’But what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit?

‘For one thing, you aren’t Abdullah, and——­’

‘There!  You confess he’s a cad!’

’And for another, the Government would only send another officer who didn’t understand your ways, and then there would be war, and no one would score except Abdullah.  He’d steal your camels and get credit for it.’

’So he would, the scoundrel!  This is a hard world for honest men.  Now, you admit Abdullah is a cad.  Listen to me, and I’ll tell you a few more things about him.  He was, etc., etc.  He is, etc., etc.’

’You’re perfectly right, Sheikh, but don’t you see I can’t tell him what I think of him so long as he’s loyal and you’re out against us?  Now, if you come in I promise you that I’ll give Abdullah a telling-off—­yes, in your presence—­that will do you good to listen to.’

’No!  I won’t come in!  But—­I tell you what I will do.  I’ll accompany you to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp.  Then you send for Abdullah, and if I judge that his fat face has been sufficiently blackened in my presence, I’ll think about coming in later.’

So it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all Abdullah’s cattle, and in the evening, in Farid’s presence, Abdullah got the tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and Farid of the Desert laughed and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards.

Somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be going on still, but the Soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages.  In due time, they will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the Mahdi’s time to secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere.  They will honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a price.  Then the demand will go up for ‘extension of local government,’ ‘Soudan for the Soudanese,’ and so on till the whole cycle has to be retrodden.  It is a hard law but an old one—­Rome died learning it, as our western civilisation may die—­that if you give any man anything that he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his descendants your devoted enemies.

THE END