nd took on a hungry look.
His voice suddenly came in a whisper.

"Gordon was a white man. Gordon said to me three years ago: 'Come with
me, I'll help you on. You don't need to live, if you don't want to. Most
of us will get knocked out up there in the Soudan.' Gordon said that to
me. But there was another fellow with Gordon who knew me, and I couldn't
face it. So I stayed behind here. I've been everything, anything, to
that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to bring
him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed. I
couldn't stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed--by
God, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I'd see him damned first.
I said it, and I shot the horse, and I'd have shot him--what's that?"

There was a churning below. The Amenhotep was moving from the bank.

"She's going--the boat's going," said the Lost One, trembling to his
feet.

"Sit down," said Dicky, and gripped him by the arm. "Where are you
taking me?" asked Heatherby, a strange, excited look in his face.

"Up the river."

He seemed to read Dicky's thoughts--the clairvoyance of an overwrought
mind: "To--to Assouan?" The voice had a curious far-away sound.

"You shall go beyond Assouan," said Dicky. "To--to Gordon?" Heatherby's
voice was husky and indistinct.

"Yes, here's Fielding; he'll give you the tip. Sit down." Dicky gently
forced him down into a chair. Six months later, a letter came to Dicky
from an Egyptian officer, saying that Heatherby of the Buffs had died
gallantly fighting in a sortie sent by Gordon into the desert.

"He had a lot of luck," mused Dicky as he read. "They don't end that way
as a rule."

Then he went to Fielding, humming a certain stave from one of Watts's
hymns.

THE PRICE OF THE GRINDSTONE--AND THE DRUM

He lived in the days of Ismail the Khedive, and was familiarly known as
the Murderer. He had earned his name, and he had no repentance. From
the roof of a hut in his native village of Manfaloot he had dropped a
grindstone on the head of Ebn Haroun, who contended with him for
the affections of Ahassa, the daughter of Haleel the barber, and Ebn
Haroun's head was flattened like the cover of a pie. Then he had broken
a cake of dourha bread on the roof for the pigeons above him, and had
come down grinning to the street, where a hesitating mounted policeman
fumbled with his weapon, and four ghaffirs waited for him with their
naboots.

Seti th