Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/262

208 of terms is permissible. I remember that for days I shuffled about, refusing to look at or speak to any one. Perhaps what brought me round was that, in my perambulations, I came near the Saier anvil and heard a man crying. It was Ibrahim Pasha Fauzi, Gordon's old favourite, who was being shackled. My expostulations on his acting as a child and bullying him into a sense of manhood, again prevented that slender thread between reason and insanity snapping. It must, in some way, have calmed and comforted me to be brought to the knowledge that others were suffering as much as I was; and just as a child, which requires care and attention itself, gives all its affection and sympathy to a limbless doll, so must I have given my sympathy to Fauzi, and in so doing taken a step back from the abyss of insanity, which I was certainly approaching. —