alutation.

"Aleikum es salam," said he, and he waited.

"It is Abou Fatma?" asked the negro.

The Arab nodded an assent.

"Two days ago," the other continued, "a man of the Bisharin, Moussa
Fedil, stopped me in the market-place of Berber, and seeing that I was
hungry, gave me food. And when I had eaten he charged me to drive this
donkey to Abou Fatma at the wells of Obak."

Abou Fatma looked carelessly at the donkey as though now for the first
time he had remarked it.

"Tayeeb," he said, no less carelessly. "The donkey is mine," and he sat
inattentive and motionless, as though the negro's business were done and
he might go.

The negro, however, held his ground.

"I am to meet Moussa Fedil again on the third morning from now, in the
market-place of Berber. Give me a token which I may carry back, so that
he may know I have fulfilled the charge and reward me."

Abou Fatma took his knife from the small of his back, and picking up a
stick from the ground, notched it thrice at each end.

"This shall be a sign to Moussa Fedil;" and he handed the stick to his
companion. The negro tied it securely into a corner of his wrap, loosed
his water-skin from the donkey's back, filled it at the well and slung
it about his shoulders. Then he picked up his spears and his shield.
Abou Fatma watched him labour up the slope of loose sand and disappear
again on the further incline of the crest. Then in his turn he rose, and
hastily. When Harry Feversham had set out from Obak six days before to
traverse the fifty-eight miles of barren desert to the Nile, this grey
donkey had carried his water-skins and food.

Abou Fatma drove the donkey down amongst the trees, and fastening it to
a stem examined its shoulders. In the left shoulder a tiny incision had
been made and the skin neatly stitched up again with fine thread. He cut
the stitches, and pressing open the two edges of the wound, forced out a
tiny package little bigger than a postage stamp. The package was a
goat's bladder, and enclosed within the bladder was a note written in
Arabic and folded very small. Abou Fatma had not been Gordon's
body-servant for nothing; he had been taught during his service to read.
He unfolded the note, and this is what was written:--

"The houses which were once Berber are destroyed, and a new town of wide
streets is building. There is no longer any sign by which I may know the
ruins of Yusef's house from the ruins of a hundred houses; nor does
Yus