ve village to the borders of Kordofan? Did
he not take to foray as a wild ass to bersim? Moreover, as little Dicky
Donovan said humorously yet shamelessly when he joined them at Korosko:
"What should a native do but loot who came from Manfaloot?"

Dicky had a prejudice against the Murderer, because he was a murderer;
and Mahommed Seti viewed with scorn any white man who was not Fielding;
much more so one who was only five feet and a trifle over. So for a time
there was no sympathy between the two. But each conquered the other in
the end. Seti was conquered first.

One day Dicky, with a sudden burst of generosity--for he had a button
to his pocket--gave Mahommed Seti a handful of cigarettes. The next
day Seti said to Fielding: "Behold, God has given thee strong men
for friends. Thou hast Mahommed Seti"--his chest blew out like a
bellows--"and thou hast Donovan Pasha."

Fielding grunted. He was not a fluent man, save in forbidden language,
and Seti added:

"Behold thou, saadat el bey, who opens a man's body and turns over his
heart with a sword-point, and sewing him up with silken cords bids him
live again, greatness is in thy house! Last night thy friend, Donovan
Pasha, gave into my hands a score of those cigarettes which are like the
smell of a camel-yard. In the evening, having broken bread and prayed,
I sat down at the door of the barber in peace to smoke, as becomes a man
who loves God and His benefits. Five times I puffed, and then I stayed
my lips, for why should a man die of smoke when he can die by the sword?
But there are many men in Korosko whose lives are not as clean linen.
These I did not love. I placed in their hands one by one the cigarettes,
and with their blessings following me I lost myself in the dusk and
waited."

Mahommed Seti paused. On his face was a smile of sardonic retrospection.

"Go on, you fool!" grunted Fielding.

"Nineteen sick men, unworthy followers of the Prophet, thanked Allah in
the mosque to-day that their lives were spared. Donovan Pasha is a great
man and a strong, effendi! We be three strong men together."

Dicky Donovan's conversion to a lasting belief in Mahommed Seti came a
year later.

The thing happened at a little sortie from the Nile. Fielding was chief
medical officer, and Dicky, for the moment, was unattached. When the
time came for starting, Mahommed Seti brought round Fielding's horse
and also Dicky Donovan's. Now, Mahommed Seti loved a horse as well as a
Baga