"Others have done as well," the officer laughed. "One of the brigade staff bought a horse for a pound from Burleigh, who had given forty for it at Cairo. There was no help for it. They could not take horses down. Besides, it is not their loss, after all. The newspapers can afford to pay for them. They must have been coining money, of late."
"That reconciles me," Gregory laughed. "I did not think of the correspondents' expenses being paid by the papers."
"I don't know anything about their arrangements, but it stands to reason that it must be so, in a campaign like this. In an ordinary war, a man can calculate what his outlay might be; but on an expedition of this kind, no one could foretell what expenses he might have to incur.
"Besides, the Sirdar has saved the newspapers an enormous expenditure. The correspondents have been rigidly kept down to messages of a few hundred words; whereas, if they had had their own way, they would have sent down columns. Of course, the correspondents grumbled, but I have no doubt their employers were very well pleased, and the newspapers must have saved thousands of pounds, by this restriction."
"You are back sooner than I expected," General Hunter said, when Gregory went in and reported his arrival. "It is scarce a week since you left."
"Just a week, sir. Everything went smoothly, and I was but three or four hours at Hebbeh."
"And did you succeed in your search?"
"Yes, sir. I most fortunately found a man who had hidden a pocketbook he had taken from the body of one of the white men who were murdered there. There was nothing in it but old papers and, when Brackenbury's expedition approached, he had hidden it away; and did not give it a thought, until I enquired if he knew of any papers, and other things, connected with those on board the steamer. He at once took me to the place where he had hidden it, under a great stone, and it turned out to be the notebook and journals of my father; who was, as I thought possible, the white man who had arrived at Khartoum, a short time before the place was captured by the Dervishes, and who had gone down in the steamer that carried Colonel Stewart."
"Well, Hilliard," the General said, kindly, "even the certain knowledge of his death is better than the fear that he might be in slavery. You told me you had no remembrance of him?"
"None, sir; but of course, my mother had talked of him so often, and had several photographs of him--the last taken at Cairo, before he left--so that I almost seem to have known him. However, I do feel it as a relief to know that he is not, as I feared was remotely possible, a slave among the Baggara. But I think it is hard that, after having gone through two years of trials and sufferings, he should have been murdered on his way home."