him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose cigarette ash-trays
was equal to the salary of an English consul--even Sadik, foster-brother,
panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent and watchful to-day.

And Sadik, silent and watchful and fearful, was also a dangerous man.
As Sadik's look wandered over the packed crowds, his faded eyes scarce
realising the bright-coloured garments of the men, the crimson silk tents
and banners and pennons, the gorgeous canopies and trappings and plumes
of the approaching dervishes, led by the Amir-el-Haj or Prince of the
Pilgrims, returned from Mecca, he wondered what lamb for the sacrifice
might be provided to soothe the mind of his master. He looked at the
matting in the long lane before them, and he knew that the bodies which
would lie here presently, yielding to the hoofs of the Sheikh's horse,
were not sufficient to appease the rabid spirit tearing at the Khedive's
soul. He himself had been flouted by one ugly look this morning, and one
from Ismail was enough.

It did his own soul good now to see the dervish fanatics foaming at the
mouth, their eyes rolling, as they crushed glass in their mouths and ate
it, as they swallowed fire, as they tore live serpents to pieces with
their teeth and devoured them, as they thrust daggers and spikes of steel
through their cheeks, and gashed their breasts with knives and swords.
He watched the effect of it on the Khedive; but Ismail had seen all this
before, and he took it in the stride. This was not sufficient.

Sadik racked his brain to think who in the palace or in official life
might be made the scapegoat, upon whom the dark spirit in the heart of
the Khedive might be turned. His mean, colourless eyes wandered
inquiringly over the crowd, as the mad dervishes, half-naked, some with
masses of dishevelled hair, some with no hair at all, bleached, haggard,