CHAPTER XIX.

IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.

Ismailia, by the Lake of Timsah, lay steeped in sunshine, while the regiments of the Highland Brigade, for the second time, after the lapse of eighty years, landed upon Egyptian soil again.

Built equi-distant from Port Said and Suez, this new town protects the outlet of the second canal, which carries the supply of fresh water from the Nile near Cairo to the Isthmus. In 1862 the place where it stands was a scene of sandy desolation. Seven years later saw a brilliant little French town in existence with a broad quay, bordering the lake, with hotels, cafés, a theatre where vaudevilles were acted, a street of well-stocked shops, a public garden with a fountain spouting Nile water in the Place Champollion, the telegraph wires overhead, and the bells of a Christian church ringing, where, but a short time before, the wandering Bedouin, the nomadic dweller in tents, the child of the desert, with glittering spear and floating burnous, urged his camel on its solitary way from Ramses to Serapium.

The heat was intense, and to the eyes of the Scottish mountaineers the scenery about Ismailia seemed intensely monotonous. Cloudless skies of the deepest and richest blue formed a contrast to the vast expanse of yellow sand that stretched far, far away till lost in hazy distance, but the desert is susceptible of many shades and changes of colour.

It is said that at Ismailia the stranger can very fully realise the purity, the balm, and beauty of the Egyptian night, especially if seated over wine and a cigar in the Hôtel des Voyageurs, where he may watch the Lake of Timsah, and so varied are the tints of the latter in the light of the red sun setting in the west, amid a lurid glow of gold and crimson, that it looks like three lakes; towards the canal that leads to Serapium it seems a deep blue; where the ships are grouped near Ismailia, its wavelets seem silver with gold, while the moon comes slowly up like a silver dawn, and rosy tints yet linger when the sun has gone abruptly down.

But no time was given to the Highlanders either to study scenery or artistic effects, even if so disposed. Each regiment was rapidly formed in column—every officer and man in his fighting kit, with tropical helmet, haversack, and water bottle; the men with their valises and greatcoats, and the march began towards the desert where the Egyptians of Arabi awaited them at Tel-el-Kebir.

Little was talked of then but the recent cavalry fight at Kassassin, where our Life Guards swept the ranks of Arabi's infantry, and where a horde of wild Bedouins, who had been hovering near the field like birds of prey, after their departure poured in to strip and rob the dead and wounded of both armies, killing all who were able to resist.

The mess—or regiment rather, as there was no mess now—saw that Allan Graham had come back a sorely changed man, who had hours of evident depression alternated by furious hilarity—not the man's old style at all; but his world, like Hamlet's, was 'out of joint.' The conduct of Olive Raymond yet remained a profound, an unexplained and exasperating mystery to him; but he felt, how bitterly, that love lives even after trust and faith are dead and buried; and now that he was so far, far away from her, dreams of a yearning and sorrowful kind, with many stinging thoughts, that he feared would never leave him, filled his mind as he marched at the head of his company towards the darkening desert.

In his looks and manner, Evan Cameron, like others, read a marked yet undefinable change; his bearing now was occasionally haughty and reserved; at other times his eyes seemed strangely sad. What could have happened? Cameron did not ask, and as yet Allan said nothing about it; and, sooth to say, in his own thoughts of Eveline, the former had cause to be sad enough too.

His memories were ever of the days at Dundargue, and the chance parting in the belvidere at Maviswood; and again her kisses, the touch of her little caressing hands, with her voice came vividly to him.

In some of the last papers that had reached the transport, viâ the Continent, he could see that she was leading a life of outward gaiety. Could he doubt that it was otherwise than outward? He gathered a sombre satisfaction from the thought, and then strove to set it aside as selfish.

Why should she not enjoy balls and flowers-shows, races and regattas, the drawing-room at Buckingham Palace, and other brilliant gatherings? Yet as he read of these things a frown of mingled anger, sorrow, and even mockery gathered on his brow in spite of himself.

In the same papers Allan could discover no trace of any body having been cast upon the beach either at Southsea or the shore of the Isle of Wight, and hence he supposed that the remains of the drowned Holcroft must have been taken out to sea.

The Highland enthusiasm, the warlike spirit that blazed up within him, kept him from a great despair, for latterly his love for Olive had become a part of his own existence.

