for his Highland blood; and, in spite of Dan's jeers, he leaped to his
feet with a cheer, as they whirled past.

But even such spectacles as these began to pall. The Canadians soon
discovered that an army is an unwieldy monster, and that even a flying
column moves slowly. When the third day came and they still awaited
their call to the boats, Dan became restless. This period of enforced
idleness acted upon him like firewater upon a wild Indian, and his
friend soon had his hands full keeping him from disaster.

On the last afternoon of their waiting Scotty composed himself under a
gum acacia tree near the river to write home. They expected to go at
any moment and he must leave a last message for Granny. With the aid
of an old box for a writing desk and the battered lid of a tin can for
an inkbottle he managed his task fairly well. The sun was blazing down
on rock and sand and river, but the breeze from the north blew up cool
and grateful, reminding him of the June zephyrs that came up from Lake
Oro to stir the boughs of the Silver Maple.

Near him, stretched full length upon the ground, lay Dan, striving to
be as cross as his light-hearted Irish spirits would permit. Scotty
had just a moment before forcibly rescued him from a row with some
idle, poker-playing Tommies, and the wild Irishman felt small gratitude
towards his preserver. He rolled about restlessly, pronouncing
serio-comic denunciations upon everything in Egypt from Lord Wolseley
to the baggage-mules, and informing his inexorable keeper at short
intervals, that if something didn't hurry up and happen, glory be, but
he'd commit high treason--a crime of which Dan had only the vaguest
notion, but one which he imagined immeasureably transcended all other
forms of iniquity.

Scotty paid no attention to these threats; he finished his letter,
packed his writing materials into his kit bag, and stood up to stretch
his limbs. Over near the officers' quarters a couple of Tommies were
making strenuous efforts to hold down a reluctant and evil-minded camel
long enough to permit a fat and pompous Colonel to mount.

"That brute must be some relation to you, Dan," said Scotty laughingly,
"he seems to have got up a mighty objection to everything in the way of
common sense."

Dan did not reply; he had raised himself upon his elbow and was
listening eagerly to something else. His attention had been caught by
the conversation of a couple of officers who were comin