40 WITH KITCHENEE IN' OE SOHDAH A month passed away. 'No news came from Hicks Pasha or any of his officers. Then there were rumours current in the bazaars of disaster, and one morning when Annie called upon Lady Hicks she found several of the ladies there with pale and anxious faces. She paused at the door. “ Do not be alarmed, Mrs. Hilliard,” Lady Hicks said. “ Hizim Pasha has been here this morning. He thought that I might have heard the rumours that are current in the bazaar that there has been a disaster, but he says there is no confirmation whatever of these reports. He does not deny, however, that they have caused anxiety among the authorities, for sometimes these rumours, whose origin no one knows, do turn out to be correct. He said that enquiries have been made, but no foundation for the stories can be got at. I questioned him closely, and he says that he can only account for them on the ground that if a victory had been won an official account from government should have been here before this, and that it is solely on this account that these rumours have got about. He said there was no reason for supposing that this silence meant disaster. A complete victory might have been won, and yet the messenger with the despatches might have been captured and killed by the parties of tribesmen hanging behind the army or wandering about the country between the army and Khartoum. Still, of course, this is making us all very anxious.”

The party soon broke up, none having any reassuring suggestions to offer; and Annie returned to her lodging to weep over her boy and pray for the safety of his father. Days and weeks passed, and still no word came to Cairo. At Khartoum there was a ferment among the native population. No secret was made of the fact that the tribesmen who came and went all declared that Hicks Pasha’s army was utterly destroyed. At length the Egyptian government announced to the wives of the officers that pensions would be given to them according to the rank of their husbands. As captain and interpreter, Gregory’s wife had but a small one, but it was