iency in his manner of narration.

"In front of us was the quiet harbour and the Red Sea, above us the
African stars. Feversham spoke in the quietest manner possible, but with
a peculiar deliberation and with his eyes fixed upon my face, as though
he was forcing me to feel with him and to understand. Even when he
lighted his cigar he did not avert his eyes. For by this time I had
given him a cigar and offered him a chair. I had really, I assure you,
Miss Eustace. It was the first time in four years that he had sat with
one of his equals, or indeed with any of his countrymen on a footing of
equality. He told me so. I wish I could remember all that he told me."
Willoughby stopped and cudgelled his brains helplessly. He gave up the
effort in the end.

"Well," he resumed, "after Feversham had skulked for a fortnight in
Berber, the negro discovered Yusef, no longer selling salt, but tending
a small plantation of dhurra on the river's edge. From Yusef, Feversham
obtained particulars enough to guide him to the house where the letters
were concealed in the inner wall. But Yusef was no longer to be trusted.
Possibly Feversham's accent betrayed him. The more likely conjecture is
that Yusef took Feversham for a spy, and thought it wise to be
beforehand and to confess to Mohammed-el-Kheir, the Emir, his own share
in the concealment of the letters. That, however, is a mere conjecture.
The important fact is this. On the same night Feversham went alone to
old Berber."

"Alone!" said Ethne. "Yes?"

"He found the house fronting a narrow alley, and the sixth of the row.
The front wall was destroyed, but the two side walls and the back wall
still stood. Three feet from the floor and two feet from the right-hand
corner the letters were hidden in that inner wall. Feversham dug into
the mud bricks with his knife; he made a hole wherein he could slip his
hand. The wall was thick; he dug deep, stopping now and again to feel
for the packet. At last his fingers clasped and drew it out; as he hid
it in a fold of his jibbeh, the light of a lantern shone upon him from
behind."

Ethne started as though she had been trapped herself. Those acres of
roofless fives-courts, with here and there a tower showing up against
the sky, the lonely alleys, the dead silence here beneath the stars, the
cries and the beating of drums and the glare of lights from the new
town, Harry Feversham alone with the letters, with, in a word, some
portion of his honour r