The novelty of the land in which our new campaign had opened, the incessant watchfulness, the time and attention each duty brought with it, all gave him a recklessness as to life and as to fear of death, that after a time won him the involuntary admiration of the Black Watch and the whole Highland Brigade.

Just as the sun set, the bugles sounded a 'halt' after a march of six miles, but six terrible miles they were, for at every step the Highlanders sank ankle-deep in the soft and sun-dried sand.

All around that halting-place a sea of the latter seemed to stretch in every direction, bare and desolate, save where Ismailia lay, its edifices looking inky, black, and opaque in outline against the orange and primrose sky; and black looked the masts of the transports as they rose like a forest amid the waters of the Lake of Timsah.

When the first bivouac was formed at El-Magfar, the bare-kneed Highlanders, each rolled in his blanket on the soft sand, slept comfortably enough; but with morning came the first instalment of misery, when the heavy dew that soaks everything left them cold and stiff, and longing even for the fierce unclouded sun again.

'A devil of a country this,' said Carslogie. 'By day it is too hot to eat, to act, or even to think; and at night it is too cold to sleep or think of anything but the bitter cold itself.'

And but for the hot tea made for all over-night, when the brigade first came to its camping-place, some injury to health must have ensued; but the men were too weary to eat even a biscuit, of which each carried a two days' supply in the canvas haversack that formed his only pillow.

Before the sun was up, Allan rose from the sand and looked about him. Under the starlight the Highland bivouac—for camp it was not—presented a curious sight, as the men lay in ranks, each rolled in his blanket, beside the piles of arms; the sentinels of the out-piquets on the way to Tel-el-Mahuta standing dark and motionless against the blue of the sky, looking in kilt and helmet like the statues of ancient Romans.

To get a little warmth ere the pipers blew the 'rouse,' he walked a short distance from where the men of his company lay, and near a fragment of ruined wall, beside which grew a patch of those prickly plants (round which hillocks of sand occasionally gather), and a solitary gum-tree grew, he found, rolled up in a burnous, and evidently concealing himself in dread and fear, a Bedouin. There was a small palm-grove near Magfar; why did he not seek hiding there?

'Hallo, my man,' thought Allan, 'what are you lurking here for?—mischief, no doubt.'

He drew his claymore, supposing the lurker could be but a spy who had crept within our chain of sentries; but the wild son of the desert raised his hands deprecatingly, and, opening his burnous, showed that he was perishing from a dreadful wound—a sword cut that had laid open his right shoulder and breast.

Allan put his brandy-flask to the sufferer's lips, raising his head as he did so, and then addressed him inquiringly. Allan had picked up some Arabic in India, and thus could understand the Bedouin, who informed him that he had been wounded thus, by one of those sons of Anak, our Life-guardsmen, in the charge at Kassassin.

'An Egyptian, by jingo!' exclaimed Carslogie, who came up at that moment. 'Are you about to become a studier of humanity?'

'Well, Cuvier was great in the study of wasps, and so forth. Why shouldn't I study Egyptians?' replied Allan, grimly, 'and this poor devil seems to have been wounded in the affair at Kassassin the other day.'

'You understand him, then?'

'Perfectly. Please bring one of the staff surgeons quickly; he must have been lying here when we took up our ground over-night.'

The Bedouin, whose astonishment that he was not butchered on the instant was great, stared alternately at Allan and at Carslogie, who was a young fellow of the best style, one whose fine face even the hideous tropical helmet (which is such an appalling substitute for the graceful feather bonnet) could not spoil. His figure was slight and elegant, his features clearly cut and refined, and his bright brown chestnut hair was close and curly.

The Bedouin was a perfect type of his race, and, save that he had a good Remington rifle slung over his back, was not much changed in habit, nature, or turn of thought from his ancestors of the tribe of Ishmael.

Though weakened now by suffering and great loss of blood, he seemed spare of figure and light of limb, well-formed and active, tall, but whether thirty or forty years old it was impossible to say. He had a long, thin, and expressive countenance, with glittering black eyes and teeth of pearly whiteness. His colour was a dusky brown, his hair black and wiry.

He was evidently a Bedouin of the desert, as the two ends of the scarlet shawl which formed his turban hung down upon the shoulder, to distinguish him from the Arabs of other tribes. He was clad in a thick dark brown baracan of wool, which served as a dress by day and a bed by night, over which was a robe with wide sleeves.

