The Hawk of Egypt Part 42

"_Irja Sooltan_!" she called. "_Irja Sooltan_!"

Her voice carried on the still air like the note of a bell over water.

And the stallion, who had broken from his _sayis_ as he was being led from the stable in readiness for the sad procession to the river, and who, terrified at the sight of the burning tents, had rushed on in search of his master, stopped dead, with his head up and tail and mane streaming in the wind.

He had not found his master, but he knew the voice that called.

"_Irja Sooltan_!" it came again. "_Irja_! _Irja_!"

And he reared and wheeled in the direction from whence it came, then raced to where he saw the girl standing.

He stamped, and whinnied, and nuzzled her hand and her shoulder as she stood in her lover's arms.

"Tell me you will marry me, sweetheart," Ben Kelham was saying, with one hand on the stallion's bridle. "Say it, Damaris."

She shook her head and looked up piteously, with tears in her wonderful eyes, as she made a great sacrifice to her honour.

"I can't, Ben," she whispered. "I--I--Oh! I can't tell you--I haven't--the courage--Oh! Ben, you would never understand------"

He gave a great shout as he leapt to the saddle and took the stallion back a hundred yards, then wheeled him and raced him back along his tracks.

"Understand, beloved?" he cried, as he bent as he rushed past her at full speed and lifted her to the saddle. "There is nothing to understand." And he turned the stallion as he spoke and headed him towards the tents. "We will just go back, dear; we will just pa.s.s to say goodbye--together."

And they swept across the desert.

Then he reined in the stallion and sat staring, then whispered, as he bent and kissed the bonny curls:

"The way out, dear; the way out. Someone is waiting for us."

Stubbornly, heavily, across the desert, with occasional pauses for rest and investigation of the track of small footprints, and the horizon, came Wellington.

He was very hot and very thirsty, and it seemed to him that he had been walking for many days through many, many endless deserts, but he intended to criss-cross the Sahara, or any other desert, through all eternity, until he could deliver the book he held between his formidable teeth to his beloved mistress.

And she slid from the saddle, and knelt, and put her arms around him, and took the somewhat moist keepsake from him.

She swung up like a bird into her lover's arms and took the reins whilst he leant right down to lift the dog. But Wellington's great heart was troubled. He looked up at his mistress and said as plainly as could be with reproachful eyes. "Two's company," and turned to walk stubbornly and heavily, back across those many, many deserts to the tents.

Ben Kelham cheered him on as they thundered past him. "We'll wait for you, old fellow," he cried, then looked down on the woman he loved.

Her hands were clasped upon the silken bodice where she had pinned the brooch which had been fas.h.i.+oned in the shape of the Hawk of Egypt.

It was not there.

It had come unfastened as she lay in her grief; she had left it to be buried so deep just a few days later, when the greatest storm which had ever been known to sweep the desert piled the sand, the desert's own cloak, to the height of hills, under which slumbered all those who had sought peace at her breast; under which, guarded throughout all ages by his dogs, peacefully slept her son.

"Ben," she cried, opening wide her eyes in which shone love and tears, "Ben, can you ever--ever forgive me?"

And he bent and kissed her as he replied:

"There is nothing to forgive, beloved of my heart--I love you!"

THE END