"But I shall die," said Arlee. "I shall simply die if I have to go another step upon that creature."

She said it cheerfully, but firmly, a sleepy, sunburned little nomad, sitting cross-legged in the sands, slowly plaiting her honey-colored hair. "Even this," she announced, indicating the slight gesture of braiding, "is agony."

"It\'s the morning after," said Billy, testing his shoulder with wry grimaces. "It\'s yesterday\'s speed—and then this infernally cold night. No wonder we\'re lame. Why, I have one universal crick wherever I used to have muscles. But let me call your attention to the fact that we are in the wilds of Egypt and that tangerines are hardly a lasting breakfast. Something has to be done."

"Not upon camels," said Arlee fixedly.

"They say it doesn\'t hurt after an hour or so more."

"I shouldn\'t live to find out."

"A walk," he suggested, "a slow, swaying, gently undulating walk——?"

"A long, lingering, agonizing death," the young lady translated. She tossed the curly end of her braid over her shoulder and rose, with sounds of lamentation. "I ought to have known better than to sit down again when I was once up," she confided sadly.

"Just what," inquired her companion, "is your idea for the day? How do you expect to reach Girgeh? It can\'t be very far away now——"

"Then we\'ll walk—we\'ll walk," she emphasized, "and tow those ships of the desert after us. That will be bad enough, but better—what\'s that?"

Like a top, for all his stiffness, Billy spun about to stare where her finger pointed. Over the crest of a hillock, far to the north—yes, something was hurrying their way.

"A man on horseback," said Arlee anxiously. "They can\'t have traced us, can they, all this way——?"

"Of course not—but we\'ll take no chances," returned Billy briskly; "no more talk of pedestrian tours now!" and promptly he helped the girl, no longer demurring, into the saddle, and thwacked her camel into arising, just dodging the long, yellow teeth that the resentful beast tried to fasten upon his shoulder.

They started at no soothing walk, but at a hurrying trot.

Worriedly, her delicate brows knitting, "It\'s absurd, but," said Arlee, "they could have traced us, I suppose, from my telegraphing at that little native station for my trunks to be sent."

"And mine," said Billy. "And from my trying to get my letter of credit cashed."

"That Captain could have telegraphed to all the places down the line to know if we\'d been seen——"

"Even if we hadn\'t wired or tried to get money, our presence alone and our buying food would have aroused talk. I told everybody," the young man continued, "that I was an artist and you were my sister, and that passed all right—but if Kerissen has been making inquiries——"

"I\'m desperately glad we didn\'t go back toward Assiout," she thrust in. "We\'d have walked right into some trap of his!"

"Lord knows what we ought to have done! Lord knows what we ought to do now!"

"Just keep on going," she encouraged. "We can\'t be very far from Girgeh, can we?"

"I don\'t know," said Billy soberly. "It may be half a day or a whole day more—you remember how vague that old woman was last night...!" Bitterly he added, "And I\'m afraid you\'ve got a chump of a guide."

"I\'ve the best one in the world!" she flashed indignantly.

But her assurance brought no solace to the young man\'s troubled soul. He reflected that they could have taken a train the day before. To be sure, he had not money enough for tickets to Luxor, yet he had enough for two to Girgeh. But Arlee had shrunk from entering a train in her dishevelled costume, fearful of watching eyes and gossiping tongues, and had advised riding on to Girgeh, where shops and banks would help them, and he had yielded apparently to her desires, but in reality to his own secret self that clung to every joyful contraband moment of this magic time with her. Sincerely he had thought their danger ended.... But those trailing horsemen—"Brute!" he raged dumbly at himself. "Dolt! Idiot!"

Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. It was an ordeal of a ride.

They had ridden on in silence, occasionally glancing back over their shoulders. At last Arlee said, quietly, "Do you see anything—over there—to the left?"

Billy had been seeing it for fifteen minutes.

"Another horseman, isn\'t it?" he carelessly suggested.

"He seems to be riding the same way we are."

"Well, we\'ve no monopoly of travel in this region."

She answered, after a moment, "There\'s another close behind him. I just saw him on top of a little hill. I suppose they can see us?"

"Probably." Billy\'s face was grave. If they continued their winding path in from the desert to the intervening hills that shut them from the Nile valley, and the horsemen continued their course along the base of those hills, they would soon meet.

"Do you mind speeding up a little?" he asked. "I\'d rather like to cross to the Nile ahead of that gentry."

But as they speeded up the pursuers did the same, and from mere dots they grew to tiny figures, clearly discernible, furiously galloping over the sands.

Billy thought hard about his cartridges, wishing he had more in his clothes. When he had left the hotel that Tuesday evening he had thrust the loaded revolver in his pocket, but he had already discharged it twice at the beginning of their flight.... And then he startlingly reflected that the Captain could easily cause their arrest for stealing those camels, and wild and dreadful thoughts of native jails and mixed tribunals darted into his harassed and anxious mind. As a long ridge of sand intervened between them and their pursuers he made a sudden decision.

"Let\'s turn off," he said quickly, and from the little winding path, edging southeast, they struck directly south over the trackless sand.

"You see, they\'ll expect us to make a railroad station as soon as possible," he explained, "and they are probably trying to nab us on the way to it—if those men have anything to do with us at all." He said nothing about his vivid fear of arrest for the camels and the tool such an arrest would be for Kerissen\'s designs. He merely added, "I think we\'d better try to give them the slip and steer clear of all the little native joints until we get to Girgeh, which is big enough to give us some protection. There must be an English something-or-other there.... I really think we ought to go as fast as we can now, and when the way is clear, hurry across the hills into the Nile valley."

But the way did not become clear. Disconcerted by that unexpected dash off the path, and reduced for a time to mere dots again, the horsemen, three in a row now, hung persistently upon their left flank, keeping a parallel course between them and the hills.

The day had dawned with a promise of sultry heat, and as the sun rose higher and higher in the heavens the heat grew more and more intolerable to their ill-protected heads and thirsty tongues. The gaiety of yesterday was gone; the enchantment had vanished from the waste spaces, and the desert was less a friend now than an enemy. Chokingly the dust rose about them, and glaringly the gold of the burning sands beat back the glare of the down-pouring sun. From such a heat the landscape seemed to shrink and ve............