It was the story of His visit to the rich man’s house, and of the sinful woman who did not cease to wash His feet with her tears and to dry them with the hair of her head. "Shall I be less charitable than the Lord of the Christians?" he asked, and the choking pathos of his story silenced everybody. In his preaching he turned for ever to the prophets—the prophet Abraham, the prophet Moses, the prophet Mohammed, and above all, the prophet Isa. He called Jesus the divine teacher of Judæa, one of the great brother souls. "Only a poor Jewish man," he said, with a memory of his own that none might share, "only a poor carpenter, but perhaps the greatest and noblest spirit save one that ever lived in the world." Thus, evening after evening, when the blazing sun had gone down, Ishmael sat on the angerib in front of his uncle’s house and taught the ever-increasing crowds that squatted before him on the brown and yellow sand. The heat and flame of his teaching burnt itself into the wild Arab souls of the great body of his hearers, but there were some among his own people who asked— "Is not this the Ishmael Ameer who denounced the Christians as the corrupters of our faith?" And there were others who answered— "Yes, the same Ishmael Ameer that married the Coptic woman who lies buried on the edge of the desert." And meantime the British Inspectors, suspecting some hidden quackery and fatuity, some fanatical intrigue masquerading as religious liberalism, were whispering among themselves— "This is a new kind of religious game—what the deuce does it mean, I wonder?" *CHAPTER II* Within a month an immense concourse of people had gathered about Ishmael at Khartoum. They came first from Omdurman and the little shipbuilding village of Khogali, on the other side of the Blue Nile, which sent daily through the desert air a ceaseless noise of the hammering of rivets; then they came from Kordofan and still farther south, and from Berber and yet farther north. A few who had means lodged in the houses of the native quarter, but the larger number encamped in tents on the desert side of old Mahmud’s house. Men, women, and children, they flocked in thousands to see the holy man of Khartoum and to drink of the river of his words. They began to see in him a man sent from God, to call him "Master," and to speak of him as the "White Prophet." At that the Governor of the city, a British Colonel, began to be alarmed, and with certain of his Inspectors he went over to see Ishmael. "What can these people want here?" he asked. "What bread is there for them in this wilderness?" "The bread of life," Ishmael answered, and the Christian Governor went away silenced though unsatisfied.