that for a night or two. Then he will come to you again,
and again you will assist his starving family, and this time you will
ask for permission for me to sleep in the open too. Come! There's Idris
shepherding us home."

It fell out as Trench had predicted. Idris read Feversham an abnormally
long lecture that afternoon. Feversham learned that now God loved him;
and how Hicks Pasha's army had been destroyed. The holy angels had done
that, not a single shot was fired, not a single spear thrown by the
Mahdi's soldiers. The spears flew from their hands by the angels'
guidance and pierced the unbelievers. Feversham heard for the first
time of a most convenient spirit, Nebbi Khiddr, who was the Khalifa's
eyes and ears and reported to him all that went on in the gaol. It was
pointed out to Feversham that if Nebbi Khiddr reported against him, he
would have heavier shackles riveted upon his feet, and many unpleasant
things would happen. At last came the exordium about the starving
children, and Feversham begged Idris to take fifteen dollars.

Trench's plan succeeded. That night Feversham slept in the open, and two
nights later Trench lay down beside him. Overhead was a clear sky and
the blazing stars.

"Only three more days," said Feversham, and he heard his companion draw
in a long breath. For a while they lay side by side in silence,
breathing the cool night air, and then Trench said:--

"Are you awake?"

"Yes."

"Well," and with some hesitation he made that confidence which he had
repressed on the day when they sat upon the foreshore of the Nile. "Each
man has his particular weak spot of sentiment, I suppose. I have mine. I
am not a marrying man, so it's not sentiment of that kind. Perhaps you
will laugh at it. It isn't merely that I loathe this squalid, shadeless,
vile town of Omdurman, or the horrors of its prison. It isn't merely
that I hate the emptiness of those desert wastes. It isn't merely that I
am sick of the palm trees of Khartum, or these chains or the whips of
the gaolers. But there's something more. I want to die at home, and I
have been desperately afraid so often that I should die here. I want to
die at home--not merely in my own country, but in my own village, and be
buried there under the trees I know, in the sight of the church and the
houses I know, and the trout stream where I fished when I was a boy.
You'll laugh, no doubt."

Feversham was not laughing. The words had a queer ring of familiarity