zed and weatherbeaten, was shown into the presence of
the Khedive, whose face showed neither pleasure nor displeasure.

"You have returned from your kith and kin in England?" asked Ismail,
with malicious irony.

"I have no excuses, Highness. I have done what I set out to do."

"If I had given you to death as an infidel who had defiled the holy tomb
and the sacred city--"

"Your Highness would have lost a faithful servant," answered Dicky. "I
took my chances."

"Even now it would be easy to furnish--accidents for you."

"But not wise, Highness, till my story is told."

"Sadik Pasha suspects you."

"I suspect Sadik Pasha," answered Dicky.

"Of what?" inquired Ismail, starting. "He is true to me--Sadik is true
to me?" he urged, with a shudder; for if Sadik was false in this crisis,
with Europe clamouring for the payment of debts and for reforms, where
should he look for faithful knavery?

"He will desert your Highness in the last ditch. Let me tell your
Highness the truth, in return for saving my life. Your only salvation
lies in giving up to the creditors of Egypt your own wealth, and also
Sadik's, which is twice your own."

"Sadik will not give it up."

"Is not Ismail the Khedive master in Egypt?"

"Sit down and smoke," said Ismail eagerly, handing Dicky a cigarette.

......................

When Dicky left the Khedive at midnight, he thought he saw a better day
dawning for Egypt. He felt also that he had done the land a good turn
in trying to break the shameless contract between Ismail and Sadik the
Mouffetish; and he had the Khedive's promise that it should be broken,
given as Ismail pinned on his breast the Order of the Mejidieh.

He was not, however, prepared to hear of the arrest of the Mouffetish
before another sunset, and then of his hugger-mugger death, of which the
world talks to this day; though the manner of it is only known to a few,
and to them it is an ugly memory.

ALL THE WORLD'S MAD

Up to thirty-two years of age David Hyam, of the village of Framley, in
Staffordshire, was not a man of surprises. With enough of this world's
goods to give him comfort of body and suave gravity of manner, the
figure he cut was becoming to his Quaker origin and profession. No one
suspected the dynamic possibilities of his nature till a momentous day
in August, in the middle Victorian period, when news from Bristol came
that an uncle in chocolate had died and left him the third of a large
f