free as they with
the whisky bottle as a substitute for adequate clothing, and the one who
had nearly committed manslaughter had some excuse in his depression and
remorse.

"If I'd hit you," he said to Uvo, "I'd have blown my own silly brains
out with the next chamber. I'm not kidding. I wouldn't shoot a man for
twenty thousand pounds!"

And he shuddered into the chair nearest the glowing lumps of white
asbestos licked by thin blue flames.

"God bless my soul, no more would I!" cried the crammer heartily. "I
aimed low on purpose not to do more than wing them; there's my bullet in
the door to say so, whereas theirs fairly whistled past my head on its
way through that upstairs window. They're a most desperate gang of
sportsmen, I assure you."

"There's certainly something to be said for keeping a revolver,"
observed Uvo, eyeing the brace now lying on the cast-iron chimneypiece.

"Do you mean to say you haven't got one?" cried Colonel Cheffins.

"I do. I wouldn't keep one even out in Egypt. I hate the beastly
things," said Uvo Delavoye.

"But why?"

"Oh, I don't know. There's something so uncanny about them. They lie so
snug in your pocket, and you needn't even take them out to send yourself
to Kingdom Come!"

"Why yourself, Mr. Delavoye?"

"You never know. You might go mad with the beastly thing about you."

"God bless my soul!" cried the colonel, with cocked eyebrows. "You might
go mad while you're shaving, and cut yourself too deep, for that
matter!"

"Or when you're waiting for a train, or looking out of a window!" I put
in, to laugh Uvo out of the morbid vein which I understood in him but
others might easily misconstrue. I could see the two young pupils
exchanging glances as I spoke.

"No," he replied, laughing in his turn, to my relief; "none of those
ways would come as easy, and they'd all hurt more. However, to be quite
serious, I must own it isn't the time or place for these little
prejudices against the only cure for the present epidemic. And yet for
my part I'd always rather trust to one of my Soudanese weapons, with
which you couldn't have an accident if you tried."

Over the way, his own rooms were freely hung with murderous trophies
acquired in the back-blocks of the Nile; but I felt more and more that
Uvo Delavoye was wilfully misrepresenting himself to these three
strangers; and the best I could hope was that a certain dash of sardonic
gaiety might lead them to suppose that it was all his