The Colonel cleared his throat and hummed and stammered.
“The fact is, my dear Belmont—I’m sure you would not let it go further—above all not to the ladies; but I am rather older than I used to be, and rather than lose the military carriage which has always been dear to me, I—”
“Stays, be Jove!” cried the astonished Irishman.
“Well, some slight artificial support,” said the Colonel stiffly, and switched the conversation off to the chances of the morrow.
It still comes back in their dreams to those who are left, that long night’s march in the desert. It was like a dream itself, the silence of it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet, and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of them. The whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in front of them. A star would glimmer like a lantern on the very level of their path. They looked again, and it was a hand’s-breadth up, and another was shining beneath it. Hour after hour the broad stream flowed sedately
