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Chapter 7
Supporting Procurement with SAP
Chapter Objectives/Study Questions
Q1. What are the fundamentals of a Procurement process?
Q2. How did the Procurement process at CBI work before SAP?
Q3. What were the problems with the Procurement process before SAP?
Q4. How does CBI implement SAP?
Q5. How does the Procurement process work at CBI after SAP?
Q6. How can SAP improve supply chain processes at CBI?
Q7. How does the use of SAP change CBI?
Q8. What new IS will affect the Procurement process in 2024?
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List of Key Terms
• 3D printing – also known as additive manufacturing, objects are manufactured
through the deposition of successive layers of material.
• Augmented reality – computer data or graphics overlaid onto the physical
environment.
• Bottleneck – event that occurs when a limited resource greatly reduces the output of
an integrated series of activities or processes.
• Bullwhip effect – occurs when companies order more supplies than are needed due to
a sudden change in demand.
• Buy-in – selling a product or system for less than its true price.
• Finished goods inventory – completed products awaiting delivery to customers.
• Internal control – control that systematically limits the actions and behaviors of
employees, processes, and systems within the organization to safeguard assets and to
achieve objectives.
• Invoice – an itemized bill sent by the supplier.
• Lead time – the time required for a supplier to deliver an order.
• Procurement – the process of obtaining goods and services such as raw materials,
machine spare parts, and cafeteria series. It is an operational process executed
hundreds or thousands of times a day in a large organization. The three main
procurement activities are Order, Receive, and Pay.
• Purchase order – a written document requesting delivery of a specified quantity of
product or service in return for payment.
• Purchase requisition (PR) – an internal company document that issues a request for
a purchase.
• Radio-frequency identification (RFID) – chips that broadcast data to receivers to
display and record data that can be used to identify and track items in the supply
chain.
• Raw materials inventory – stores components like bicycle tires and other goods
procured from suppliers.
• Returns Management process – manages returns of a business’ faulty products.
• Roll up – the accounting process to compile and summarize the accounting
transactions into balance sheets and income statements.
• Supplier evaluation process – process to determine the criteria for supplier selection
that adds or removes suppliers from the list of approved suppliers.
• Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) process – process that automates,
simplifies, and accelerates a variety of supply chain processes. It helps companies
reduce procurement costs, build collaborative supplier relationships, better manage
supplier options, and improve time to market.
• Supply chain management (SCM) – the design, planning, execution, and integration
of all supply chain processes. It uses a collection of tools, techniques, and
management activities to help businesses develop integrated supply chains that
support organizational strategy.
• Three-way match – the data on the invoice must match the purchase order and the
goods receipt.
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MIS InClass 7
1. Describe the order pattern from the customers to the retailer every week.
The order pattern from the customers to the retailer was random from week to week.
One week demand would be six bikes, and 12 the next. The following week demand
would be for only two bikes. Sometimes the demand would trend upward, steadily
increasing over a period of weeks. At other times, demand would slowly fall over a
period of time.
2. Why did the ordering pattern between the suppliers in the supply chain evolve
the way it did?
Initially, the ordering pattern between the stations was very erratic. A bullwhip effect
was created. As the game moved forward, product was able to work its way through
the supply chain, so orders were able to be met. This created a pattern of over-
ordering, which led to generally excessive inventory. As the randomness of the orders
was realized, the orders through the supply chain moved up and down as well.
3. What are the objectives and measures for each team’s procurement process?
The objectives for each station are to have less inventory and less backorders. To
measure this, stations use the total cost. The total cost is 0.5 (inventory) +1
(backorders).
4. Where is the IS? What would more data allow? What data are most needed?
There is not an IS present in the game. More data would allow materials planning
within the supply chain. Customer demand is most needed. It takes a long time to get
the customer data through the different stations. If the factory had a more direct view
of customer demand, the backorder and inventory problems would not be as
exaggerated downstream.
5. If you spent money on an IS, would it improve an activity, data flow, control,
automation, or procedure?
It would improve the linkage between the retailer and each of the stations in the
supply chain. Without an IS, each station can only know what the demand is one
station away, and there is an inherent lag. This lag can be reduced when every station
understands what the customer demand actually is.
