The Messengers | Page 8

a supreme effort. And in their
exhaustion so complete was something humanly helpless and pathetic.
To Ainsley the mysterious visitors made a direct appeal. He felt as
though they had thrown themselves upon his hospitality. That they
showed such confidence that the sanctuary would be kept sacred
touched him. And while his friends spoke eagerly, he remained silent,
watching the drooping, ghost-like figures, his eyes filled with pity.
"I have seen birds like those in Florida," Mortimer was whispering,
"but they were not migratory birds."
"And I've seen white cranes in the Adirondacks," said Lowell, "but
never six at one time."
"They're like no bird I ever saw out of a zoo," declared Elsie Mortimer.
"Maybe they ARE from the Zoo? Maybe they escaped from the
Bronx?"
"The Bronx is too near," objected Lowell. "These birds have come a
great distance. They move as though they had been flying for many
days."
As though the absurdity of his own thought amused him, Mortimer
laughed softly.

"I'll tell you what they DO look like," he said. "They look like that bird
you see on the Nile, the sacred Ibis, they--"
Something between a gasp and a cry startled him into silence. He found
his host staring wildly, his lips parted, his eyes open wide.
"Where?" demanded Ainsley. "Where did you say?" His voice was so
hoarse, so strange, that they all turned and looked.
"On the Nile," repeated Mortimer. "All over Egypt. Why?"
Ainsley made no answer. Unclasping his hold, he suddenly slid down
the face of the rock, and with a bump lit on his hands and knees. With
one bound he had cleared a flower-bed. In two more he had mounted
the steps to the terrace, and in another instant had disappeared into the
house.
"What happened to him?" demanded Elsie Mortimer.
"He's gone to get a gun!" exclaimed Mortimer. "But he mustn't! How
can he think of shooting them?" he cried indignantly. "I'll put a stop to
that!"
In the hall he found Ainsley surrounded by a group of startled servants.
"You get that car at the door in five minutes!" he was shouting, "and
YOU telephone the hotel to have my trunks out of the cellar and on
board the Kron Prinz Albert by midnight. Then you telephone Hoboken
that I want a cabin, and if they haven't got a cabin I want the captain's.
And tell them anyway I'm coming on board to-night, and I'm going
with them if I have to sleep on deck. And YOU," he cried, turning to
Mortimer, "take a shotgun and guard that lake, and if anybody tries to
molest those birds--shoot him! They've come from Egypt! From Polly
Kirkland! She sent them! They're a sign!"
"Are you going mad?" cried Mortimer.
"No!" roared Ainsley. "I'm going to Egypt, and I'm going NOW!"
Polly Kirkland and her friends were travelling slowly up the Nile, and
had reached Luxor. A few hundred yards below the village their
dahabiyeh was moored to the bank, and, on the deck, Miss Kirkland
was watching a scarlet sun sink behind two palm-trees. By the grace of
that special Providence that cares for drunken men, citizens of the
United States, and lovers, her friends were on shore, and she was alone.
For this she was grateful, for her thoughts were of a melancholy and
tender nature and she had no wish for any companion save one. In
consequence, when a steam-launch, approaching at full speed with the

rattle of a quick-firing gun, broke upon her meditations, she was
distinctly annoyed.
But when, with much ringing of bells and shouting of orders, the
steam-launch rammed the paint off her dahabiyeh, and a young man
flung himself over the rail and ran toward her, her annoyance passed,
and with a sigh she sank into his outstretched, eager arms.
Half an hour later Ainsley laughed proudly and happily.
"Well!" he exclaimed, "you can never say I kept YOU waiting. I didn't
lose much time, did I? Ten minutes after I got your C. Q. D. signal I
was going down the Boston Post Road at seventy miles an hour."
"My what?" said the girl.
"The sign!" explained Ainsley. "The sign you were to send me to tell
me"--he bent over her hands and added gently--"that you cared for me."
"Oh, I remember," laughed Polly Kirkland. "I was to send you a sign,
wasn't I? You were to 'read it in your heart'," she quoted.
"And I did," returned Ainsley complacently. "There were several false
alarms, and I'd almost lost hope, but when the messengers came I knew
them."
With puzzled eyes the girl frowned and raised her head.
"Messengers?" she repeated. "I sent no message. Of course," she went
on, "when I said you would 'read it in your heart' I meant