looked up, straining my ears for the sound of hoofs, but the road was
as quiet as any country lane before dawn. I leaned over the dark form
and listened, and I knew that his march was ended.

CHAPTER XXVI

Through what quiet lanes of trivial circumstance do we move toward the
momentous events of our lives? We go our way, whistling thoughtlessly;
we turn a corner and stand face to face with the all-important. In my
boyhood I went fishing and tumbled into a mountain stream; I overheard
Boller of '89 speaking to Gladys Todd; I walked the Avenue at half past
three in the afternoon and met Penelope Blight. How finely spun is the
thread which holds together my story! A firmer foothold on the bank,
an ear less quick to catch an undertone, a moment's delay before
setting out on my daily airing, and there might have been no story to
tell you; the valley might have been all the world I know and the wall
of mountains my mind's horizon.

Then I come to the matter of Philip Bennett's motor. It was always
breaking down. The delays that it caused as we journeyed north from
Naples were annoying, but at the time these were trivial events, as we
usually found a comfortable inn where we could wait while Bennett's man
lay in the dust and peered up into the vitals of the machine. It was
an adventurous thing to trust one's self to the mercy of the Italian
highway in the untrustworthy little cars of those days, but Stephen
Bennett insisted on our joining his brother, and as I was travelling
back to England with him after a hard year in the Sudan I consented.

Bennett's brother met us at Naples, where we landed from the steamer,
and, after pointing out to us the marvels of his self-propelling
vehicle, put us into it, and took us puffing and rattling northward.
We broke down twice a day, but we did not mind it, for after the trip
from Khartum, the saddle over the desert, and the uncomfortable
Egyptian rail, this new invention was to us the height of luxury in
travel.

Stephen Bennett was in the Egyptian army, in the camel corps. I had
ridden many a long march with him, and was beside him at Omdurman when
he was struck through the body by a Remington. We got in a nasty
corner that morning on the heights of Kerreri, and were so hard pressed
by the dervishes in the retreat that the wounded were saved with the
greatest difficulty. Bennett was so badly hurt that it took two of us
to hold him on my horse; but we got him back to