aring trays, on which were
six smoking bowls of beans and oil!

"Hallo! Moses, your business follows you even to prison," exclaimed
Molloy.

"True, Jack, and I'll follow my business up!" returned Moses, sitting
down on the ground, which formed their convenient table, and going to
work.

We need scarcely say that his comrades were not slow to follow his
example.

The tide may be said to have reached at least half-flood, if not more,
when, on the following morning, the captives were brought out and told
by the interpreter that they were to accompany a body of troops which
were about to quit the place under the command of Mohammed, the Mahdi's
cousin.

"Does the Mahdi accompany us?" Miles ventured to ask.

"No. The Mahdi has gone to Khartoum," returned the interpreter, who
then walked away as if he objected to be further questioned.

The hopes which had been recently raised in the breasts of the captives
to a rather high pitch were, however, somewhat reduced when they found
that their supposed friend Mohammed treated them with cool indifference,
did not even recognise them, and the disappointment was deepened still
more when all of them, except Miles, were loaded with heavy burdens, and
made to march among the baggage-animals as if they were mere beasts of
burden. The savage warriors also treated them with great rudeness and
contempt.

Miles soon found that he was destined to fill his old post of runner in
front of Mohammed, his new master. This seemed to him unaccountable,
for runners, he understood, were required only in towns and cities, not
on a march. But the hardships attendant on the post, and the
indignities to which he was subjected, at last convinced him that the
Mahdi must have set the mind of his kinsman against him, and that he was
now undergoing extra punishment as well as unique degradation.

The force that took the field on this occasion was a very considerable
one--with what precise object in view was of course unknown to all
except its chiefs, but the fact that it marched towards the frontiers of
Egypt left no doubt in the mind of any one. It was a wild barbaric
host, badly armed and worse drilled, but fired with a hatred of all
Europeans and a burning sense of wrong.

"What think ye now, Miles?" asked Armstrong, as the captives sat grouped
together in the midst of the host on the first night of their camping
out in the desert.

"I think that everything seems to be going wrong," answ