"Know you! Of course I do, just as if you were my brother; but just now I forget whether it is tinned meats or bullocks. By Jove! Is it possible! Harry Forsyth! And how are you, old fellow? One would think Korti was the centre of the world, for every fellow comes here. I say, who was to know you dressed up like that? Well, and what are you up to? Have you found that will yet?" "Yes." "Nonsense! And _got_ it?" "Yes." "You must tell me all about that. I was just going to get something to eat; come along and share it. You have fallen upon the right boy for grub, I can tell you; I am in the provisioning department just for the moment, and there is no order against looking after number one." "And you found your uncle who had turned wild man?" observed Tom Strachan, as the two filled and lit their pipes after a capital repast. "Yes, poor fellow!" answered Harry. "Without him I don't suppose I should have got the will." "And where did you run your Egyptian clerk to earth?" "At El Obeid, and we got it out of him with the kourbash." "Of course; you know the cynical saying here. As Nature provides an antidote growing in the same district with every poison, all we have to do is to learn how to seek it. So when the Egyptian was placed on the Nile the hippopotamus was created to provide whips to rule him with. But you must tell your story at greater length to-morrow morning to a friend of mine who is lying wounded here, waiting for a chance to be transported to Cairo. For I have a lot of things to see to; reports to make out--you would never believe; and must run away presently." Next morning Harry Forsyth called on Strachan at the time and place appointed, and was taken by him to the hospital which had been established near the banks of the river. They found the friend of Strachan's they proposed to visit lying on a bamboo couch under an awning, over which again spread a palm-tree. There was a pleasant view of the river and the country, and altogether it was as cheery a spot as could have been selected. There was a visitor already with the invalid: a soldier who was standing near, his head leaning on his rifle. "I tell ye what it is," he was saying; "I'll say nothing about flesh wounds and bullet wounds since it worries ye, but ye have the best luck of it to be wounded at all, in my thinking. Won't ye be getting out of this baste of a country at once, and shan't we poor beggars what's whole and sound have to stop here and stew, and be ate up with the flies entirely? I tell ye so long as ye aint crippled it's the best chance to be a bit hurt, and get away, now there's no more fighting to be done. And they say there will perhaps be some real fun going on in India, out Afghanistan way, against the Rooshians; and we will be left here with the flies and crocodiles. But here's the officer coming. I'll come and see you again, when I'm off duty."