“On the Nile,” repeated Mortimer.  “All over Egypt.  Why?”

Ainsley made no answer.  Unclasping his hold, he suddenly slid down the face of the rock, and with a bump lit on his hands and knees.  With one bound he had cleared a flower-bed.  In two more he had mounted the steps to the terrace, and in another instant had disappeared into the house.

“What happened to him?” demanded Elsie Mortimer.

“He’s gone to get a gun!” exclaimed Mortimer.  “But he mustn’t!  How can he think of shooting them?” he cried indignantly.  “I’ll put a stop to that!”

In the hall he found Ainsley surrounded by a group of startled servants.

“You get that car at the door in five minutes!” he was shouting, “and you telephone the hotel to have my trunks out of the cellar and on board the Kron Prinz Albert by midnight.  Then you telephone Hoboken that I want a cabin, and if they haven’t got a cabin I want the captain’s.  And tell them anyway I’m coming on board to-night, and I’m going with them if I have to sleep on deck.  And you,” he cried, turning to Mortimer, “take a shotgun and guard that lake, and if anybody tries to molest those birds—­shoot him!  They’ve come from Egypt!  From Polly Kirkland!  She sent them!  They’re a sign!”

“Are you going mad?” cried Mortimer.

“No!” roared Ainsley.  “I’m going to Egypt, and I’m going now!”

Polly Kirkland and her friends were travelling slowly up the Nile, and had reached Luxor.  A few hundred yards below the village their dahabiyeh was moored to the bank, and, on the deck, Miss Kirkland was watching a scarlet sun sink behind two palm-trees.  By the grace of that special Providence that cares for drunken men, citizens of the United States, and lovers, her friends were on shore, and she was alone.  For this she was grateful, for her thoughts were of a melancholy and tender nature and she had no wish for any companion save one.  In consequence, when a steam-launch, approaching at full speed with the rattle of a quick-firing gun, broke upon her meditations, she was distinctly annoyed.

But when, with much ringing of bells and shouting of orders, the steam-launch rammed the paint off her dahabiyeh, and a young man flung himself over the rail and ran toward her, her annoyance passed, and with a sigh she sank into his outstretched, eager arms.

Half an hour later Ainsley laughed proudly and happily.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “you can never say I kept you waiting.  I didn’t lose much time, did I?  Ten minutes after I got your C.Q.D. signal I was going down the Boston Post Road at seventy miles an hour.”

“My what?” said the girl.

“The sign!” explained Ainsley.  “The sign you were to send me to tell me”—­he bent over her hands and added gently—­“that you cared for me.”

“Oh, I remember,” laughed Polly Kirkland.  “I was to send you a sign, wasn’t I?  You were to ‘read it in your heart,’” she quoted.