"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: