you, or at least a copy of it, as soon as possible. It was written before his death, some eighteen years ago, and was intended for my mother to give to you should she return to England. Its interest to you consists chiefly in the proof of my father's affection for you, and that he felt he could rely on yours for him. I may say that this is a copy, signed as correct by Mr. Tufton. He could not give me the original, as it would be required as an evidence of my father's identity in the application he is about to make for me to be declared heir to the title."

"Then Gregory has been dead eighteen years!" the elder of the ladies said. "We have always hoped that he would be alive in one of the colonies, and that sooner or later he would see the advertisement that had been put in the papers."

"No, madam; he went out to Alexandria with my mother shortly before I was born. He died some three or four years before his brother. It was seldom my mother saw an English paper. Unfortunately, as it turned out, my father had dropped his surname when he accepted a situation, which was a subordinate one, at Alexandria, and his reason for taking it was, that my mother was in weak health and the doctor said it was necessary she should go to a warm climate; therefore had any of her friends seen the advertisement, they would not have known that it applied to her. I myself did not know that my proper name was Hartley until a year back, when I discovered my father's journal at Hebbeh, the place where he was murdered, and then opened the documents that my mother had entrusted to me before her death, with an injunction not to open them until I had ascertained for certain that my father was no longer alive."

One of the ladies took the letter and opened it. They read it together. "Poor Gregory !" one said, wiping her eyes, "we were both fond of him, and certainly would have done all in our power to assist his widow. He was nearer our age than Geoffrey. It was a terrible grief to us when he quarrelled with our father. Of course our sympathies were with Gregory, but we never ventured to say so, and our father never mentioned his name from the day he left the house. Why did not your mother send his letter to us?"

" Because she did not need assistance. She was maintaining herself and me in comfort by teaching music, French, and English to the wives and children of several of the high Egyptian officials."

" How long is it since you lost her?"

" More than three years ago. At her death I was fortunate enough to obtain an appointment similar to that my father had, and at the same time a commission in the Egyptian service, and have been fortunate in being two or three times mentioned in dispatches."

"Yes; curiously enough, after receiving Mr. Tufton's letter we saw Colonel Wingate's dispatch in the paper, in which your name is mentioned. We should have been astonished indeed had we not opened the letter before we looked at the paper. Well, Gregory, we are very glad to see you, and to find that you have done honour to the name. The dispatch said that you have been previously mentioned under the name of Gregory Hilliard. We always file our papers, and we spent an hour after breakfast in going through them. I suppose you threw up your appointment as soon as you discovered that Geoffrey died years ago, and that you had come into the title?"

" I should have thrown it up, but Lord Kitchener was good enough to give me six months' leave, so that if I should fail to prove my right to the title, I could return there and take up my work again. He was so kind as to say that I should be given a responsible position in the civil administration of the Soudan."

" Well, we both feel very proud of you, and it does sound wonderful that, being under twenty, you should have got on so well, without friends or influence. I hope you intend to stay with us until you have to go up to London about these affairs."

" I shall be very happy to stay a few days, Aunt, but it is better that I should be on the spot, as there may be questions that have to be answered, and signatures, and all sorts of things. I have brought my Arab servant down with me. He has been with me for three years, and is most faithful and devoted, and moreover he once saved my life at tremendous risk to himself."

" Oh, of course we can put him up! Can he speak English?"

"He speaks a little English, and is improving fast."

"Does he dress as a native?"

"No, Aunt; he would soon freeze to death in his native garb. As soon as I got down to Cairo with him I put him into good European clothes. He is a fine specimen of a Soudan Arab, but when he came to me he was somewhat weakly; however, he soon got over that."

" Where is he now?"

" He is with the trap outside. I told him that he had better not come in until I had seen you, for I thought that your domestics would not know what to do with him till they had your orders."

" You brought your portmanteau with you, I hope ?"

" I have brought it, but not knowing whether it would be wanted, for I did not know whether you would take sufficiently to me to ask me to stay."

" The idea of such a thing! You must have had a bad opinion of us."

"No, Aunt; I had the best of opinions. I am sure that my father would not have written as he did to you unless he had been very fond of you; still, as at present I am not proved to be your nephew, I thought that you might not be disposed to ask me to stay. Now, with your permission I will go and tell Zaki—that is the man's name—to bring in my portmanteau; I can then send the trap back."

" Do you know, Gregory," one of his aunts said that evening, " even putting aside the fact that you are our nephew, we are delighted that the title and estates are not to go to the next heir. He came down here about a year ago, his regiment had just returned from the Soudan. He drove straight to the hall and requested to be shown over it, saying that in a short time he was going to take possession. The housekeeper came across here quite in distress, and said that he talked as if he were already master; said he should make alterations in one place, enlarge the drawing-room, build a conservatory against it, do away with some of the pictures on the walls, and in fact he made himself very objectionable. He came on here, and behaved in a most offensive and ungentlemanly way. He actually enquired of us whether we were tenants by right or merely on sufferance. I told him that if he wanted to know he had better enquire of Mr. Tufton; and Flossie, who is more outspoken than I am, said at once that whether we were tenants for life or not, we should certainly not continue to reside here if so objectionable a person were master at the hall. He was very angry, but I cut him short by saying, 'This is our house at present, sir, and unless you leave it at once I shall call the gardener in and order him to eject you'."

" I am not surprised at what you say, Aunt, for I met the fellow myself on the way up to Omdurman, and found him an offensive cad. It has been a great satisfaction to me to know that he was so, for if he had been a nice fellow I could not have helped being sorry to deprive him of the title and estates which he has for years considered to be his."

