Fielding also ought to have a few days clear away from this constant pressure and fighting, and the sounds and the smells of death; but it could not be yet. Therefore, to humour them both was the only thing, and Norman's was the worse case. After all, they had got a system of sanitary supervision, they had the disease by the throat, and even in Cairo the administration was waking up a little. The crisis would soon pass perhaps, if a riot could be stayed and the natives give up their awful fictions of yellow handkerchiefs, poisoned sweetmeats, deadly limewash, and all such nonsense. So Dicky said now, "All right, Norman; come along. You'll seize that fessikh, and I'll bring back Mustapha Kali. We'll work him as he has never worked in his life. He'll be a living object-lesson. We'll have all Upper Egypt on the banks of the Nile waiting to see what happens to Mustapha." Dicky laughed, and Fielding responded feebly; but Norman was looking at the hospital with a look too bright for joy, too intense for despair. "I found ten in a corner of a cane-field yesterday," he said dreamily. "Four were dead, and the others had taken the dead men's smocks as covering." He shuddered. "I see nothing but limewash, smell nothing but carbolic. It's got into my head. Look here, old man, I can't stand it. I'm no use," he added pathetically to Fielding. "You're right enough, if you'll not take yourself so seriously," said Dicky jauntily. "You mustn't try to say, 'Alone I did it.' Come along. Fill your tobacco-pouch. There are the horses. I'm ready." He turned to Fielding. "It's going to be a stiff ride, Fielding. But I'll do it in twenty-four hours, and bring Mustapha Kali too--for a consideration." He paused, and Fielding said, with an attempt at playfulness: "Name your price." "That you play for me, when I get back, the overture of 'Tannhauser'. Play it, mind; no tuning-up sort of thing, like last Sunday's performance. Practise it, my son! Is it a bargain? I'm not going to work for nothing a day." He watched the effect of his words anxiously, for he saw how needful it was to divert Fielding's mind in the midst of all this "plague, pestilence, and famine." For days Fielding had not touched the piano, the piano which Mrs. Henshaw, widow of Henshaw of the Buffs, had insisted on his taking with him a year before, saying that it would be a cure for loneliness when away from her. During the first of these black days Fielding had played intermittently for a few moments at a time, and Dicky had noticed that after playing he seemed in better spirits. But lately the disease of a ceaseless unrest, of constant sleepless work, was on him. He had not played for near a week, saying, in response to Dicky's urging, that there was no time for music. And Dicky knew that presently there would be no time to eat, and then no time to sleep; and then, the worst!