we stand in forty-eight hours. You have some cards up your
sleeve, I suppose; but--well, I'm taking you on. I'm taking you on with
a lot of joy, and some sorrow, too, for we might have pulled off a big
thing together, you and Claridge Pasha, with me to hold the stirrups.
Now it's got to be war. You've made it so. It's a pity, for when we grip
there'll be a heavy fall."

"For a poor man thou hast a proud stomach."

"Well, I'll admit the stomach, pasha. It's proud; and it's strong, too;
it's stood a lot in Egypt; it's standing a lot to-day."

"We'll ease the strain, perhaps," sneered Nahoum. He made a perfunctory
salutation and walked briskly from the room.

Mahommed Hassan crept in, a malicious grin on his face. Danger and
conflict were as meat and drink to him.

"Effendi, God hath given thee a wasp's sting to thy tongue. It is well.
Nahoum Pasha hath Mizraim: the Saadat hath thee and me."

"There's the Effendina," said Lacey reflectively. "Thou saidst thou
would 'square' him, effendi."

"I say a lot," answered Lacey rather ruefully. "Come, Mahommed, the
Saadat first, and the sooner the better."

CHAPTER XXXI. THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT

"And His mercy is on them that fear Him throughout all generations."

On the clear, still evening air the words rang out over the desert,
sonorous, imposing, peaceful. As the notes of the verse died away the
answer came from other voices in deep, appealing antiphonal:

"He hath showed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts."

Beyond the limits of the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither
beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the
perfect immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain
to offer light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance
of the descending sun. But at the great door of the monastery there grew
a stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone
chapel there was a garden of struggling shrubs and green things, with
one rose-tree which scattered its pink leaves from year to year upon the
loam, since no man gathered bud or blossom.

The triumphant call of the Magnificat, however beautiful, seemed
strangely out of place in this lonely island in a sea of sand. It
was the song of a bannered army, marching over the battle-field with
conquering voices, and swords as yet unsheathed and red, carrying
the spoils of conqu