"Yes, I have friends. I shall have three months wherein to see them."

Durrance had written no word to Harry Feversham during these years. Not to write letters was indeed a part of the man. Correspondence was a difficulty to him. He was thinking now that he would surprise his friends by a visit to Donegal, or he might find them perhaps in London. He would ride once again in the Row. But in the end he would come back. For his friend was married, and to Ethne Eustace, and as for himself his life's work lay here in the Soudan. He would certainly come back. And so, turning on his side, he slept dreamlessly while the hosts of the stars trampled across the heavens above his head.

Now, at this moment Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe was sleeping under a boulder on the Khor Gwob. He rose early and continued along the broad plains to the white city of Suakin. There he repeated the story which he had told to Durrance to one Captain Willoughby, who was acting for the time as deputy-governor. After he had come from the Palace he told his story again, but this time in the native bazaar. He told it in Arabic, and it happened that a Greek seated outside a café close at hand overheard something of what was said. The Greek took Abou Fatma aside, and with a promise of much merissa, wherewith to intoxicate himself, induced him to tell it a fourth time and very slowly.

"Could you find the house again?" asked the Greek.

Abou Fatma had no doubts upon that score. He proceeded to draw diagrams in the dust, not knowing that during his imprisonment the town of Berber had been steadily pulled down by the Mahdists and rebuilt to the north.

"It will be wise to speak of this to no one except me," said the Greek, jingling some significant dollars, and for a long while the two men talked secretly together. The Greek happened to be Harry Feversham whom Durrance was proposing to visit in Donegal. Captain Willoughby was Deputy-Governor of Suakin, and after three years of waiting one of Harry Feversham's opportunities had come.

CHAPTER VIII

LIEUTENANT SUTCH IS TEMPTED TO LIE

Durrance reached London one morning in June, and on that afternoon took the first walk of the exile, into Hyde Park, where he sat beneath the trees marvelling at the grace of his countrywomen and the delicacy of their apparel, a solitary figure, sunburnt and stamped already with that indefinable expression of the eyes and face 

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