nce at seven o'clock with this note and was to
wait for an answer. The Minister was known to be a very early riser
and would have plenty of time to arrange matters as he thought best.

Ugo was now in a good deal of pain, and it seemed very long before the
panes of his window turned from black to grey as the dawn
fore-lightened. He made Pica get him coffee, and soon after sunrise the
orderly brought one of the men from the guard-house to remain within
call in case the Captain needed anything. Pica took his bicycle and went
off to the city with the note for the Minister.

As Ugo had anticipated, Giovanni arrived in a station cab while the
orderly was still absent, and was admitted by the soldier, on his
representing that he was a relation of the Captain's and had come a long
distance to see him. The man briefly explained that Ugo was in bed,
having been wounded in the foot during the night, but was in no danger.
A moment later the brothers were together.

Ugo saw a man standing beside his bed and holding out his hand whom he
would certainly not have recognised if he had met him in the street. His
skin was almost as dark as an Arab's, and he wore a brown beard which
had reddened in streaks under the African sun. He was as lean as a
half-starved greyhound, but did not look ill, and his eyes were fiery
and deeper set than formerly. His head had been shaved when he had worn
a turban, but the hair was now more than half an inch long, and was as
thick as a beaver's fur. He was dressed in a suit of thin grey clothes
which he had picked up in Massowah, and which did not fit him, and his
canvas shoes were in a bad way. When he spoke, it was with a slight
accent, unlike any that Ugo had heard, and he occasionally hesitated as
if trying to find a word.

After the first greetings, he sat down and told the main facts of his
story. When he paused the two looked at each other and after a while
they laughed.

'The disguise is complete,' Ugo said. 'But are you going to call on the
Minister in those clothes? If you are seen near the magazine in that
condition you will be warned off and I shall have to explain who you
are.'

'I suppose I could get into a uniform of yours, since I have grown
thin,' Giovanni answered. 'We are the same height, I remember, and as I
am in the artillery no one can find fault with me for wearing the
uniform of another regiment than my own, in an emergency. It will be
better than presenting myself before the