possible after his arrival at Omdurman, and until he set out with the main body under the general on the way to El Obeid. Before starting he said he hoped that in another two months the campaign would be over, El Obeid recovered, and the Mahdi smashed up; and that as soon as they returned to Khartoum, Hicks Pasha would send for his wife and daughters, and the other married officers for their wives, and of course she would accompany them.
I cannot say much for Omdurman, he said; but Khartoum is a nice place. Many of the houses there have shady gardens. Hicks has promised to recommend me for a majority in one of the Turkish regiments. In the intervals of my own work I have got up drill. I shall of course tell him then what my real name is, so that I can be gazetted m it. It is likely enough that even after toe defeat the Mahdi this war may go on for some time before it is stamped out, and in another year I may be a full-blown colonel, if only an Egyptian one; and as the pay of the English officers is good, I shall be able to have a very comfortable home for you.
I need not repeat my instructions, darling, as to what you must do in the event, improbable as it is, of disaster. When absolutely assured of my death, but not until then, you will go back to England with the boy and see my father. He is not a man to change his mind, unless I were to humble myself before him; but I think he would do the right thing for you. If he will not, there is the letter for Geoffrey. He has no settled income at present, but when he comes into the title he will, I feel quite certain, nyike you an allowance. I know that you would for yourself shrink from doing this, but for the boy's sake you will not hesitate to carry out my instructions. I shoidd say you had better write to my father, for the interview might be cm unpleasant one; but if you have to appeal to Geoffrey you had better call upon him and show him this letter. I feel sure that he will do what he can.
GREGORY.
A month later a messenger came up from Suakim with a dispatch dated October 3rd. The force was then within a few days' march of El Obeid. The news was not altogether cheering: hordes of the enemy hovered about their rear; communication was already difficult, and they had to depend upon the stores they carried, and cut themselves off altogether from the base. He brought some private letters from the officers, and among them one for Mrs. Hilliard. It was short and written in pencil:
In a few days, dear, the decisive battle will take place, and
although it will be a tough fight none of us have any fear of the
result. In the very improbable event of a defeat, I shall, if I have
time, slip on the Arab dress I have with me, and may hope to
escape. However, I have little fear that it will come to that. God
bless and protect you and the boy!
GREGORY.
A month passed away. No news came from Hicks Pasha or any of Ms officers. Then there were rumours current in the bazaars of disaster, and one morning when Annie called upon Lady Hicks she found several of the ladies there with pale and anxious faces. She paused at the door. 'Do not be alarmed, Mrs. Hilliard,' Lady Hicks said. ' Nizim Pasha has been here this morning. He thought that I might have heard the rumours that are current in the bazaar that there has been a disaster, but he says there is no confirmation whatever of these reports. He does not deny, however, that they have caused anxiety among the authorities, for sometimes these rumours, whose origin no one knows, do turn out to be correct. He said that enquiries have been made, but no foundation for the stories can be got at. I questioned him closely, and he says that he can only account for them on the ground that if a victory had been won an official account from government should have been here before this, and that it is solely on this account that these rumours have got about. He said there was no reason for supposing that this silence meant disaster. A complete victory might have been won, and yet the messenger with the dispatches might have been captured and killed by the parties of tribesmen hanging behind the army or wandering about the country between the army and Khartoum. Still, of course, this is making us all very anxious.'
