ad seen him
before.

"I have here a French pistol, a revolver with six chambers, which I can
offer your Excellency almost for nothing, with ammunition to match. It
is a weapon which will save your life a hundred times by its accuracy
and the rapidity of its fire; and what says the wise man? `Life is
sweet, even to the bravest.'" And all the time he was talking, Harry
Forsyth kept thinking, "Where have I seen him? What circumstance does
his face recall?"

As he left the shop his eye fell on a bale of goods yet unopened, and on
it he read the name *Daireh*!

It acted like a match on a gas-jet. He had come out to seek the will,
and Daireh was the man who had abstracted it!

And as he walked home, he remembered everything which had been a puzzle
to him. Being still weak, he now grew as much excited as before he had
been apathetic, and had his uncle been at home he would have gone to him
with the whole story at once. But the sheikh was away, superintending
the drill of certain European ruffians in the Mahdi's service who were
to man some Krupp guns taken from the Egyptians, and Harry had a forced
respite in which to collect his ideas and frame them in the manner best
calculated to gain his uncle's attention and assistance.

And now his anxiety about those at home who had no doubt long mourned
him as dead grew more poignant, and remembering his uncle's affection
for his sister, he regretted not having confided in him and begged him
to get a letter conveyed to some point sufficiently civilised to have a
post. He tried to find out from Fatima how long he had been laid up at
the fakir's residence, and at first she was puzzled. But at last she
gave him a clue.

"The Nile had risen and gone back," she said, "when you were brought to
us as dead. It rose again, and fell again, and now it will soon rise
once more."

Two years! Was it possible? Nearly two years! And he wondered whether
his people had gone into mourning for him, or if they still hoped on.
He next made inquiries about Daireh, setting Fatima to gossip for him
and tell him the result. He seemed to bear a shockingly bad character,
and to be very unpopular. The fact was that he was a money-lender, and
his extortions caused him to be hated.

Harry was glad of this, since it promised to make his task easier.

The Sheikh Burrachee returned, and was rejoiced to find his nephew so
much improved in health.

Harry took the first opportunity of opening h