"On Saturday, you say?"
"Yes, by the English steamer from Alexandria," said Hafiz, and then, eagerly, as if by a sudden thought, "Gordon!"
"Well?"
"Why shouldn't you go with her?"
Gordon shook his head.
"Why not? You'll be better by that time, and even if you're not ... You can't stay here for ever, and if you should fall into Macdonald's hands ... Besides, it's better in any case to let the War Office deal with you. They'll know everything before you reach London, and they'll see you've been in the right. You'll get justice there. Gordon, whereas here ... Then there's Helena, too—she's expecting you to join her—I'm sure she is—why shouldn't she, being friendless in Egypt now, and without anybody to go to even at home? And if the worst comes to the worst, and you have to leave the army, which God forbid, you'll be together at all events; she'll be with you anyway——"
"No, no, my boy, no!" cried Gordon; but Hafiz, full of his new hope, was not to be denied.
"You think it's impossible, but it isn't. Wallahi! Leave it to me. I'll arrange everything. Trust me!" he said, and in the warmth of his new resolve and the urgency of another errand, he got up to go.
The hundred and fifty Notables who had been arrested that morning before the Grand Cadi's house had been tried in the afternoon by a Special Tribunal, and despatched in the evening as dangerous rebels to the penal settlement in the Soudan. In protest against this injustice, as well as in lamentation for the loss of the students who had fallen at El Azhar, Ishmael Ameer had called upon the people of Cairo to follow him in procession to the Arabic cemetery outside the city, that there, without violence or offence, they might appeal from the barbarity of man to the judgment seat of God.
"They've gone with him, too," said Hafiz, "tens of thousands of them, so that the streets are deserted and half the shops shut up. Oh, they've not done with Ishmael yet—you'll see they have not! I must find out what he's doing, though, and come back and tell you what's going on. Meantime I'll say nothing about you—about knowing where you are, I mean—nothing to the Consul-General, nothing to my mother, nothing to anybody. Good-bye, old fellow! Leave yourself to me. I'll see you through."