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6. Create a BPMN diagram of your team’s weekly procurement process.
Procurement Process for Wholesaler
Purchasing Manager Warehouse Manager Fulfillment Manager
Phase
Receive Incoming
Orders and Advance
the order delay
Fill the Order
Place Order
Receive Inventory
and advance the
shipping delay
Record Back Log
Start
Enough
inventory to
fulfill
Yes
No
Check Inventory
Inventory
Update Inventory
Enough
Inventory
No
End
Yes
Update Inventory
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Using Your Knowledge
7-1. Two supply chain processes introduced in this chapter are Returns
Management and Supplier Evaluation.
a. Create a BPMN diagram of each of these processes.
Returns Managment
Retailer Factory Supplier
Phase
Start
End
Product Received by
Retailer
Product Returned to
Factory
Correct Supplier
Charged for Defect
Replacement
Product issued to
Customer
Product Received by
Factory
Product Examined
for Defect
Supplier Charged
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Supplier Evaluation
Approved Supplier List
Purchasing Manager
Phase
Approved
Supplier DB
Start
End
Suppliers are
nominated
Information
Gathered
Supplier
Approved
Update List
Yes
b. Specify efficiency and effectiveness objectives for each process and identify
measures appropriate for CBI.
Potential efficiency objective examples for:
Returns Management: Fewer product returns.
Supplier Evaluation: Time to approve suppliers.
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Potential effectiveness objective examples for:
Returns Management: Quality Controls.
Supplier Evaluation: Sufficient number of approved suppliers.
Potential efficiency measures for:
Returns Management: Percentage of quality control tests passed and inspecting
parts prior to assembly.
Supplier Evaluation: Inventory turnover.
Potential effectiveness measures for:
Returns Management: Decrease in Product Returns account.
Supplier Evaluation: Decrease in the number of suppliers removed from the list
of approved suppliers.
c. What new information system technologies could be used by CBI to
improve these processes, as specified by your measures in part b? Can AR,
RFID, or 3D printing be used to improve these processes?
Yes, RFID could be used to track batches of parts that fail a quality control
inspection, allowing CBI to find the parts before they are used to assemble other
products. Augmented Reality could be used when inspecting a returned product.
The parts in the product could be linked directly to the supplier, allowing CBI to
quickly charge the supplier for the defect to reduce its own Returns allowance
and increase its accounts receivable.
7-2. Which of the four nonroutine cognitive skills identified in Chapter 1 (i.e.,
abstract reasoning, systems thinking, collaboration, and experimentation) did
you use to answer the previous question?
Based on the example answer for question 1, the nonroutine cognitive skill of
systems thinking was used to determine what available technologies could be used
by CBI to help improve its processes and how the technologies could be leveraged
to help each other. Abstract reasoning was also utilized to determine in which step
of the process the technology could be used.
7-3. Which of the four skills in Exercise 7-2 would be most important for Wally’s
replacement?
Wally’s replacement will need to possess systems thinking in order to connect all of
the inputs and outputs produced by CBI into one big system. The three remaining
non-routine skills will also be important for Wally’s replacement. Technology
moves quickly and to remain an effective manager, Wally’s replacement will need
to move quickly as well. Over the course of ten or twenty years, the processes will
also change, creating more opportunities for CBI to improve and become an even
better business.
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7-4. The Procurement process in this chapter is an inbound logistics operational
process. Name two other operational processes at CBI. Describe two inbound
logistics managerial processes and two strategic processes.
Examples of two other operational processes are Accounts Payable and Conducting
Sales. Examples of inbound logistics managerial processes include materials
requirement planning and production assembly employee scheduling. Examples of
strategic processes include budget planning and determining future warehouse
space requirements.
7-5. If a warehouse worker opens a box and the contents are broken, those items
will be returned to the supplier. Add this activity to the BPMN diagram of the
Procurement process (Figure 7-14).
