ack as your Sunday hat in London; blubber lips, hair like coarse
wool; feet like canoes, and the best heart in the world, and--there she
is!"

It was true enough; Fatima was searching about, looking for Harry
Forsyth, just like a dear, faithful old dog. Ever since the episode of
the letter she had thought he wanted to go to his own people, and sought
how to aid him; after the fight at Kirbekan she lost him, and made her
way down to Korti, as the best place, so far as she could learn, to gain
tidings of any Englishman. The delight she expressed on thus
unexpectedly seeing him again was touching to a degree.

"You will have some one else to nurse now, Fatima," said Harry in
Arabic, pointing to Kavanagh.

"Your brother is my master; I will cure him!" she said, nodding
cheerfully to Kavanagh, and showing her white teeth.

"I am afraid Fatima would want to be nurse and doctor all in one, as she
was with me," said Harry, "and that would hardly agree with discipline.
But you might do worse than that, I can tell you. Meantime, what am I
to do with her, I wonder? Part from her willingly I never will. I tell
you, Kavanagh, you would never have had a chance of your money, if I had
not fallen into her hands, after I fell for dead in the wilderness; for
I should never have pulled through but for her. How astonished my dear
old mother and sister will be when I bring them a black servant! But
she will soon learn their ways."

"You are my good genius, Forsyth," said Kavanagh; "and if you will call
on the Principal Medical Officer, and other great authorities, I have no
doubt you will be able to help me to get away the quicker."

"I should like to go home with you," said Forsyth, "and will if I can.
Let us once get to Cairo, and I can raise any necessary money on the
strength of this," and he tapped the will on his chest.

"Would it be too great a presumption to ask to see this portentous
document?" asked Strachan. "I own to feeling some curiosity about it."

"Not at all." And he unwound it from its wrappings and produced it.

"And because a rascal clerk ran away with that bit of parchment,
Kavanagh had to enlist as a private, and you had to go wandering over
the world for years, leaving your mother and sister in poverty and
anxiety!" said Tom Strachan, meditatively. "People are always talking
about red tape in the army; surely there is still more of it in the
law."

"Oh, yes, naturally one would expect that."

"A