A FUGITIVE 279 course I had seen something of wounds, for in the old times —it seems a lifetime back—when I was for two years searching tombs and monuments with the professor, there had been frays between our workmen and bands of robbers ; and there were also many cases of injuries incurred in the work of moving heavy fragments of masonry. Moreover, although I had no actual practice, I had seen a good deal of surgical work, for when I was at the university I had some idea of becoming a surgeon, and attended the courses there and saw a good many operations. I had therefore, of course, a general knowledge of the structure of the human frame and the position of the arteries.

“ So far, the wound, which I examined when the woman poured in what I suppose was a styptic, looked healthy and but little inflamed. Of course a skilled surgeon would have probed it and endeavoured to extract the ball, which had not gone through. The Soudanese were armed only with old muskets, and it was possible that the ball had not penetrated far, for if, as he had told me, he was some distance from the square when he was hit, the bullet was probably spent. I told the woman so, and asked her if she had any objection to my endeavouring to find it. She looked surprised.

Are you, then, a hakim?’

‘ Mo, but I have been at Khartoum, and have seen how the white hakims find which way a bullet has gone. They are sometimes able to get it out. At any rate, I should not hurt him, and if, as is likely, the ball has not gone in very far for had it done so he would probably have died before he got home—I might draw it out.’ “ You can try,’ she said. You have saved his life and it is yours.’

“ Bring me the pistol that your husband had in his belt.’ “ She brought it to me. I took out the ramrod. ‘ Mow,’ I said, ‘ it is most important that this should be clean ; therefore heat it in the fire so that it is red-hot, and then drop it into cold water.’ When this had been done I took a handful