The Summons

rd's M

name still marked upon the maps. Once there had been a village here, before the Kalifa sent his soldiers and herded the tribes into the towns for his better security. Now there was no sign anywhere of habitation. The red boles of the mimosa trees, purple-

to leave a country which had so restored him to physical well-being. Never had he been so strong. He had recaptured, after his five years of London confinement, the swift spring of the muscles, the immediate response of the body to the demand made upon it, and the glorious

vast blaze of stars overhead, Hillyard could hardly see the flutter of his shikari's white robe a few paces ahead of him. They passed a clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a great shuffling and lapping of water below them. T

hispered t

morning. For that creek Hillyard was now making with a little Mannlicher sporting rifle-and he had tumbled suddenly u

himself when a small but startling change took place. The snuffling and lapping

ri whispe

eloped the donkey's head in a shawl that he was carryi

Hillyard might bring down one-perhaps two, if by some miraculous chance he shot a bullet through both forelegs. But it would make no difference to the herd. Hillyard pictured them below by the water's edge, their heads lifted, their tails stiffened, waiting in the darkness. Once the

forward, but the shikar

and again the four men waited, u

e very near." He looked towards the east

st. We shall not know where they are, but

vered, still led by the boy. Under the cavern of the branches it was black as pitch-so b

ste

d of them a bush that had been ben

ri whispered. "They know everything we do. Let us wait here

nge hungry days on the quays of Spain, the moonlit wanderings on the footpath over the rustic ridge and up the hill, when he composed poems to the moon and pithy short, great thoughts-here was something fresh to add to them if he didn't go down at daybreak under the hoofs of the herd! Here was yet a further token, that out of the vicissitudes of his life something more, something new, something altogether different and unimagined was to come, as the crown and ultimate reason of all that had gone before. Once more the shikari's hand touched him and pointed eastwards. The tree-trunks were emerging from the darkne

e shikari c

grey light in that cathedral of a forest the huge carcases of the buffalo in mad flight were dimly visible. Then silence came again for a few mom

d drew

go on,"

ote upon his eyes. A solitary Arab, driving a tiny, overladen donkey, was adva

n in consequence. The Arab was ten days' journey from the nearest village and, even so, his back was turned towards it. He wa

A ray of sunlight struck through the branches of a tree and burned suddenly like a dancing flame on something the man carried-a carbine with a brass hammer. And the nex

ad of the file towards the stranger and stopped. The two men talked together

, and the shikari turned wit

he delivery of letters along the Dinder

Hillyard. "What in th

between Abyssinia and Senga on the Blue Ni

t take him?" Hillyar

r months each way unless he meets with a party shooting. Th

. He stood wreathed in smiles and nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to Hillyard, with the emotions of the dark hour just past still shivering about him, he seemed s

ny use," he cried. "Is

ect Hillyard did not understand at a

t fighting his little donkey in the moonlight and he fired his rifle and the elephant ran away. You must know that

ts on which little wooden Korans were strung. He fingered them and counted th

ront of the great eye and the machine shall go click, and it will not do him any harm at all. He has a letter for you." Hamet drop

That's impossibl

cluded the inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be

forest, with its patterns of golden sunlight and its colonnades of trees crowding away into darkness, was less visible than those towers to Hillyard, as he stood with the envelope in his hand. Once more he swung down the High and across the Broad from a lecture with a ragged gown across his arm.

it open

age came through in a secret cipher and it might be important. I think you

d the letter and put

said to Hamet, with a nod towards

yard sat down to wait for the deer to gather. He had one of the green volumes of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne" in his pocket, but this morning the splendid Four for once did not enchain him. Who was it in London who wanted him-wanted him so much that ci

. But they did not drink; they waited, cropping the grass. Gradually, through a long hour, others gathered, tawny and yellow, and dappled-brown,

ater from the river was hot. He stretched himself out in his bed and waked again that night after the moon had set, to fix indelibly in his memory the blazing dome of stars above

ards from the Dinder, across a most tediou