David had been too late to stop it. It had grown to a head with revolution and conspiracy. For months before he came conscripts had been gathered in the Nile country from Rosetta to Assouan, and here and there, far south, tribes had revolted. He had come to power too late to devise another course. One day, when this war was over, he would go alone, save for a faithful few, to deal with these tribes and peoples upon another plane than war; but here and now the only course was that which had been planned by Kaid and those who counselled him. Troubled by a deep danger drawing near, Kaid had drawn him into his tough service, half-blindly catching at his help, with a strange, almost superstitious belief that luck and good would come from the alliance; seeing in him a protection against wholesale robbery and debt--were not the English masters of finance, and was not this Englishman honest, and with a brain of fire and an eye that pierced things? David had accepted the inevitable. The war had its value. It would draw off to the south--he would see that it was so--Achmet and Higli and Diaz and the rest, who were ever a danger. Not to himself: he did not think of that; but to Kaid and to Egypt. They had been out-manoeuvred, beaten, foiled, knew who had foiled them and what they had escaped; congratulated themselves, but had no gratitude to him, and still plotted his destruction. More than once his death had been planned, but the dark design had come to light--now from the workers of the bazaars, whose wires of intelligence pierced everywhere; now from some hungry fellah whose yelek he had filled with cakes of dourha beside a bread-shop; now from Mahommed Hassan, who was for him a thousand eyes and feet and hands, who cooked his food, and gathered round him fellaheen or Copts or Soudanese or Nubians whom he himself had tested and found true, and ruled them with a hand of plenty and a rod of iron. Also, from Nahoum’s spies he learned of plots and counterplots, chiefly on Achmet’s part; and these he hid from Kaid, while he trusted Nahoum--and not without reason, as yet.