BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1884.
All rights reserved.
Contents
Chapter
I. Suspicion
II. At Tel-el-Kebir
III. At Grand Cairo
IV. The Telegram
V. Dead and Buried in the Sand
VI. A Skirmish in the Desert
VII. Hurdell Hall
VIII. Sir Harry
IX. The Cub-hunting
X. Allan's Adventure
XI. Among the Dwellers in Tents
XII. Kismet
XIII. The Last of Sir Paget
XIV. The Young Widow
XV. In the Desert
XVI. Eastward Ho!
XVII. At Ismailia
XVIII. Clouds and Sunshine
THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE.
Many a wife, mother, and maid watchedthe progress of our troops from point topoint in Egypt, from the bombardment ofAlexandria, with the subsequent landing,up to the last telegram which announcedthat the army had begun its auspiciousnight march from Kassassin towardsTel-el-Kebir, but none could do so with moreanxiety than had Olive Raymond andEveline.
To them and to how many loving heartsat home were the next telegrams fraughtwith terror and anxiety!
Olive was free to rush to the newspapersas soon as they arrived. But not so Eveline,for so suspicious of her secret interestin one who was far away had Sir Pagetbecome, that he absolutely kept them outof her sight as much as possible; and shehad a terror in her heart that EvanCameron might be killed in action, and, for atime, all unknown to her.
Great was her craving for intelligence.She could not, like a man, go to clubs ornewspaper offices, when the latesttelegrams—often false ones—were posted up;and often nightly she went to bed with theagonising yet unasked question on herlips, 'Oh, what has happened to-day inEgypt?—what is happening now?' and shehad to scan the morning papers, if at all,surreptitiously, eagerly, and feverishly, forwhat she did not want to see.
How would she have suffered the oldPeninsula war time, when news and battlelists appeared in the weekly and bi-weeklyjournals more than a month, yea, sometimestwo months, after victories were won(we had no defeats in those long-servicedays), and after the grass was green abovethe graves of our gallant dead—the menthat knew how to die, but never turntheir heel before a foe—when our regimentsfought for the historic glory of theirnumber, as steadily as