The party soon broke up, none having any reassuring suggestions to offer; and Annie returned to her lodging to weep over her boy and pray for the safety of his father. Days and weeks passed, and still no word came to Cairo. At Khartoum there was a ferment among the native population. No secret was made of the fact that the tribesmen who came and went all declared that Hicks Pasha's army was utterly destroyed. At length the Egyptian government announced to the wives of the officers that pensions would be given to them according to the rank of their husbands. As captain and interpreter, Gregory's wife had but a small one, but it was sufficient for her to live upon. One by one the other ladies gave up hope and returned to England, but Annie stayed on. Misfortune might have befallen the arm} 7 , but Gregory might have escaped in disguise. She had, like the other ladies, put on mourning for him, for had she declared her belief that he might still be alive she could not have applied for the pension, and this was necessary for the child's sake. Of one thing she was determined: she would not go with him as beggars to the father who had cast Gregory off, until, as he had said, she received absolute news of his death. She was not in want; but as her pension was a small one, and she felt that it would be well for her to be employed, she asked Lady Hicks, before she left, to mention at the houses of the Egyptian ladies to whom she went to say good-bye, that Mrs. Hilliard would be glad to give lessons in English, French, or music.
The idea pleased them, and she obtained several pupils. Some of these were the ladies themselves, and the lessons generally consisted in sitting for an hour with them two or three times a week and talking to them, the conversation being in short sentences, of which she gave them the English translation, which they repeated over and over again until they knew them by heart. This caused great amusement, and was accompanied by much laughter on the part of the ladies and their attendants. Several of her pupils, however, were young boys and girls, and the teaching here was of a more serious kind. The lessons to the boys were given the first thing in the morning, and the pupils were brought to her house by attendants. At eleven o'clock she taught the girls, and returned at one, and had two hours more teaching in the afternoon. She could have obtained more pupils had she wished to, but the pay she received, added to her income, enabled her to live very comfortably and to save up money. She had a negro servant who was very fond of the boy, and she could leave him in her charge with perfect confidence while she was teaching.
In the latter part of 1884 she ventured to hope that some news might yet come to her, for a British expedition had started for the relief of General Gordon, who had gone up early in the year to Khartoum, where it was hoped that the influence he had gained among the natives at the time he was in command of the Egyptian forces in the Soudan would enable him to make head against the insurrection. His arrival had been hailed by the population, but it was soon evident to him that unless aided by England with something more than words Khartoum must finally fall. But his requests for aid were slighted. He had asked that two regiments should be sent from Suakim to keep open the route to Berber, but Mr. Gladstone's government refused even this slight assistance to the man they had sent out, and it was not until May that public indignation at this base desertion of one of the noblest spirits that Britain ever produced caused preparations for his rescue to be made, and it was December before the leading regiment arrived at Korti, far up the Nile.
After fighting two hard battles, a force that had marched across the loop of the Nile came down upon it above Metemmeh. A party started up the river at once in two steamers which Gordon had sent down to meet them, but only arrived near the town to hear that they were too late, + .haf- Khartoum had fallen, and that Gordon had been murdered. The army was at once hurried back to the coast, leaving it to the Mahdists—more triumphant than ever—to occupy Dongola, and to push down, and possibly, as they were confident they should do, to capture Egypt itself. The news of the failure was a terrible blow to Mrs. Hilliard. She had hoped that when Khartoum was relieved some information at least might be obtained from prisoners as to the fate of the British officers at El Obeid. That most of them had been killed was certain, but she still clung to the hope that her husband might have escaped from the general massacre, thanks to his knowledge of the language and the disguise he had with him; and even that if captured later on he might be a prisoner; or that he might have escaped detection altogether, and be still living among friendly tribesmen. It was a heavy blow to her, therefore, when she heard that the troops were being hurried down to the coast, and that the Madhi would be uncontested master of Egypt as far as Assouan.
She did, however, receive news when the force returned to Cairo, which, although depressing, did not extinguish all hope. Lieutenant-colonel Colborne, by good luck, had ascertained that a native boy in the service of General Buller claimed to have been at El Obeid. Upon questioning him closely he found out that he had unquestionably been there, for he described accurately the position Colonel Colborne— who had started with Hicks Pasha, but had been forced by illness to return—had occupied in one of the engagements. The boy was then the slave of an Egyptian officer of the expedition.
The army had suffered much from want of water, but they had obtained plenty from a lake within three days'