After remaining four days at the Manor House, Gregory went back to town. A notice had already been served upon the former claimant to the title that an application would be made to the court to hear the claim of Gregory Hilliard Hartley, nephew of the late Marquis, to be acknowledged as his successor to the title and estates, and that if he wished to appear by counsel he could do so. The matter was not heard of for another three months. Lieutenant Hartley was in court, and was represented by a queen's counsel of eminence, who, however, when Gregory's narrative had been told, and the various documents put in, at once stated that after the evidence he had heard, he felt that it would be vain to contest the case at this point, but that he reserved the right of appealing should anything come to light which would alter the complexion of the affair.

The judgment was that Gregory Hilliard Hartley had proved himself to be the son of the late Gregory Hilliard Hartley, brother of and heir to the late Marquis of Langdale, and was therefore seized of the title and estates. As soon as the case was decided, Gregory went down again to Devonshire and asked his aunts to take charge for him. This they at first said was impossible, but he urged that if they refused to do so he should be driven to go back to the Soudan again.

"My dear Aunts," he said, "what in the world am I to do? I know no one; I know nothing of English customs or society; I should indeed be the most forlorn person in existence, with a large country estate and a mansion in London. I want someone to introduce me into society and set me on my legs, manage me and my house, and preside at my table. I am not yet twenty, and have not as much knowledge of English ways as a boy of ten. I should be taken in and duped in every way, and be at the mercy of every adventurer. I feel that it would be a sacrifice for you to leave your pretty home here, but I am sure, for the sake of my father, you will not refuse to do so."

His aunts admitted that there was great justice in what he said, and finally submitted to his request to preside over his house until, as they said, the time came when he would introduce a younger mistress. Zaki, when his six months' trial was over, scorned the idea of returning to the Soudan, declaring that if Gregory would not keep him he would rather beg in the streets than go back there.

" It is all wonderful here," he said; " Ave poor Arabs could not dream of such things. No, master, as long as you live, I shall stay here."

" Very well, Zaki, so be it; and I can promise you that if I die before you, you will be so provided for, tbat you will be able to live in as mucb comfort as you now enjoy, and in addition you will be your own master."

Zaki shook his head. "I should be a fool to wish to be my own master," he said, "after having such a good one at present."

Gregory is learning the duties of a large land-owner, and is already very popular in his part of Devonshire. The mansion in London has not yet been reopened, as Gregory says he must learn his lessons perfectly before he ventures to take his place in society.

THE NEW POPULAR HENTY

At Aboukir and Acre: A Tale of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt.

At Agincourt : A Tale of the White Hoods of Paris.

At the Point of the Bayonet: A

Tale of the Mahratta War.

Beric the Briton: A Story of the Roman Invasion of Britain.

Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Cullodea.

Both Sides the Border: A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower.

The Bravest of the Brave: or,

With Peterborough in Spain.

By Conduct and Courage: A Tale of the Days of Nelson.

By England's Aid: A Story of the Freeing of the Netherlands.

By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic.

By Right of Conquest: or, With Cortez in Mexico.

By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War.

Captain Bay ley's Heir: A Tale of the Goldfields of California.

The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt.

Condemned as a Nihilist: A

Story of Escape from Siberia.

The Dash for Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition.

The L~agon and the Raven: A

Story of the Days of King Alfred.

Facing Death: or, The Hero of the Vaughan Pit.

A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia.

For Name and Fame: or, To

Kabul with Roberts.

For the Temple: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem.

Held Fast for England: A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar.

In Freedom's Cause: A Story of Wallace and Bruce.

In Greek Waters: A Story of the Grecian War of Independence.

In the Heart of the Rockies: A

Tale of Adventure in Colorado.

In the Irish Brigade: A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain.

In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy.

A Jacobite Exile: or, In the Service of Charles XII of Sweden.

A Knight of the White Cross: A

Tale of the Siege of Rhodes.

The Lion of St. Mark: A Tale of Venice in the fourteenth century.

The Lion of the North: A Tale of Gustavus Adolphus.

Maori and Settler: A Tale of the New Zealand War.

A March on London: A Story of Wat Tyler's Insurrection.

No Surrender: A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee.

One of the 28th : A Tale of Waterloo.

On the Irrawaddy: A Story of the First Burmese War.

The New Popular Henty

Redskin and Cowboy: A Tale of the Western Plains.

A Roving Commission: or,

Through the Black Insurrection of Hayti.

St. Bartholomew's Eve: A Story of the Huguenot Wars.

St. George for England: A Story of Cressy and Poitiers.

Through Russian Snows: A

Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow.

The Treasure of the Incas: A

Tale of Adventure in Peru.

Through the Fray: A Tale of the Luddite Riots.

Through the Sikh War: A Tale of the Conquest of the Punjaub.

The Tiger of Mysore: A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib.

To Herat and Cabul: A Story of the First Afghan War.

True to the Old Flag: A Tale of the American War of Independence.

Under Drake's Flag: A Tale of the Spanish Main.

Under Wellington's Command:

A Story of the Peninsular War.

With Frederick the Great: A

Story of the Seven Years' War.

When London Burned: A Tale of

Restoration Times.

With Clive in India: or, The Beginnings of an Empire.

With Cochrane the Dauntless: A

Tale of his Exploits.

With Kitchener in the Soudan: A

Tale of Atbara and Omdurman.

With Lee in Virginia: A Tale of the American Civil War.

With Moore at Corunna: A Tale

of the Peninsular War.

With the Allies to Pekin: A Tale

of the Boxer Rising.

With Wolfe in Canada: or, The

Winning of a Continent.

Won by the Sword: A Tale of the Thirty Years' War.

Wulf the Saxon: A Story of the Norman Conquest.

The Young Carthaginian: A Story of the Times of Hannibal.

Orange and Green: A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick.

Through Three Campaigns: A

Story of Chitral, Tirah, and Ash-antee.

With the British Legion: A

Story of the Carlist Wars.