ing
with one of the officers of his regiment on the day we left Cairo; he
spoke in very high terms of him, and said that he was quite a popular
character in the regiment. It seems that he was a first-rate cricketer,
and especially brought himself into notice by some exceedingly plucky
conduct when two ladies belonging to the regiment were attacked by a
couple of tramps at Aldershot; and besides that he had greatly
distinguished himself at El-Teb, where the Hussars got badly mauled. His
name was amongst those sent in for the Victoria Cross, and he was
specially chosen to go with us to give him another chance. I never heard
a young fellow more warmly spoken of. We were awfully sorry when we
heard that he was missing. There is no doubt he was with Sergeant Bowen
whom your men brought in this morning. One of the two camels was the one
he rode. We have been talking that over to-day, and the general opinion
is that he was caught by the Arabs as he was trying to rejoin the
regiment. It is a thousand pities he did not wait a little longer in
that grove, but I have no doubt he was anxious to get assistance as soon
as possible for the sergeant. I intend as soon as we are settled here to
ask the colonel to let me go out with a party to search the plains to
see if we can find his body."

"I am more inclined to think that he has been taken prisoner," Easton
said; "he would hardly have gone out to meet the square, as he must have
seen the plains swarming with Arabs and that he had no chance whatever
of getting through. He would have known that we were making for the
water, and that he would have a far better chance of reaching us by
waiting until we got there. My own idea is that he did wait, and that
the Arabs came upon him somewhere between that grove and our camp; if
so, they did not kill him, for if they had done so we must have found
his body to-day, for we searched every foot of the ground. I think that
he is a prisoner in their hands."

"He had better have been killed at once," the officer said.

"I agree with you, except that it is just possible that a slave may
escape. You see, on our way up to Khartoum if we defeat the Mahdi's
troops--which we certainly shall do--all the country will no doubt
submit, and there would be in the first place the chance of his being
given up to us, and in the second of his escape."

"It is possible," the officer agreed, "but I certainly would not build
on that. The probability is that if he