And as he walked home, he remembered everything which had been a puzzle to him. Being still weak, he now grew as much excited as before he had been apathetic, and had his uncle been at home he would have gone to him with the whole story at once. But the sheikh was away, superintending the drill of certain European ruffians in the Mahdi's service who were to man some Krupp guns taken from the Egyptians, and Harry had a forced respite in which to collect his ideas and frame them in the manner best calculated to gain his uncle's attention and assistance. And now his anxiety about those at home who had no doubt long mourned him as dead grew more poignant, and remembering his uncle's affection for his sister, he regretted not having confided in him and begged him to get a letter conveyed to some point sufficiently civilised to have a post. He tried to find out from Fatima how long he had been laid up at the fakir's residence, and at first she was puzzled. But at last she gave him a clue. "The Nile had risen and gone back," she said, "when you were brought to us as dead. It rose again, and fell again, and now it will soon rise once more." Two years! Was it possible? Nearly two years! And he wondered whether his people had gone into mourning for him, or if they still hoped on. He next made inquiries about Daireh, setting Fatima to gossip for him and tell him the result. He seemed to bear a shockingly bad character, and to be very unpopular. The fact was that he was a money-lender, and his extortions caused him to be hated. Harry was glad of this, since it promised to make his task easier. The Sheikh Burrachee returned, and was rejoiced to find his nephew so much improved in health. Harry took the first opportunity of opening his budget. "Do you mind my speaking to you in English?" he said. "I have got to say things which I should find it difficult to explain in a foreign language, which I have very imperfectly picked up, and which may not have idioms answering to the English." "I do not love the English tongue," said the sheikh, using it, however. "But what things do you allude to?" "Family matters, affecting my mother and all of us--you, perhaps." "When I last went to England," said the sheikh, "I took a final farewell of all relatives, and of everything belonging to the country from which I shook off the dust on my feet, you only excepted, for I saw that you, too, were called out of the seething hotbed of corruption, which is called civilisation, to the natural life of man. Why disturb the ashes of the buried past?" "I love my mother," replied Harry; "and you, her brother, once loved her too." His uncle bowed his head. "True," he said; "speak on."