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The allusion was not direct enough for Colonel Trench's comprehension. He heard the word "feather," but he could not connect it as yet with any action of his own. He was more curious than ever about that "afterwards"; he began to have a glimmering of its meaning, and he was struck with wonderment at the thought of how many men there were going about the world with a calm and commonplace demeanour beneath which were hidden quaint fancies and poetic beliefs, never to be so much as suspected, until illness deprived the brain of its control.

"No, one of the reasons why I never said anything that night to you about what I intended was, I think, that I did not wish you to wait or have any suspicion of what I was going to attempt." And then expostulation ceased, and he began to speak in a tone of interest. "Do you know, it has only occurred to me since I came to the Soudan, but I believe that Durrance cared."

The name came with something of a shock upon Trench's ears. This man knew Durrance! He was not merely a stranger of Trench's blood, but he knew Durrance even as Trench knew him. There was a link between them, they had a friend in common. He knew Durrance, had fought in the same square with him, perhaps, at Tokar, or Tamai, or Tamanieb, just as Trench had done! And so Trench's curiosity as to the life history in its turn gave place to a curiosity as to the identity of the man. He tried to see, knowing that in that black and noisome hovel sight was impossible. He might hear, though, enough to be assured. For if the stranger knew Durrance, it might be that he knew Trench as well. Trench listened; the sound of the voice, high pitched and rambling, told him nothing. He waited for the words, and the words came.

"Durrance stood at the window, after I had told them about you, Ethne," and Trench repeated the name to himself. It was to a woman, then, that his new-found compatriot, this friend of Durrance, in his delirium imagined himself to be speaking-a woman named Ethne. Trench could recall no such name; but the voice in the dark went on.

"All the time when I was proposing to send in my papers, after the telegram had come, he stood at the window of my rooms with his back to me, looking out across the park. I fancied he blamed me. But I think now he was making up his mind to lose you… I wonder."

Trench uttered so startled an exclamation that Ibrahim turned round.

"Is he dead?"

"No, he lives, he lives."

It was impossible, Trench argued. He remembered quite clearly Durrance standing by a window with his back to the room. He remembered a telegram coming which took a long while in the reading-which diffused among all except Durrance an inexplicable suspense. He remembered, too, a man who spoke of his betrothal and of sending in his papers. But surely this could not be the man. Was the woman's name Ethne? A woman of Donegal-yes; and this man had spoken of sailing out of Dublin Bay-he had spoken, too, of a feather.

"Good God!" whispered Trench. "Was the name Ethne? Was it? Was it?"

But for a while he received no answer. He heard only talk of a mud-walled city, and an intolerable sun burning upon a wide round of desert, and a man who lay there all the day with his linen robe drawn over his head, and slowly drew one face towards him across three thousand miles, until at sunset it was near, and he took courage and went down into the gate. And after that, four words stabbed Trench.

"Three little white feathers," were the words. Trench leaned back against the wall. It was he who had devised that message. "Three little white feathers," the voice repeated. "This afternoon we were under the elms down by the Lennon River-do you remember, Harry? — just you and I. And then came three little white feathers; and the world's at an end."

Trench had no longer any doubts. The man was quoting words, and words, no doubt, spoken by this girl Ethne on the night when the three feathers came. "Harry," she had said. "Do you remember, Harry?" Trench was certain.

"Feversham!" he cried. "Feversham!" And he shook the man whom he held in his arms and called to him again. "Under the elms by the Lennon River-" Visions of green shade touched with gold, and of the sunlight flickering between the leaves, caught at Trench and drew him like a mirage in that desert of which Feversham had spoken. Feversham had been under the elms of the Lennon River on that afternoon before the feathers came, and he was in the House of Stone at Omdurman. But why? Trench asked himself the question and was not spared the answer.

"Willoughby took his feather back"-and upon that Feversham broke off. His voice rambled. He seemed to be running somewhere amid sandhills which continually shifted and danced about him as he ran, so that he could not tell which way he went. He was in the last stage of fatigue, too, so that his voice in his delirium became querulous and weak. "Abou Fatma!" he cried, and the cry was the cry of a man whose throat is parched, and whose limbs fail beneath him. "Abou Fatma! Abou Fatma!" He stumbled as he ran, picked himself up, ran and stumbled again; and about him the deep soft sand piled itself into pyramids, built itself into long slopes and ridges, and levelled itself flat with an extraordinary and a malicious rapidity. "Abou Fatma!" cried Feversham, and he began to argue in a weak obstinate voice. "I know the wells are here-close by-within half a mile. I know they are-I know they are."

The clue to that speech Trench had not got. He knew nothing of Feversham's adventure at Berber; he could not tell that the wells were the Wells of Obak, or that Feversham, tired with the hurry of his travelling, and after a long day's march without water, had lost his way among the shifting sandhills. But he did know that Willoughby had taken back his feather, and he made a guess as to the motive which had brought Feversham now to the House of Stone. Even on that point, however, he was not to remain in doubt; for in a while he heard his own name upon Feversham's lips.

Remorse seized upon Colonel Trench. The sending of the feathers had been his invention and his alone. He could not thrust the responsibility of his invention upon either Willoughby or Castleton; it was just his doing. He had thought it rather a shrewd and clever stroke, he remembered at the time-a vengeance eminently just. Eminently just, no doubt, it was, but he had not thought of the woman. He had not imagined that she might be present when the feathers came. He had indeed almost forgotten the episode, he had never speculated upon the consequences, and now they rose up and smote the smiter.

And his remorse was to grow. For the night was not nearly at its end. All through the dark slow hours he supported Feversham and heard him talk. Now Feversham was lurking in the bazaar at Suakin and during the siege.

"During the siege," thought Trench. "While we were there, then, he was herding with the camel-drivers in the bazaar learning their tongues, watching for his chance. Three years of it!"

At another moment Feversham was slinking up the Nile to Wadi Halfa with a zither, in the company of some itinerant musicians, hiding from any who might remember him and accuse him with his name. Trench heard of a man slipping out from Wadi Halfa, crossing the Nile and wandering with the assumed manner of a lunatic southwards, starving and waterless, until one day he was snapped up by a Mahdist caravan and dragged to Dongola as a spy. And at Dongola things had happened of which the mere mention made Trench shake. He heard of leather cords which had been bound about the prisoner's wrists, and upon which water had been poured until the cords swelled and the wrists burst, but this was among the minor brutalities. Trench waited for the morning as he listened, wondering whether indeed it would ever come.

He heard the bolts dragged back at the last; he saw the door open and the good daylight. He stood up and with Ibrahim's help protected this new comrade until the eager rush was past. Then he supported him out into the zareeba. Worn, wasted in body and face, with a rough beard straggled upon his chin, and his eyes all sunk and very bright, it was still Harry Feversham. Trench laid him down in a corner of the zareeba where there would be shade; and in a few hours shade would be needed. Then with the rest he scrambled to the Nile for water and brought it back. As he poured it down Feversham's throat, Feversham seemed for a moment to recognise him. But it was only for a moment, and the incoherent tale of his adventures began again. Thus, after five years, and for the first time since Trench had dined as Feversham's guest in the high rooms overlooking St. James's Park, the two men met in the House of Stone.