Part 36 (1/2)

”But you have your Crihts,” said Durrance, cheerfully

Feversham shook his head ”There have been none since Harry went away I had no heart for them,” he said slowly For a second the mask was lifted and his stern features softened He had suffered h not one of his acquaintances up to this moment had ever detected a look upon his face or heard a sentence from his lips which could lead them so to think He had shown a stubborn front to the world; he had made it a er at him and say, ”There's a man struck down” But on this one occasion and in these feords he revealed to Durrance the depth of his grief Durrance understood how unendurable the chatter of his friends about the old days of war in the snowy trenches would have been An anecdote recalling soe would hurt as keenly as a story of cowardice The whole history of his lonely life at Broad Place was laid bare in that sihts for he had no heart for theravel

”Good-bye,” said Durrance, and he held out his hand

”By the way,” said Fevershareat deal of ?”

”I am”

Fevershaht, of course,” he said

”Certainly I will let you knohat it costs”

”Thank you”

General Feversham accompanied his visitor to the door There was a question which he had it in his mind to ask, but the question was delicate He stood uneasily on the steps of the house

”Didn't I hear, Durrance,” he said with an air of carelessness, ”that you were engaged to Miss Eustace?”

”I think I said that Harry would regain all that he had lost except his career,” said Durrance

He stepped into the carriage and drove off to the station His as ended There was nothing more for him now to do, except to wait at Wiesbaden and pray that Sutch ht succeed He had devised the plan, it remained for those who had eyes ith to see to execute it

General Fevershae until it disappeared a the pines Then he walked slowly back into the hall ”There is no reason why he should not come back,” he said He looked up at the pictures The dead Feversharaced ”No reason in the world,” he said ”And, please God, he will coers of an escape froan to looe on his mind He owned to hiht he repeated his prayer, ”Please God, Harry will come back soon,” as he sat erect upon the bench which had once been his wife's favourite seat, and gazed out across the moonlit country to the Sussex Downs

CHAPTER XXVII

THE HOUSE OF STONE

These were the days before the great mud as built about the House of Stone in Omdurman Only a thorn zareeba as yet enclosed that noisome prison and the space about it It stood upon the eastern border of the town, surely the an Not a flower blooreen shade of any tree A brown and stony plain, burnt by the sun, and, built upon it a straggling narrow city of hovels crawling with vermin and poisoned with disease

Between the prison and the Nile no houses stood, and at this tiht lasted, to stu earth to the Nile bank, so that they ht draater for their use and perforro, then, escape was not so difficult For along that bank the dhoere moored and they were numerous; the river traffic, such as there was of it, had its harbour there, and the wide foreshore made a convenient market-place Thus the open space between the river and the House of Stone was thronged and clamorous all day, captives rubbed elboith their friends, concerted plans of escape, or then and there slipped into the thickest of the crowd and made their way to the first blackshed any risk he took But even on their way to the blacksmith's shop, their fetters called for no notice in Omdurman Slaves wore the brown treeless squalid city was ever free from the clink of a man alked in chains

But for the European escape was another matter There were not so many white prisoners but that each was a h the desert,preparations, and above all, devoted natives ould risk their lives, were the first necessities for their evasion The caht be procured and stationed, but it did not follow that their drivers would reht be aoler overset the the captive within an inch of his life, on a suspicion that he had ht shrink at the last an to lose all hope His friends orking for hiht his food into the prison would bid him be ready; at times, too, when at some parade of the Khalifa's troops he was shown in triumph as an emblem of the destiny of all the Turks, a ainst his ca ever caements He saw the sun rise daily beyond the bend of the river behind the tall palm trees of Khartued one after the other

On an evening towards the end of August, in that year when Durrance came home blind fro the sun drop ards towards the plain with an agony of anticipation For however intolerable the heat and burden of the day, it was as nothing coht renewed The reat negro of the Gawaaaolers

”Into the House of Stone!” he cried

Praying and cursing, with the sound of the pitiless whips falling perpetually upon the backs of the hindled at the narrow entrance to the prison house Already it was occupied by so upon the swaainst the wall in the last extremities of weakness and disease Two hundredThe room was perhaps thirty feet square, of which four feet were occupied by a solid pillar supporting the roof There was noin the building; a few s air, and into this foul and pestilent hovel the prisoners were packed, screa The door was closed upon theht, so that a uish even the outlines of the heads of the neighbours edged hiht like the rest There was a corner near the door which he coveted at that reater fierceness of desire than he had ever felt in the days when he had been free Once in that corner, he would have so feet, the bruises of his neighbour's shackles; he would have, too, a support against which to lean his back during the ten interminable hours of suffocation

”If I were to fall! If I were to fall!”