Drinking the water of the Nile, eating the crumbs of dourha bread she had brought from the hospital, getting an onion from a field, chewing shreds of sugarcane, hiding by day and trudging on by night, hourly growing weaker, she struggled towards Beni Souef. Fifty--forty--thirty--ten-- five miles! Oh! the last two days, her head so hot and her brain bursting, and a thousand fancies swimming before her eyes, her heart fluttering, fluttering--stopping, going on--stopping, going on. It was only the sound of the river--the Nile, Mother of Egypt, crooning to her disordered spirit, which kept her on her feet. Five miles, four miles, three miles, two, and then--she never quite remembered how she came to the hut where she was born. Two miles--two hours of incredible agony, now running, now leaning against a palm tree, now dropping to her knees, now fighting on and on, she came at last to the one spot in the world where she could die in peace. As she staggered, stumbled, through the village, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, saw her. He did not dare speak to her, for had he not killed her father, and had he not bought himself free of punishment from the Mudir? So he ran to old Fatima and knocked upon her door with his naboot, crying: "In the name of Allah get thee to the hut of Wassef the camel-driver!" Thus it was that Soada, in her agony, heard a voice say out of the infinite distance: "All praise to Allah, he hath even now the strength of a year-old child!" IV That night at sunset, as Soada lay upon the sheepskin spread for her, with the child nestled between her arm and her breast, a figure darkened the doorway, and old Fatima cried out: "Mahommed Selim!" With a gasping sound Soada gathered the child quickly to her breast, and shrank back to the wall. This surely was the ghost of Mahommed Selim-- this gaunt, stooping figure covered with dust. "Soada, in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, Soada, beautiful one!" Mahommed Selim, once the lithe, the straight, the graceful, now bent, awkward, fevered, all the old daring gone from him, stood still in the middle of the room, humbled before the motherhood in his sight. "Brother of jackals," cried old Fatima, "what dost thou here? What dost thou here, dog of dogs!" She spat at him. He took no notice. "Soada," he said eagerly, prayerfully, and his voice, though hoarse, was softer than she had ever heard it. "Soada, I have come through death to thee--Listen, Soada! At night, when sleep was upon the barrack-house, I stole out to come to thee. My heart had been hard. I had not known how much I loved thee--" Soada interrupted him. "What dost thou know of love, Mahommed Selim? The blood of the dead cries from the ground."