rk was
ended. There was nothing more for him now to do, except to wait at
Wiesbaden and pray that Sutch might succeed. He had devised the plan, it
remained for those who had eyes wherewith to see to execute it.

General Feversham stood upon the steps looking after the carriage until
it disappeared among the pines. Then he walked slowly back into the
hall. "There is no reason why he should not come back," he said. He
looked up at the pictures. The dead Fevershams in their uniforms would
not be disgraced. "No reason in the world," he said. "And, please God,
he will come back soon." The dangers of an escape from the Dervish city
remote among the sands began to loom very large on his mind. He owned to
himself that he felt very tired and old, and many times that night he
repeated his prayer, "Please God, Harry will come back soon," as he sat
erect upon the bench which had once been his wife's favourite seat, and
gazed out across the moonlit country to the Sussex Downs.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE HOUSE OF STONE

These were the days before the great mud wall was built about the House
of Stone in Omdurman. Only a thorn zareeba as yet enclosed that noisome
prison and the space about it. It stood upon the eastern border of the
town, surely the most squalid capital of any empire since the world
began. Not a flower bloomed in a single corner. There was no grass nor
the green shade of any tree. A brown and stony plain, burnt by the sun,
and, built upon it a straggling narrow city of hovels crawling with
vermin and poisoned with disease.

Between the prison and the Nile no houses stood, and at this time the
prisoners were allowed, so long as daylight lasted, to stumble in their
chains down the half-mile of broken sloping earth to the Nile bank, so
that they might draw water for their use and perform their ablutions.
For the native or the negro, then, escape was not so difficult. For
along that bank the dhows were moored and they were numerous; the river
traffic, such as there was of it, had its harbour there, and the wide
foreshore made a convenient market-place. Thus the open space between
the river and the House of Stone was thronged and clamorous all day,
captives rubbed elbows with their friends, concerted plans of escape, or
then and there slipped into the thickest of the crowd and made their
way to the first blacksmith, with whom the price of iron outweighed any
risk he took. But even on their way to the blacksmith's shop