k of the Nile just beyond the limits of the great mud wall and at the
back of the slave market. Every morning the two prisoners were let out
from the prison door, they tramped along the river-bank on the outside
of the town wall, and came into the powder factory past the storehouses
of the Khalifa's bodyguard. Every evening they went back by the same
road to the House of Stone. No guard was sent with them, since flight
seemed impossible, and each journey that they made they looked anxiously
for the man in the blue robe. But the months passed, and May brought
with it the summer.

"Something has happened to Abou Fatma," said Feversham. "He has been
caught at Berber perhaps. In some way he has been delayed."

"He will not come," said Trench.

Feversham could no longer pretend to hope that he would. He did not know
of a sword-thrust received by Abou Fatma, as he fled through Berber on
his return from Omdurman. He had been recognised by one of his old
gaolers in that town, and had got cheaply off with the one thrust in his
thigh. From that wound he had through the greater part of this year been
slowly recovering in the hospital at Assouan. But though Feversham heard
nothing of Abou Fatma, towards the end of May he received news that
others were working for his escape. As Trench and he passed in the dusk
of one evening between the storehouses and the town wall, a man in the
shadow of one of the narrow alleys which opened from the storehouses
whispered to them to stop. Trench knelt down upon the ground and
examined his foot as though a stone had cut it, and as he kneeled the
man walked past them and dropped a slip of paper at their feet. He was a
Suakin merchant, who had a booth in the grain market of Omdurman. Trench
picked up the paper, hid it in his hand and limped on, with Feversham at
his side. There was no address or name upon the outside, and as soon as
they had left the houses behind, and had only the wall upon their right
and the Nile upon their left, Trench sat down again. There was a crowd
about the water's edge, men passed up and down between the crowd and
them. Trench took his foot into his lap and examined the sole. But at
the same time he unfolded the paper in the hollow of his hand and read
the contents aloud. He could hardly read them, his voice so trembled.
Feversham could hardly hear them, the blood so sang in his ears.

"A man will bring to you a box of matches. When he comes trust
him.--Sutch." And he a