Though his career as a soldier was at an end; though his father, his mother and Helena were gone from him; though he had lost everything he had loved and been proud of; though the ways of life seemed to be for ever closed to him and the world had no use for him any longer, and he was beaten and broken and alone, there was One who was with him still—there was God!
"With our God is forgiveness," and in the immensity and majesty of His compassion, the Almighty had willed it that he, even he, might yet do something.
He would join the forces of the new prophet!
Why not? Their cause was a good one. It was not a crusade of Egypt against England, but of right against wrong, of justice against injustice, of belief against unbelief, of God against the world.
Hold! A traitor to his Church and country?
No, for this was the great universal war—the war of an empire that had no boundaries, the holy war that had been waged all the earth over and all the ages through—the war of religion and truth against the powers of darkness and death.
So thinking God's hand was leading him, he saw himself—white man and Christian and British soldier though he was—following Ishmael Ameer into the desert, working by his side, and then coming back at last when his sin had been forgiven and his redemption won.
"Yet wait! What about my father?" he thought.
But he could not think of his father at the same time as he thought of his return. He remembered his mother, though, and saw himself taking her in his arms and saying, "Mother, I've come back to you, as you always said I would. I only meant to do what was right, and if I did what was wrong, God has pardoned me."
And then far off, very far, hardly daring to see itself yet, in his awakened soul there was a hope of Helena. Somehow and somewhere he would meet her again—he knew not how or where or when, but Heaven knew everything, and the end would be with God.