When the doctor was dressing his wound, which was certainly a terrible sword-cut, his richly embroidered girdle was seen, and this announced him to be a sheikh, and such he was proved to be, as Allan gathered from him that his name was Zeid el Ourdeh, the sheikh of a tribe near Jebel Dimeshk, between the desert and the disused railway to Heliopolis, 'the City of the Sun;' and as he lay there in his picturesque costume, with a group of wondering Highlanders, in their dark kilts and white helmets, gathered round him, and the blood-red sun in the distance, coming swiftly up out of the dry sand of the yellow desert, as it seemed, Allan thought what a subject was the whole for the pencil of an artist.

The Bedouin was on the point of fainting, so great was the agony occasioned by the dressing of his wound; but a mouthful from Allan's flask revived him more than it would have done one usually accustomed to such stimulants.

'Some sick men are going back to the rear at Ismailia,' said Allan. 'Carslogie, please to order the ambulance people to come this way. I'll send this unfortunate creature to the Third Field Hospital.'

Carslogie paused to scrape a vesta and light a cigar, which he proceeded to puff with a sigh of satisfaction.

'Quick, Carslogie,' cried Allan. 'We have no time to lose. The bugles will sound immediately.'

And Carslogie went on his way with the air of a man who thought the world would be none the worse for having a Bedouin the less in it.

In his own language, and in terms peculiarly his own, Allan could make out that the sheikh was thanking him in a low and earnest voice, and adding that while life lasted he 'would always deem him as a brother. You infidels are powerful as the genii of old; you can flash a light at night brilliant as that of the sun at noon; you have another light that springs from the unseen air. I have seen it in the streets of Cairo' (no doubt referring to gas); 'and you can send your thoughts from land to land under the sea more swiftly than even the Afrite did in the days of Solomon; and I fear that from your hands the Egyptians will suffer such chastisement as fell on the people of Noah, of Ad, and of Thamud,' he added, wearily and sadly, as his head fell on one side.

A party of the ambulance had now come, and Allan informed him that he was to be sent to Ismailia. He did more; he placed some money in his hand wherewith to procure necessaries, and, while the eyes of the Bedouin gleamed with gratitude, his brown mahogany and attenuated fingers closed avariciously and tightly on such an unusual gift as coins.

''Pon my soul, Allan Graham,' said Carslogie, 'considering how these rascals treated our wounded at Kassassin, your humanity, to say the least of it, seems to me to be a little misplaced.'

'Perhaps; but I cannot help it. I feel a little tender-hearted just now,' said Allan, with a smile, as the wounded Bedouin—of whom he had not seen the last—was borne away.

The pipes struck up, and once more the columns began a ten-miles' march to Mahsameh. The Gordon Highlanders were in advance, the Camerons next, then came the Highland Light Infantry, and then the Black Watch, all toiling through the soft, deep sand. These splendid regiments were all marching in massed columns, at one pace interval, the cavalry moving with them collaterally on one flank, and the artillery on the other, clattering along, with spunges, buckets, spare wheels, and forge waggons—all forming a grand, impressive spectacle in the midst of the wide Egyptian desert.

To Scottish soldiers, who are usually so well-grounded in their Bible history, the soil they were treading, if the toil made it disgusting on one hand, memory made it full of deep interest on the other. They knew that they were already in, or were approaching, the Land of Goshen, where, by the tasks they had conned at school and those which their ministers superintended, they were aware that they were nigh unto the place where Jacob dwelt of old, that he might be near to Joseph, who lived at Pharaoh's court; near to the place where father and son met, and where we still find Rameses, which was built by the Israelites in the days of their bondage; and, as our soldiers marched on, some there were who recalled these things to each other, as their minds went back to the village kirk, whose bells awoke the echoes of green and lonely glens, and to the firesides of their fathers, when expounding on these things on Saturday night, when the 'big ha' Bible' was produced; and, though they might yawn wearily over such matters at home, these scriptural names and localities had a very different effect upon them now.

CHAPTER XX.

THE MARCH THROUGH GOSHEN.

On, and on, and on, through the same kind of Egyptian landscape—tame, barren, and insipid—so terribly vapid and flatly horrid, when compared with the Salvatoresque hills and glens of their native land—the naked plain, bounded by occasional hillocks at vast distances—the toilsome march of the Highlanders continued. Yet there are luxuriant plains in some parts of the Land of Goshen.

