"Are you wearing your military boots, Gordon? Did you forget the slippers? Or was it Osman who forgot them? It can’t be helped, though. The man was a tracker—I told you so—and now he has gone for the others and we shall be followed by the whole troop of them. Let us be off." But still Gordon was in no hurry to go. The sense of stealing like a stranger from a spot that was dear to him by a thousand memories seemed to be more than he could bear. Leaving Hafiz on the path, he went round the house until he reached a place from which he could see the light in his mother’s window. His mother, his sweet and sainted mother, innocent of everything yet the victim of all! God forgive him! Was it worth while to go away at all? A gentle breeze had risen by this time, and Hafiz was starting at every leaf that rustled over his head. When at length they left the Agency they were going in the right direction, but Gordon was once more choosing the lighter and more crowded thoroughfares. Again the hawkers, the pedlars, the water-carriers, the shrouded black forms of women and the blue figures of men. Again the salutations, the pious ejaculations, the silent Eastern greetings. It was almost as if Gordon were tempting Providence, as if he were trying to leave time for the trackers to overtake him. "Every moment we lose fills me with fear—can’t we go faster now?" whispered Hafiz in English, but Gordon continued to walk with the same even step. "I know it might look like fright and arouse suspicion, but still——" As often as he dared to do so, Hafiz looked back to see if they were pursued. "Nothing in sight yet—God has delivered, us thus far—but must we walk so slow?" In the agony of his impatience every noise in the streets was like the sound of a pursuer. If a boy shouted to his playmate, he shuddered; if a hawker yelled over his tray, he trembled. When they had passed out of the busy thoroughfares into the darker streets, where watchmen call to each other through the hours of the night, the cry of a ghafir far ahead (_Wahhed!_) seemed to Hafiz like the bay of a bloodhound, and the answer of another close behind was like the shrill voice of some one who was pouncing upon his shoulders. "It would be a pity to be taken now—at the last moment, too," he whispered, and he strained his ear to catch the faintest sound of footsteps behind them. After that no more was said until they came to the open space under the heights of the Citadel where one path goes up to the Mokattam Hills and another crosses the arid land that lies on the east bank of the Nile. Then suddenly Hafiz, who had been panting and gasping, began to laugh and crow. "I know what we’ve got to do," he said. "Good Lord alive! why didn’t I think of it before?" With that he stooped and whipped off the slippers he wore over his boots and called on Gordon to hold up his foot. "What for?" asked Gordon. "I have a reason—a good one. Hold up! The other one! Quick!"