“The Inspector of ... begs to inform you that he is quite sure that the robbers will be found in their hiding. When he received your word saying that you would attack them at this midnight his hand shivered with gladness and his heart was full of joy. He will be at the place of meeting with the horses at the time you say, but owing to his mother is about to die he hopes you will not need him to accompany you.” I must now be permitted to relate a few anecdotes concerning the children of Egypt, which will further display that quality of youthful simplicity which is usually so very engaging, and which leads more often to an internal convulsion than to an outburst of wrath. A curious fact in regard to the Egyptian peasant is that, in a manner of the little child, he seldom knows his own age. A lad with a budding moustache will tell you in all seriousness that he is forty, and a wizened old man will, with many gestures indicating his uncertainty, declare himself to be “perhaps about thirty.” A true story is told of an old native who was taken before the magistrate on a charge of stealing six buns from a pastrycook’s shop. Asked what his age was, he replied that he thought he was about 112. The magistrate turned to the clerk and inquired whether any previous offence was recorded against the prisoner. The clerk replied that there seemed to be nothing against him--at any rate not for the last hundred years. The magistrate then addressed the old man once more, and asked him whether he had no grandchildren or other descendants with whom he could live and who could keep him out of mischief. “Oh,” replied the prisoner, “I am well enough looked after, thank you. I live with mother.” A somewhat similar tale comes from the upper reaches of the Nile. In the Sudân there are always a large number of camp-followers who do odd jobs for the troops stationed in outlying places, and these men receive daily rations from the War Office, the amount varying according to the age of the individual. A short time ago a grey-haired native sergeant of many years’ service asked his commanding officer whether the rations of one of these hangers-on might be increased from those of a boy to those of an adult. “Why?” asked the officer. “Is the man more than eighteen years old?” “Oh yes, I think he _must_ be,” said the sergeant, after some hesitation. “He is my father.”