'The Bedouins fired at something—I know not what. They proved to belong to a friendly tribe—Bedouins of that kind who become petty merchants wandering over the country, trading in such goods as they can easily transport from place to place, and fortunate—most fortunate—was it for me that I fell just then into the hands of men so peacefully disposed.'
'And your wound?'
'Is healing fast, thank Heaven! They carefully redressed it, put me in a camel litter, and conveyed me to Abu Zabel on the canal, from whence I was sent, with others here, by boat to Ismailia on sick-leave for home. I heard of your having been carried off at Matarieh; some of our fellows who are in the wards told me so; but I was powerless to attempt your discovery in any way—too feeble almost to think, but the idea of your peril and too probably helpless butchery cut me to the heart.'
'Any news from home?'
'Home?' repeated Cameron.
'I mean of my people.'
'None, Allan, how should I hear of them?'
'True,' said Allan, wearily and sadly, and in the miserable weakness of his body, as a paroxysm of shivering came over him, almost doubting the evidence of his own senses.
Hawke Holcroft had turned up in the camp of Zeid-el-Ourdeh—that was startling enough in all conscience; but that Evan Cameron, whom he and Sergeant Farquharson had so regretfully buried in the sandy grave—the grave of which no trace could be found—should be alive, well, and chatting with him there, and manipulating a cigar, outheroded fiction!
The wonderful reappearance of the supposed dead Cameron was the intelligence in the papers which Olive Raymond and Eveline did not see.