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“Your messenger is in the anteroom,” said Dicky with a sudden thought.

“Who is it, son of the high hills?”

“The lady at Assiout–she who is such a friend to Gordon as I am to thee, Highness.”

“She whose voice and hand are against slavery?”

“Even so. It is good that she return to England there to remain. Send her.”

“Why is she here?” The Khedive looked suspiciously at Dicky, for it seemed that a plot had been laid.

Thereupon, Dicky told the Khedive the whole story, and not in years had Ismail’s face shown such abandon of humour.

“By the will of God, but it shall be!” he said. “She shall marry Kingsley Bey, and he shall go free.”

“But not till she has seen him and mourned over him in his cell, with the mud floor and the balass of water.”

The Khedive laughed outright and swore in French. “And the cakes of dourha! I will give her as a parting gift the twenty slaves, and she shall bring her great work to a close in the arms of a slaver. It is worth a fortune.”

“It is worth exactly ten thousand pounds to your Highness–ten thousand pounds neither more nor less.”

Ismail questioned.

“Kingsley Bey would make last tribute of thus much to your Highness.”

Ismail would not have declined ten thousand centimes. “Malaish!” he said, and called for coffee, while they planned what should be said to his Ambassadress from Assiout.

She came trembling, yet determined, and she left with her eyes full of joyful tears. She was to carry the news of his freedom and the freedom of his slaves to Kingsley Bey, and she–she, was to bear to Gordon, the foe of slavery, the world’s benefactor, the message that he was to come and save the Soudan. Her vision was enlarged, and never went from any prince a more grateful supplicant and envoy.

Donovan Pasha went with her to the room with the mud floor where Kingsley Bey was confined.

“I owe it all to you,” she said as they hastened across the sun-swept square. “Ah, but you have atoned! You have done it all at once, after these long years.”

“Well, well, the time is ripe,” said Dicky piously. They found Kingsley Bey reading the last issue of the French newspaper published in Cairo. He was laughing at some article in it abusive of the English, and seemed not very downcast; but at a warning sign and look from Dicky, he became as grave as he was inwardly delighted at seeing the lady of Assiout.

As Kingsley Bey and the Ambassadress shook hands, Dicky said to her: “I’ll tell him, and then go.” Forthwith he said: “Kingsley Bey, son of the desert, and unhappy prisoner, the prison opens its doors. No more for you the cold earth for a bed–relieved though it be by a sleeping-mat. No more the cake of dourha and the balass of Nile water. Inshallah, you are as free as a bird on the mountain top, to soar to far lands and none to say thee nay.”

Kingsley Bey caught instantly at the meaning lying beneath Dicky’s whimsical phrases, and he deported himself accordingly. He looked inquiringly at the Ambassadress, and she responded:

“We come from the Khedive, and he bids us carry you his high considerations–“

“Yes, ‘high considerations,’ he said,” interjected Dicky with his eye towards a fly on the ceiling.

“And to beg your company at dinner to-night.”

“And the price?” asked Kingsley, feeling his way carefully, for he wished no more mistakes where this lady was concerned. At Assiout he had erred; he had no desire to be deceived at Cairo. He did not know how he stood with her, though her visit gave him audacious hopes. Her face was ruled to quietness now, and only in the eyes resolutely turned away was there any look which gave him assurance. He seemed to hear her talking from the veranda that last day at Assiout; and it made him discreet at least.