e chilly hand of
death passing over everything, and smothering all the activities? His
pulses, which, but a few minutes past, were throbbing and pounding like
drums in his ears, seemed now to flow and beat in very quiet. Was this,
then, the way that murderers felt, that men felt who took human life--so
frozen, so little a part of their surroundings? Did they move as dead
men among the living, devitalised, vacuous calm?

His life had been suddenly twisted out of recognition. All that his
habit, his code, his morals, his religion, had imposed upon him had
been overturned in one moment. To take a human life, even in battle, was
against the code by which he had ever been governed, yet he had taken
life secretly, and was hiding it from the world.

Accident? But had it been necessary to strike at all? His presence alone
would have been enough to save the girl from further molestation; but,
he had thrown himself upon the man like a tiger. Yet, somehow, he felt
no sorrow for that. He knew that if again and yet again he were placed
in the same position he would do even as he had done--even as he had
done with the man Kimber by the Fox and Goose tavern beyond Hamley. He
knew that the blow he had given then was inevitable, and he had never
felt real repentance. Thinking of that blow, he saw its sequel in the
blow he had given now. Thus was that day linked with the present, thus
had a blow struck in punishment of the wrong done the woman at the
crossroads been repeated in the wrong done the girl who had just left
him.

A sound now broke the stillness. It was a door shutting not far off.
Kaid was coming. David turned his face towards the room where Foorgat
Bey was lying dead. He lifted his arms with a sudden passionate gesture.
The blood came rushing through his veins again. His life, which had
seemed suspended, was set free; and an exaltation of sorrow, of pain, of
action, possessed him.

"I have taken a life, O my God!" he murmured. "Accept mine in service
for this land. What I have done in secret, let me atone for in secret,
for this land--for this poor land, for Christ's sake!"

Footsteps were approaching quickly. With a great effort of the will he
ruled himself to quietness again. Kaid entered, and stood before him in
silence. David rose. He looked Kaid steadily in the eyes. "Well?" said
Kaid placidly.

"For Egypt's sake I will serve thee," was the reply. He held out his
hand. Kaid took it, but said, in smiling comment o