Sometimes date-trees were seen, with trunks bare and slender, or mud-walled wigwams on the causeways; but it is a land that, with all its vast antiquity and religious associations, of which no poet has ever sung. 'What, indeed, could an Egyptian sing on the reed of Gesner or Theocritus?' asks Volney. 'He sees neither limpid streams, nor verdant lawns, nor solitary caves; and is equally a stranger to valleys, mountain-sides, and impending rocks.' Miss Martineau is almost the only traveller who claims for Egypt the attributes of the picturesque and varied in beauty!

And there were incessant swarms of scorpions, gnats, and more especially of flies—one of the many plagues of Egypt—which were so numerous that it was impossible to eat the dry ration biscuits without the chance of swallowing these pests also.

More than once, on the summit of a sandy hillock, there would appear, sharply defined against the clear blue sky, the picturesque figure of a mounted Bedouin, with his white burnous floating about him, a tall, reed-like spear, or a long musket slung by his side—a man unchanged in aspect or ideas from his nomadic forefathers, who saw the mailed Crusaders toiling on their way to Jerusalem—gazing with stolid wonder at the marching columns in a costume so strange, with bare knees, white sporrans, and kilts of dark-green tartan waving at every step; while on the hot and breathless air there was borne towards him the hoarse and shrill music of the pipes—the same wild music that, eighty years before, woke the echoes of the Pyramids and of the streets of Grand Cairo.

But what land in the world has not echoed to their music?

All our soldiers were more or less full of enthusiasm—anxious to get at Arabi—to grapple with the enemy, 'and get the business over,' as they phrased it; though it is doubtful if they quite believed in Sir Garnet Wolseley's apparently boastful prediction that the war would be ended by the 16th of that month, September.

In the exuberance of their spirits, many chorussed merrily when the pipes ceased, which was seldom, lilting as, a writer says, only 'the song-loving Scots' can do, as in the days when their country was redolent of song, when the milk-maid sang some old chant to her cows in field or byre, when the house-wife span at her ingle-neuk, when the reapers filled the harvest-field with melody, and the ploughman in winter when he turned the glistening furrows over the lea.

And now and anon the Bedouin scouts would wheel their horses round and vanish ere our cavalry could reach them to bear to Tel-el-Kebir the terrible tidings, as some said, 'that devils in petticoats' were coming, and, as others asserted, 'devils with beards down to their knees.'

Every man had one hundred rounds of ball-cartridge and his bottle filled with water from the Canal, called by the soldiers jocularly 'Egyptian soup,' from its hue and quality; thus a ration of rum, when it was served out, proved very acceptable, though some there were who did not much affect the cold tea, and Allan could not help smiling at a little argument that ensued between Corporal MacSnish of his company and one of the Scripture-readers, who, to their honour, be it said, kept up with the troops, went under fire with them, and after the conflict did all in their power to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded.

'Don't grumble, corporal,' said the Scripture-reader, 'though I know it is a soldier's privilege. He who paints the lilies of the field and feeds the sparrow will supply all you want.'

'Oich, I hope so, whateffer; but a corporal of the Black Watch is worth a good many sparrows, I can tell you, and as for the cold tea—ugh!'

'Better for you than all the liquor in the world, my man,' said the Scripture-reader.

'Even the worst whusky, whateffer, would be better to my mind; and we have Scripture for it that we should not drink water alone.'

'Indeed!' said the reader, doubtfully.

'Yes,' urged the corporal, who knew his Bible well; 'are we not told in Maccabees, chapter xv. and verse 39, that "it is hurtful to drink wine or water alone, as wine mingled with water is pleasant and delighteth the taste?"'

'For all that,' replied the Scripture-reader, 'I agree with Sir Garnet that water is alone the drink for man.'

'Yet the only man that Holy Writ records as ever asking for it, didn't get it.'

'Who was he?'

'Dives, and we all know where he was then. Scripture again!' said the corporal, with a smirk on his sharp Highland face, and thinking he had decidedly the best of the argument.

During a mid-day halt on this march, some of the troops constructed out of blankets and rifles with fixed bayonets erections like gipsy tents, to shelter them from the blazing heat of the sun, and a singular kind of encampment they presented.

With ship biscuits and tinned meat and some brandy to flavour their cold tea, Allan Graham, Cameron, Carslogie, and some other officers of the corps made themselves as comfortable as they could under shelter of their impromptu tents, and many were even jolly, especially Carslogie, who was rather a noisy and irrepressible fellow.

