182 TRIBES BORDERING ON KORDOFAN.

When they had told the Turk the name of their father and their place of residence, and at the same time related the manner in which this ungrateful wretch had stolen them from their paternal roof, he became enraged, and ordered the robber a bastinado of several hundred stripes. He quieted the sobs of the children, and promised to send them home again, and told them their father had arrived the day before in the camp, but hastened back home again, to seek them elsewhere, as he had not found them there.

It so happened that the Eg}"ptian officer was a friend of their father's, who had done him a great service some few years before. He immediately summoned a subaltern into his presence, and put the two girls under his care, with orders to take them back to their father, and give him notice of his arrival at the borders. The subordinate mounted a camel, took charge of the girls, and delighted them with the assurance that they should reach the borders of Takele in two days, and that he would there find some safe opportunity of sending them to their parent; but how were they deceived on their arrival at Khartoom, after ten days, when they observed a town totally unknown to them, and when this second robber showed himself in his true colours ! He hastened immediately to the blue Nile, and hired a boat for the remainder of his journey to Cairo ; but he was here arrested and carried before the governor. On being questioned whence he came, and by whose authority he was escorting