"There is no reason why he should not come back," he said. He
looked up at the pictures. The dead Fevershams in their uniforms would
not be disgraced. "No reason in the world," he said. "And, please God,
he will come back soon." The dangers of an escape from the Dervish city
remote among the sands began to loom very large on his mind. He owned to
himself that he felt very tired and old, and many times that night he
repeated his prayer, "Please God, Harry will come back soon," as he sat
erect upon the bench which had once been his wife's favourite seat, and
gazed out across the moonlit country to the Sussex Downs.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HOUSE OF STONE
These were the days before the great mud wall was built about the House
of Stone in Omdurman. Only a thorn zareeba as yet enclosed that noisome
prison and the space about it. It stood upon the eastern border of the
town, surely the most squalid capital of any empire since the world
began. Not a flower bloomed in a single corner. There was no grass nor
the green shade of any tree. A brown and stony plain, burnt by the sun,
and, built upon it a straggling narrow city of hovels crawling with
vermin and poisoned with disease.
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