Stretched on the sand with his tropical helmet tilted back on his head, he drank his 'cold tea,' as he called it, though it was stiff half-and-half grog, and proffered his cigar-case to all.

'Isn't this jolly!' he exclaimed. 'Instead of this, we might have been out in the blazing open.'

Then he struck up a verse of a song to the air of the 'Garb of Old Gaul,' and composed by an anonymous writer, though he hinted it was Mr. John Bright:—

    'They talk of a good time, when warfare shall cease,
    And the nations hobnob o'er a big pipe of peace,
    And the lion and the lamb in auriferous mead
    On bills of exchange in beatitude feed.
But keep your powder dry, my boys, and keep your bayonets keen;
The world can't do without us yet, nor will it soon, I ween!
Then stern and true, where work's to do, we'll do it as we can,
And shoulder to shoulder still march in the van!'

'The good time predicted seems a long way off yet,' he added, with a sigh, to find that the last of his grog was gone, for after a hot morning's march it was, as he said, 'quite a Sybaritish luxury.' 'Well, well, a little time will find us face to face with Arabi, and we shall exchange the fleshpots of Egypt for those of the old country.'

This was the 11th of September, and the march was resumed at five in the evening for the head-quarters at Kassassin, where the column found its tents pitched. Allan shared his with Cameron, and, like their comrades, they proceeded to make themselves as comfortable as they could; but it soon became known that on the morrow the Highland Brigade was to lead in the night attack upon the formidable entrenchments of Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir.

'The last bugle some of us may ever hear will sound at six to-morrow evening,' said Allan, as he and Cameron, after a picnic kind of repast, lay on the floor of the tent and smoked their Havanas, with their jackets open, and minus collars and ties, for the evening was hot then, though cold and dew came together the moment the sun went down, and then there was no light in the tent save those of the stars.

'Listen to Carslogie singing in his tent; no sombre reflections seem to come to him,' said Cameron.

'Some of us, of course, will lose the number of our mess, as the sailors say,' said Allan again, after a pause.

'Well, it is not a cheerful thought, Allan,' said Cameron; 'but life is not particularly rosy with me just now, so I am just the fellow to have a charmed one when under fire again to-morrow.'

'There is a history in all men's lives, Cameron, it is said. Well, there is a devil of a lot in mine—more than I care for.'

'You have long seemed rather low in spirit.'

'I have reason,' replied Allan, while that inexpressible longing to talk of himself and his sorrows, which seizes upon men now and then, came upon him, and he related to Cameron the whole story of his engagement with his cousin, his doubts and fears—the intrusions and outrageous insults put upon them both by Hawke Holcroft, who seemed to wield some degrading and mysterious power once—a power that was ended now; 'and,' he added, after his narrative was ended, 'I trust under heaven never to look upon her false fair face again!'

Cameron heard his strange story in silent amazement.

'Can all this not be explained?' he asked.

'I want no explanation; I have been degraded enough,' replied Allan, bitterly.

Cameron, strangely enough, had never, as yet, even to his early friend and comrade, made any reference to what the latter fully knew—his love for Eveline: and never once had her name escaped him during the long voyage in the Nepaul from Woolwich to Ismailia, nor even on the march towards the enemy.

Poor Cameron had thought, what was the use of speaking of that matter now, when all was hopeless—all over, and for ever, between them? But now, encouraged or melted by Allan Graham's new confidence in himself, he said,

'With reference to the risks we run tomorrow, I am glad that I set my house in order, did so, indeed, before we marched from Edinburgh.'

'How?'

'About Stratherroch, or what remains of it.'

'In what way, Evan?'

We must all die sooner or later—a soldier sooner, perhaps, than a civilian; so by will, if aught happens to me—I have left the old place—tower and hill, wood, glen, and water, to—to Eveline—I mean to Lady Paget.'

'Good heavens! To Eveline!' exclaimed Allan, his face full of a surprise that was unseen in the starlight and darkened bell tent.'

'Yes.'

'Have you no one else?'

'None save my brother Duncan, who has himself a large fortune—none whom I love as—as I love her,' added Cameron, in a very broken voice.

'Poor Evan! I always suspected—indeed, knew of it.'

'You did?'

'Yes, Evan.'

'And—and your sister.'

'She loved you.'

'My God!—yet was sacrificed to another.'

