"No, my lad," said the Hakim, as the position was discussed, for the twentieth time perhaps; "it is horrible, but we have the choice of being friends with these people or their foes. As friends they treat us admirably; as foes it means cruel slavery." "And perhaps death," said the professor. "You must bear it, Frank, though I know it is hard." "It is terrible," said Frank bitterly, "for I have hard work to conceal my dislike to this man." "But it has brought about what we so earnestly prayed for," said the doctor. "You have won for yourself the permission to go almost wherever you wish." "Yes," said Frank bitterly; "but I get no farther, and I am once more beginning to feel that we have come to the wrong place. We must go to Khartoum." "Ibrahim has, I know, worked hard for us; but he gets no tidings," said the doctor. "None," said the professor; "but still we must not give up hope. We shall have to petition the Emir after all. How long will it be before your patient can be left, Robert, my son? Let's see, it is nearly a month since you performed the operation." "Four weeks to-morrow," replied the doctor; "and he is rapidly getting strong." "But does not seem very grateful." "No," said the doctor, smiling. "He is ten times as civil to Frank here as he is to me." "You ought to have tried Frank's black dye," said the professor, laughing. "Well," said the doctor, quite seriously, "if I had known as much as I know now I certainly should have followed his example. You see, the best of us at home look down upon a black skin as being worn by a lower type of man." "Yes," replied the professor, "while here a white skin is the mark of the beast. Fortunately, I am getting of a good, wholesome tan colour." "You are as dark now as Ibrahim," said the doctor, looking at his companion searchingly. "Am I? Well, I suppose I am. So much the better. I want to be as free to come and go as Frank here. I'd say that it is terribly weary work being kept in as I am if it were not that the poor Hakim here is ten times worse off." "And bears it all without a murmur," said Frank, turning to his friend with a look full of the gratitude he felt. "I don't mind at all," said the doctor, smiling. "You two need not fidget about me. I pity you." "Why so?" said Frank wonderingly. "Because I am so busy with my profession that the time goes quickly, and I am always gaining fresh experience in surgery; while you two can do nothing but fret and think." "Don't speak, Frank," whispered the professor warningly; "someone coming." It was not the Emir or his son, nor anyone to summon the Hakim to his patient's side, but the Sheikh returning from one of his rambles about the place, and the professor turned to him eagerly, for the old man's face suggested that he had something to tell. "News, Excellencies; it is the common report that the Egyptian army is coming up the river. I hear it on all sides."