"Yes! ’Come to me, my brothers,’ he said. ’Your purification is here. A pilgrimage is before you that will cleanse you from all sin.’ They took him at his word too. Good Lord! You never saw such scrambling! Such a crew! Sinners, by Jove! Some of them the most notorious scoundrels in Cairo—rich rascals who have been living for themselves all their lives and beggaring everybody about them. Assassins too, or men who have been suspected of being so. Yet there they were, fighting for a chance of going out to starvation and danger and death." Gordon’s eyes were running over by this time, but they were glistening too, like the sun when it shines through a cloud of rain. "Open the curtains, Hafiz," he said, and when Hafiz had done so it was almost as if an angel of hope had parted them and come sweeping with a stream of sunlight into the room. Then Hafiz told of the going away of the hundred messengers, of Ishmael’s triumphant prediction that they would come back, and finally of the return of the people to their homes with the flow as of a great tide, filled with a new spirit, comforted, changed, transformed, transfigured. "And Ishmael himself?" asked Gordon. "He has gone also," said Hafiz. "Where has he gone?" "That was kept quiet, but the Chancellor was there, and I got it out of him—he has gone to Khartoum." "Khartoum?" "That’s where he comes from—where he lived in his youth, at all events. He has to take the early train for Upper Egypt, so he’ll be on his way already. Oh, something is going to happen! Wait! You’ll see! Couldn’t find out exactly what the men were told to do, but Government has its work cut out for it." "There was to be no resistance to the rule of England—do you say he said that, Hafiz?" "That’s true. ’Do you wish to drive England out of Egypt? Go home,’ he said, ’this pilgrimage is not yours. Do you expect to conquer by the sword? Stand back! This work is not for you.’ All the same there’ll be a mighty stir at the Ministry of the Interior. Omdehs and Moudirs and all the miscellaneous blackguards will be watching Ishmael and his men. So much the better for us, my boy. Now’s your time! Now’s your opportunity!" While Gordon listened a great burden seemed to fall from him; a sort of electric revelation appeared to suffuse the path that had been so obscure a few moments before. His prayers seemed to be answered; the bright glory of a new hope seemed to be born within him and he thought he saw his way at last. Though his career as a soldier was at an end; though his father, his mother and Helena were gone from him; though he had lost everything he had loved and been proud of; though the ways of life seemed to be for ever closed to him and the world had no use for him any longer, and he was beaten and broken and alone, there was One who was with him still—there was God!