Updated BPMN for Figure 7-12
Purchasing Manager
Warehouse
Manager
SAP Application Accountant
Phase
Start
Update DB
Create Purchase
Requisition
Create Purchase
Order
Receive Goods
Receive Invoice
Yes
Consistent 3
Way Match
Pay Supplier
Yes
End
Retrieve Three-Way
Match Data
Update DB
SAP DB
No
Product in
Acceptable
Condition
Return Product to
Supplier
No
7-6. For the Procurement process after SAP implementation, what are the triggers
for each activity to start? For example, what action (trigger) initiates the
Create PO activity?
To start, the raw material inventory for a given product must drop below a
predetermined level. This will cause a purchase requisition to be created. Once a PR
is created, the purchasing manager must approve it in order to create a purchase
order. Once a PO is created and the materials are delivered, a goods receipt is
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created. Once the goods are added to the inventory, the goods receipt creates an
entry in accounts payable. Once CBI receives the invoice for the PO, the receive
invoice process is triggered. This allows the Pay supplier activity to begin. Before
the post outgoing payment activity can be completed, the data from the PO, goods
receipt, and invoice must all be correct (the three-way match).
7-7. What kinds of errors can Wally, Maria, and Ann make that are not captured
by SAP? One example is that Wally might count 20 bottles and 30 cages but
mistakenly enter 20 cages and 30 bottles. Describe a particularly harmful
mistake that each can make and how the process could be changed to prevent
that error.
Wally could accidentally miss clicking OK for one of the products in the Goods
Receipt Screen. Maria could select the wrong supplier for a particular material. Ann
could select the wrong supplier to which to issue a payment. A particularly harmful
mistake that Wally could make is to forget to create a good receipt altogether. To
improve this process, augmented reality and RFID tags could be used to identify
materials that have been shipped by the supplier but have yet to be entered into
inventory at CBI. Maria could mistype a part number to be ordered. To prevent this,
a check could be run to confirm that the part number ordered is below the minimum
stock on hand. Ann could pay the wrong vendor. To prevent this, checks could be
used to ensure that the vendor being paid has an unpaid invoice with CBI and that
the amount of payment is less than or equal to the amount of the accounts payable
for that particular vendor.
7-8. How does a pizza shop’s Procurement process differ from CBI’s? What do you
believe is the corporate strategy of your favorite pizza franchise? What are the
objectives and measures of its Procurement process to support this strategy?
A pizza shop’s procurement process would need to be more efficient than CBI’s.
Pizza shops carry perishable items on their inventory, which means inventory must
be turned over quickly. Pizza shops also generally have narrow margins. This
means that there is not as much room to carry excess inventory like CBI might be
able to. Papa John’s, with over 3,500 locations, aims to provide better pizzas by
using better ingredients. This can be particularly difficult due to the need for fresh
vegetables. Because of this, the chain has local suppliers for each location. To
support the strategy, Papa John’s should have relatively small amounts of raw
materials on hand to make sure that the ingredients are fresh. This can be measured
by the inventory turnover for each ingredient. Another measure is the response time
by suppliers to provide the fresh ingredients. This can be measured by the order
fulfillment time.
7-9. 3D printing has many benefits for businesses. Suggest three products that CBI
might print instead of procure with traditional means and three that your
university might print.
Suggested answers for CBI:
• Any plastic parts for its bicycles, ranging from wheel reflector shells to handle-
bar plugs and from tire filler caps to water bottles and helmet shells.
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• Promotional materials such as key chains, custom signage for store display, etc.
• With the right technology and printer cartridges, metal parts may be part of the
process in the future. There are currently experiments with titanium printing that
would allow the printing of high-end gears, derailleurs, etc.
Suggested answers for a university:
• Athletic equipment (think football, hockey, etc.).
• Keys, most universities spend significant funds on key manufacture and control.
• Soft and hard goods with the university seal/logo for sale in the bookstore and at
events.
Students will certainly have a plethora of suggestions.
Which procurement objectives does 3D printing support?
Procurement is primarily associated with inbound logistics. It is the process by
which goods are ordered, received, stored, disseminated within the organization,
and paid for. 3D printing affects ordering (to some extent), receipt, storage, and
dissemination (depending upon where printing occurs relative to the ultimate user’s
location).
