Their brother, when they brought him into the house, was very poor and weak, and looked as if he were an older man than either of them. But he was full of triumph and good cheer.
"Boys," he said, "I told you I would not come back to you until I had done a great deed. I have done it."
He never told them what it was, and they were contented with knowing that he had taken rank above all other men down in the great world yonder.
He lived for more than a year. It was a very happy year. The brothers had waited long for it. They listened from morning until night to his boastful little stories with undoubting faith and pleasure. As for their hero, he felt that he had made his mark: he had his circle of admirers and limitless applause: what could life give him more?
The little man wasted away gradually. Just at the last he looked up with an assuring nod to Richard and Hugh: "You'll not be long behind me, boys. But I'll be there before: I'll straighten matters a bit for you." And so he went out with an airy swagger into the other world.
A DAY AT TANTAH.
"Tantah, a town of Lower Egypt, in the Delta province and 5 miles S. W. of Menoof, on the Damietta branch of the Nile. It has a government school."
This, and nothing more, from the Gazetteer. It does not promise much, and yet Tantah is an important place, and, in spite of the Gazetteer, is not on the Damietta branch, but in the very heart of the Delta, among the smaller water-courses. On this account it is not often visited by travellers.