Allan maintained a grim silence, and, though his heart was full of genuine grief, the remarks of his soldiers pleased him.
'Those who have lived with us and died as he has done will never be forgotten in the regiment, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson.
'Mourn for the mourner, I have heard my mother say in Gaelic, and not for the dead, as they are at rest and we in tears,' said Donald, as he hooked-on his water-bottle.
'He has none to mourn for him now but one, and she is far away,' remarked Allan, with a swelling in his throat. 'And now fall in, lads.'
The Highlanders marched on their way back to Matarieh in silence, impressed by the recent episode; for, if gallant and reckless fellows in battle, they were thoughtful and full of sorrow for the brave young officer they had lost.
A shot or two, fired apparently at random in the distance, sparkling out redly amid the obscurity, showed that the Bedouins were following them up, and must have passed over the very place where Cameron lay.
The silence of the starry night was upon the world then—upon the ridgy summits of Jebel Mokattam, and darkness now enfolded the desert where Evan Cameron lay in such awful loneliness, without even the grim companionship of the dead—the last Cameron of the old fighting line of Stratherroch.
Two days after, with an ambulance waggon, Sergeant Farquharson, and some of his men, Allan went along the line of the old railway from Matarieh to the place where they had left the body—a place marked in their memory by the presence of two large stones and some shrubs near the embankment—but of these they could find no trace, though they searched for hours, believing they might have passed them or miscalculated the distance.
Nothing was to be seen about the real or supposed spot but sand, smooth and drifted sand everywhere. Thus Allan could but come to the sorrowful conclusion that some species of sand-storm must have swept from the desert south-eastward between the mountain ranges, and buried every trace of the hastily-made grave.