They wrung each other's hands in the dark, and both remained silent for a time, each full of his own thoughts, and in the gloom seeing nothing but the end of the other's cigar.

'Sir Paget is so rich that he will think little of Stratherroch, even when cleared of its heavy encumbrances,' said Evan.

'But he may think rather wrathfully of the donor, though I trust and hope he may never get it. And now, good-night, Evan. I have to parade the inlying picquet. Get some sleep if you can, old fellow—we'll need all our metal on the morrow.'

And Allan, taking his dirk and claymore, hurried away full of thought, for, if his friend really fell, this odd bequest of Stratherroch might compromise his sister with her elderly spouse, and it was impossible to make any change, circumstanced as they were then.

'It is said that "every man has a history, and that every man outlives it,"' thought Allan; 'I wonder how it will be with poor Evan and me. And now to parade the picquet, with that paragon of sergeant-majors, M'Neill. Picquets parade at sunset—here, however, the sun sets before we have time to think of it. But the fight to-morrow will be to Evan and me—for a time, at least—what opium was to De Quincey and the author of the "Ancient Mariner." Fool, fool, fool that I am, to think of her here at all!'

He left Evan Cameron inspired by a mingled emotion of gratitude and satisfaction, for Evan now knew and felt certain that, had Eveline been in Allan's gift, she might have been his bride ere this; and with this conviction in his mind he strove to court sleep, while roused ever and anon, as in India, by the wild cry of the jackal.

Sir Garnet Wolseley had now come up, the brigade of guards also, and the whole strength of the British force was concentrated at Kassassin, the place of our cavalry victory, where our horse so gallantly charged and swept, sword in hand, through the brigades of Egyptian guns in the dark.

With the next day's dawn those officers, who, like the Master of Aberfeldie, Cameron, and others, advanced beyond a palm wood that grew near the camp, could distinctly see with their field-glasses, against the bright orange tint shed on the sky by the up-coming sun, the strong earthworks of Tel-el-Kebir crowning the hillocks, and manned by more than twenty thousand regular troops—the flower of the army of Arabi, who commanded them in person; and when the sun rose higher the infantry could be seen lining the trenches, with all their serried bayonets flashing in the sunshine.

Beyond these formidable earthworks the Egyptian camp could be seen in the distance spreading far away an almost unbroken line of tents, which, if they had all occupants, betokened the presence of a very great force indeed, as more than one reconnoitring officer remarked to another.

Many were full of disappointment lest there might be no fighting after all, as the preceding morning the sound of heavy firing had been heard in the rear of the Egyptian position, and there seemed a prospect of internal dissension facilitating a dissolution of the whole enemy's force.

Others more wisely suggested that Arabi was only practising his artillery to obtain the range in case his position was turned and attacked in the rear, though some asserted that the deep booming of the guns was too steady and continuous for mere practice of that nature.

The British troops had only a five days' reserve of provisions, but it was generally known that the country was rich and full of subsistence beyond the lines of Tel-el-Kebir, and that we would carry these no man under Wolseley doubted. Moreover, he had with him sixty of the finest pieces of cannon in the world.

The day passed on, and evening drew nigh, the eventful day of the 12th September, when every man was prepared to 'do or die!' Higher and higher beat every heart. At six p.m. the 'fall in' was sounded far along the lines, and quietly, as if upon parade at home, that stately soldier M'Neill, sergeant-major of the Black Watch, paraded and posted the markers for the various companies of his corps, 'dressing' them with his usual accuracy.

The orders were brief but emphatic. Perfect silence was to be maintained for the march, and, as the place was to be carried in grand old British style at the point of the bayonet, on no account was an order to load to be issued.

Each man carried a hundred rounds of ball with one day's provisions, and his tin water-bottle filled with cold tea. The tents were struck, and the baggage piled for conveyance to the rear, in case of a reverse, which no man thought possible.

The blood-red sun went swiftly down westward of the point of attack beyond Zagazig, darkness fell as swiftly over the desert and the triple lines of canal that flow between both Mahsameh and Abassa, and then our army, fourteen thousand strong, including foot, horse, and artillery, began in silence the midnight march for Tel-el-Kebir, the last march as it proved to many a brave young fellow.

As the regiment moved off, Allan thought of Evan Cameron's communication over-night, and an irrepressible regret and anxiety took possession of him, as he had an unaccountable presentiment that his friend was doomed to fall in the coming strife. Of himself he never thought at all.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.