rk, and his words rang in the ears of Kaid as he rode
away.

A few hours afterwards, bitter and rebellious, murmuring to himself,
Kaid sat in a darkened room of his Nile Palace beyond the city. So
few years on the throne, so young, so much on which to lay the hand of
pleasure, so many millions to command; and yet the slave at his door had
a surer hold on life and all its joys and lures than he, Prince Kaid,
ruler of Egypt! There was on him that barbaric despair which has taken
dreadful toll of life for the decree of destiny. Across the record of
this day, as across the history of many an Eastern and pagan tyrant, was
written: "He would not die alone." That the world should go on when he
was gone, that men should buy and sell and laugh and drink, and flaunt
it in the sun, while he, Prince Kaid, would be done with it all.

He was roused by the rustling of a robe. Before him stood the Arab
physician, Sharif Bey, who had been in his father's house and his own
for a lifetime. It was many a year since his ministrations to Kaid had
ceased; but he had remained on in the Palace, doing service to those
who received him, and--it was said by the evil-tongued--granting
certificates of death out of harmony with dark facts, a sinister and
useful figure. His beard was white, his face was friendly, almost
benevolent, but his eyes had a light caught from no celestial flame.

His look was confident now, as his eyes bent on Kaid. He had lived long,
he had seen much, he had heard of the peril that had been foreshadowed
by the infidel physician; and, by a sure instinct, he knew that his
own opportunity had come. He knew that Kaid would snatch at any offered
comfort, would cherish any alleviating lie, would steal back from
science and civilisation and the modern palace to the superstition of
the fellah's hut. Were not all men alike when the neboot of Fate struck
them down into the terrible loneliness of doom, numbing their minds?
Luck would be with him that offered first succour in that dark hour.
Sharif had come at the right moment for Sharif.

Kaid looked at him with dull yet anxious eyes. "Did I not command that
none should enter?" he asked presently in a thick voice.

"Am I not thy physician, Effendina, to whom be the undying years? When
the Effendina is sick, shall I not heal? Have I not waited like a dog
at thy door these many years, till that time would come when none could
heal thee save Sharif?"

"What canst thou give me?"

"