When, at last, he was able to get about again, which, was not till December had ended and a new year had dawned, he found, somewhat to his surprise, that the sheik, if harsh, was just in all his dealings. One night he and the sheik were sitting over the camp fire under the shadow of the very rock which had been the scene of St. Just's narrow escape from death, when the sheik spoke concerning that adventure.
"If I had wished to kill you, I could easily have done so. You must not suppose that my men are, as a rule, the bad marksmen they proved themselves on that occasion. If you had been killed, I had avenged the affront your General had put upon me, and, indirectly, upon the tribe, by trying to bribe me to become his ally. If you survived the shots, you could carry my answer, and, possibly, save the life of one of my own tribe, whom your General might slay for being the bearer of unpalatable news. That you would be hit fatally I expected; and how Mahmoud, who, though but eighteen, is a good marksman, came to miss, I know not, though he only failed by chance.
"Chance, did I say? Nay, my son," and here the old man laid his hand softly upon his listener's shoulder; "It was fate. Allah has willed that you should live for greater things. Therefore give praise to him."
Towards the end of January the whole camp, including St. Just, who was mounted on a camel and closely guarded, made a move, traveling northwards towards Cairo. After journeying for about a month, a halt was made at a group of stone tombs, said to be—in common with so many burial places in Egypt whose records are lost—the tombs of Kings.
During their stay at this oasis of the tombs, St. Just began to pick up health and strength. Here, too, he improved his acquaintance with the old sheik, and the more he learned of him the better he liked him. Strange to say, too, the boy Mahmoud, he who had fired the last shot at him on the rock, began to make friendly advances towards him, and expressed a wish to wait on him. At first St. Just was suspicious of his motives, and watched him carefully. But, in the end, he satisfied himself that the lad had really become attached to him; so, with the Sheik's permission, he accepted his services, and, as the result, found that he could have engaged no truer or more faithful servant.
The monotony of St. Just's life at this time made him dwell with tenderness and regret on the memory of the busy time he had passed at Cairo, and, in particular, of the beautiful half-bred Arab girl with whom he had been so much thrown.
He knew that his love for her was no transient passion, but the abiding affection of a life-time; absence, in his case, so far from inducing forgetfulness, had made the heart grow fonder. With her, his life would be rose-colored, like the desert sand around him when the sun's rays were poured upon it; without her, like the same desert at night before the moonbeams had illumined it, cold and gray and gloomy.
Inwardly chafing at the enforced helplessness that kept him from his love, and wondering whether they were ever again to meet, he was much surprised and no less delighted when the sheik one day told him that, in the middle of March, he was to set out for Cairo with his, the sheik's, reply to Buonaparte's letter; and, further, that he would be furnished with an escort of twenty men for his protection. It now wanted about three weeks to the time.
One day, when it wanted but four to the time when he was to set out, he was aroused from his slumbers, while dawn yet struggled with the darkness, by the sheik himself, who bade him get up quickly and dress quickly.
"Before the camp wakes to life we must be on our way," he told St. Just; but whither they were bound he gave no intimation.