e dark enough to hide our departure; and I should
have been sorry indeed to go without saying good-bye to you."

"But for how long will you go, brother?" Sidi asked.

"Until the trouble was over here, which might be only two or three
months, but which might be as many years."

"And will you be glad to go back to your own country?" the sheik asked.

"No, indeed. There I should have to work in an office in London, which
would be very dull, while here my work is light, I have amusements, and
I have my friends here."

"Why not stay behind with us until your father returns? You know that
you would be most welcome, and that it would gladden all our hearts to
have you with us."

"I should like it above all things, sheik," Edgar said warmly, "and I
thank you most heartily for the invitation, but of course I must do as
my father wishes, and he thinks it best that we should go to England if
the French come, for they would keep us both as prisoners, and would
seize all our goods and merchandise. However, it does not seem to him
likely that the French will really come here, and it was only because he
considered that it was just possible they might do so that he himself
suggested that I should come over and stay here until to-morrow
afternoon, lest, if we should have to leave suddenly, you might not
think that we had forgotten you in our haste to be off. For myself, I
wish that I could stay here. I suppose that if the French came you would
fight, and I could fight with your tribe?"

"Assuredly we will fight," the sheik said. "Why should these Franks come
here to molest us? I love not the Turkish rule much, but we are in no
way molested. Assuredly every Arab through the desert will ride against
them and aid the Mamelukes to drive them into the sea. How great an army
would they bring against us?"

"We hear from the officers of our fleet that the news received in
England said that some 30,000 men were preparing to embark for some
unknown destination."

"Thirty thousand!" the sheik said scornfully; "why, there are 10,000
Mameluke cavalry and fully 20,000 infantry, janizaries, and spahis,
besides the levy of the whole population, and the desert tribes can put
5000 horsemen into the field. They will never dare to come against us
unless with a force very much larger than you speak of. No, it is not
against Egypt that the expedition can have sailed."

"That is what my father thinks," Edgar said; "not because of the force
you cou