I doubt, Miss Eustace, if you can realise, however hard you try, what that fortnight must have meant to Feversham--the anxiety, the danger, the continued expectation that a voice would bid him halt and a hand fall upon his shoulder, the urgent knowledge that if the hand fell, death would be the least part of his penalty.

I imagine the town--a town of low houses and broad streets of sand, dug here and there into pits for mud wherewith to build the houses, and overhead the blistering sun and a hot shadowless sky.

In no corner was there any darkness or concealment.

And all day a crowd jostled and shouted up and down these streets--for that is the Mahdist policy to crowd the towns so that all may be watched and every other man may be his neighbour's spy.

Feversham dared not seek the shelter of a roof at night, for he dared not trust his tongue.