k to his tent.

Edgar, standing within, heard the conversation. "You have heard," the
sheik said when he had entered; "half my property is gone, but I have
freedom and the other half. I have had worse misfortunes than this. So
far your counsel has turned out well, Muley. Now about the future. We
shall have but four days' start. He will reach El-Obeid by evening the
day after to-morrow. There he will hear that he has let slip through his
fingers the man for whom all the country is in search, and horsemen will
be despatched instantly in pursuit; probably they will be here the next
evening; it is but a reprieve. Journey as fast as we will they will soon
overtake us."

"Yes, if we pursue our course in the same direction, sheik, but this we
must not do. I should say that as soon as the division is made we should
start south; it is as well that they should see the direction in which
we are travelling. Then as soon as we are well out of sight of the camp
I should say let us break up the party into six or eight parts and bid
them travel in different directions east and west, and then make to the
point where we arrived from the desert, and strike across to the wady. A
party like ours would be noticed at once, but two or three persons each
with a camel carrying their belongings would be scarce observed; and the
Mahdi's horsemen, asking if a caravan of ten camels had passed, would
be told that no such party had been seen. At any rate most of your men
would be able to regain the wady and there to await your return. Then I
should propose that you on one camel and your wife and child on another,
with such goods as you require to pay your way, with myself on foot
dressed as formerly as a slave, should strike in the direction of
Khartoum, but keeping this side of the river until we reach Berber. Of
course you could take Yussuf with you or not as you might choose; but I
think that you would find him useful."

"You would like him to go?" the sheik asked in a tone of suspicion, for
it flashed across him that if Edgar and Yussuf made common cause he
would be at their mercy.

"I should like him to go, sheik. The negro has always been civil and
obliging to me from the day when I thrashed his companion, and if when
we arrive at a port on the Red Sea you are willing to part with him I
will gladly arrange to buy him of you at any reasonable price that you
might name."

"So be it," the sheik said; "the matter is settled."

Next morning th