splendid boat which Kaid had placed at his disposal David looked out upon
it all, with emotions not yet wholly mastered by the true estimate of
what this day had brought to him. With a mind unsettled he listened to
the natives in the forepart of the boat and on the shore, beating the
darabukkeh and playing the kemengeh. Yet it was moving in a mist and on
a flood of greater happiness than he had ever known.

He did not know as yet that Eglington was gone for ever. He did not know
that the winds of time had already swept away all traces of the house of
ambition which Eglington had sought to build; and that his nimble tongue
and untrustworthy mind would never more delude and charm, and wanton with
truth. He did not know, but within the past hour Hylda knew; and now out
of the night Soolsby came to tell him.

He was roused from his reverie by Soolsby's voice saying: "Hast nowt to
say to me, Egyptian?"

It startled him, sounded ghostly in the moonlight; for why should he hear
Soolsby's voice on the confines of Egypt? But Soolsby came nearer, and
stood where the moonlight fell upon him, hat in hand, a rustic modern
figure in this Oriental world.

David sprang to his feet and grasped the old man by the shoulders.
"Soolsby, Soolsby," he said, with a strange plaintive-note in his voice,
yet gladly, too. "Soolsby, thee is come here to welcome me! But has
she not come--Miss Claridge, Soolsby?"

He longed for that true heart which had never failed him, the simple soul
whose life had been filled by thought and care of him, and whose every
act had for its background the love of sister for brother--for that was