This ceremony was scarcely over and the soldiers' dinner drum been beaten as a summons once more to bully-beef and hard biscuits, when a few boats brought up a detachment that marched at once into camp, where crowds gathered round them, as newcomers, to hear the last news from the rear, as letters were becoming scarce and newspapers just then still more so. A tall officer who was in command, with his canvas haversack, water-bottle, revolver-case, and jack-knife dangling about him, and whose new fighting suit of gray contrasted with the tattered attire of Roland and others, came towards them with impatient strides. CHAPTER L. THE START FOR KHARTOUM. 'Elliot, can this be Jack Elliot?' exclaimed Dick Mostyn as he screwed an eyeglass into his left eye. 'By Jove, he looks as if he had a bad toothache! What's up, Jack--lost your heart to some fair Cairene on the Shoubrah road--eh?' 'Jack Elliot it is!' said Roland, as the officer in question, after 'handing over' his detachment, made his way to the quarters of the South Staffordshire, 'you are just in time to go up the river with us. We are on the eve of starting for Khartoum.' 'At last!' 'Yes, at last,' continued Roland, as they grasped each other's hands, and the latter, when looking intently into his brother-in-law's face, detected a grave, grim, keen-eyed, harassed, and even haggard expression, which was all unlike the jovial, free, and open one he was wont to see there. 'Why, Jack,' said he, 'what the devil is up? Are you ill with fever, or what? Did you leave all well at home?' he added as he drew him aside. 'Well--yes--I suppose; but ill or well, thereby hangs a tale--a devil of a tale; but ere I can tell it, give me something to drink, old fellow--my water-bottle is empty--flask ditto, and then I shall relate that which you would rather not hear.' Jack unbuckled and flung his sword aside, while Roland hastily and impatiently supplied his wants, and then heard his brief, rapid, and startling story, winding up with the disappearance of Maude from the villa, and the incoherent and mysterious letter of farewell she left for him. 'After this--the deluge!' exclaimed Roland in the direst perplexity. 'God and my own heart only know what it cost me to start for the seat of war, leaving Maude, as I did, untraced, unfollowed, and undiscovered; but I had neither time nor an address to follow up,' sighed Elliot; 'and God only knows, too, how all this has cut her as it must have cut her--my poor darling--to the soul!'