to
him, and he knew why. They never had actually been spoken to him, but
they might have been and by Ethne Eustace.

"No, I am not laughing," he answered. "I understand." And he spoke with
a warmth of tone which rather surprised Trench. And indeed an actual
friendship sprang up between the two men, and it dated from that night.

It was a fit moment for confidences. Lying side by side in that
enclosure, they made them one to the other in low voices. The shouts and
yells came muffled from within the House of Stone, and gave to them both
a feeling that they were well off. They could breathe; they could see;
no low roof oppressed them; they were in the cool of the night air. That
night air would be very cold before morning and wake them to shiver in
their rags and huddle together in their corner. But at present they lay
comfortably upon their backs with their hands clasped behind their heads
and watched the great stars and planets burn in the blue dome of sky.

"It will be strange to find them dim and small again," said Trench.

"There will be compensations," answered Feversham, with a laugh; and
they fell to making plans of what they would do when they had crossed
the desert and the Mediterranean and the continent of Europe, and had
come to their own country of dim small stars. Fascinated and enthralled
by the pictures which the simplest sentence, the most commonplace
phrase, through the magic of its associations was able to evoke in their
minds, they let the hours slip by unnoticed. They were no longer
prisoners in that barbarous town which lay a murky stain upon the
solitary wide spaces of sand; they were in their own land, following
their old pursuits. They were standing outside clumps of trees, guns in
their hands, while the sharp cry, "Mark! Mark!" came to their ears.
Trench heard again the unmistakable rattle of the reel of his
fishing-rod as he wound in his line upon the bank of his trout stream.
They talked of theatres in London, and the last plays which they had
seen, the last books which they had read six years ago.

"There goes the Great Bear," said Trench, suddenly. "It is late." The
tail of the constellation was dipping behind the thorn hedge of the
zareeba. They turned over on their sides.

"Three more days," said Trench.

"Only three more days," Feversham replied. And in a minute they were
neither in England nor the Soudan; the stars marched to the morning
unnoticed above their heads. They were lost