"He went away early, as you say.

But he did not go to his quarters.

He walked along the river-bank to Tewfikieh." Wadi Halfa was the military station, Tewfikieh a little frontier town to the north separated from Halfa by a mile of river-bank.

A few Greeks kept stores there, a few bare and dirty cafes faced the street between native cook-shops and tobacconists'; a noisy little town where the negro from the Dinka country jolted the fellah from the Delta, and the air was torn with many dialects; a thronged little town, which yet lacked to European ears one distinctive element of a throng.

There was no ring of footsteps.