He grasped the hand of Allan, and laughed at the mingled expression of blank amazement and dismay he read there, emotions which were gradually replaced by those of satisfaction and delight. 'I was supposed to be dead and buried in the sand, like Lieutenant O'Brien in "Peter Simple," but, unlike Lieutenant O'Brien, I was not discovered by a pretty girl treading on my nose,' said Cameron, laughing, and in reply to some inarticulate words of Allan, on the side of whose bed he seated himself. 'Tell me--tell me about it,' said Allan, huskily. 'You could scarcely have left me ere I began to recover from the syncope--for a syncope it was--only you and Sergeant Farquharson were not doctors enough to discover that it was so. A sense of suffocation made me struggle up and throw off my blanket and the covering of light sand in which you had so kindly tucked me; and as the blanket fell from my face the dew refreshed me, and I perceived in a moment the fatal mistake into which you had all fallen. Dark though it was, the detachment was still in sight, and I could hear your voices; I tried to call out, but lacked the power to do so, and a horror fell upon me, with insensibility after a time, and, when I recovered, I found a group of mounted Bedouins gazing at me in stupid wonder to see a living man half buried in the sand.' 'But how was it that we totally failed to find all trace of the spot where we interred you?' 'How strange the question sounds as you frame it,' said Cameron, smiling. 'A sandstorm came on, and must have obliterated the landmarks.' 'We heard shots as we fell back.' 'The Bedouins fired at something--I know not what. They proved to belong to a friendly tribe--Bedouins of that kind who become petty merchants wandering over the country, trading in such goods as they can easily transport from place to place, and fortunate--most fortunate--was it for me that I fell just then into the hands of men so peacefully disposed.' 'And your wound?' 'Is healing fast, thank Heaven! They carefully redressed it, put me in a camel litter, and conveyed me to Abu Zabel on the canal, from whence I was sent, with others here, by boat to Ismailia on sick-leave for home. I heard of your having been carried off at Matarieh; some of our fellows who are in the wards told me so; but I was powerless to attempt your discovery in any way--too feeble almost to think, but the idea of your peril and too probably helpless butchery cut me to the heart.' 'Any news from home?' 'Home?' repeated Cameron. 'I mean of my people.' 'None, Allan, how should I hear of them?' 'True,' said Allan, wearily and sadly, and in the miserable weakness of his body, as a paroxysm of shivering came over him, almost doubting the evidence of his own senses.