7-10. Augmented reality will help employees find items in a warehouse, but this IS
may also support many other processes. Name two and describe how AR will
improve them. Use Google Glass as one example of using AR, and use another
example of AR for your other process.
AR could assist with navigation though a large facility to locate an individual or
functional location. AR could also be used to help a person during a presentation by
presenting context sensitive information viewable only by the presenter regardless
of the presenter’s proximity to a computer (think Google Glass). In a more
traditional sense, AR could present 3D images of complex designs to assist in
product repair, virtual design interaction, etc. If AR is tied to GPS, which is
certainly a reality, your smartphone can present an AR view of your current
location to give you information about your surroundings, or possibly suggest
possibilities for a sales call close to you, for example.
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Collaboration Exercise 7
1. Figure 7-8 lists problems with the Procurement process at CBI. Which of these
would apply to the university? Which would not? What are some procurement
problems that might be unique to an athletics department?
In the Accounting role, three-way match discrepancies and the lack of real time
accounting data would apply at university. Purchasing agents could be spread across
many departments and colleges. Internal controls could also be weak in the
Purchasing role. The problems with finished goods inventory and raw materials
inventory would not apply to the university. The athletics department, on the other
hand, may face issues with procurement due to the need for a very specialized piece
of athletic equipment that is only offered by a limited number of suppliers. An
athletics department might also face issues with increased procurement costs because
of low order volumes. It might be difficult to obtain economies of scale when there
are only 25 hockey players who need hockey skates ordered for the season.
2. Figure 7-12 lists objectives and measures that the managers at CBI determined
for the Procurement process. What objectives and measures would you suggest
for the university? What objectives and measures would you expect the athletics
director to suggest (do not use the objectives and measures from Chapter 6)?
For the university, an objective should be to reduce inventory. Another objective
could be to reduce costs. Measures for these objectives would be decreasing
inventory costs from 25% of sales to 15% and to reduce product costs by 5%. The
athletics department should use objectives like reduce cost and increase the volume of
cross-selling. Measures could include reducing product costs by 10% and increasing
cross-selling revenues by 25%.
3. Figure 7-28 lists the impacts of SAP on an organization. Which of these impacts
would affect the athletics department?
Of the four items listed, new skills needed and process focus would affect the
athletics department. The department will need to train employees to be proficient
with the supply chain management system, and to utilize employees’ abstract
reasoning and analytical skills. The athletics department will also need to focus on
processes. The inputs and outputs into the system will provide more data for the
department’s customers and suppliers.
4. Chapter 1 explained four nonroutine cognitive skills: abstract reasoning, systems
thinking, collaboration, and experimentation. Explain how implementing the
new Procurement process at CBI will require each of these skills from the
members of the SAP implementation team.
Abstract reasoning is needed to create and manipulate the models for CBI’s
processes. Ultimately, the process used by the employees and the process that the
SAP software is designed to aid must be the same. It may require the human
processes and computer processes to be tweaked in order to work together. Systems
thinking will be needed in order to fully realize the benefits provided by SAP. The
ERP system creates many inputs and outputs which can be used by the company to
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increase the efficiency of it processes and to increase its operating margins. It is up to
the employees to realize how the data can be used. Collaboration is essential for a
successful implementation. Employees from different areas of the company will need
to work together toward a common goal for the investment in the system to be
worthwhile. Experimentation is needed to pursue potential solutions to problems in
the processes and to foster learning opportunities. Not every experiment will be
successful; the opportunity comes in learning something from a failed experiment
other than the knowledge that what was tried did not work.
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Active Case 7: SAP PROCUREMENT TUTORIAL
7-11. Describe your first impressions of SAP.
SAP can seem very large and daunting at first glance. Users may have feelings of
confusion and even intimidation. Many textboxes create many opportunities for
user error. However, while SAP may seem a little overwhelming, the system has
many controls in place. Some of these controls include data validation (selecting
vendors or products from a pre-populated list), and auto-completed fields, which
prevent user inputs from being incorrectly entered.|
7-12. What types of skills are necessary to use this system?
In order to use the SAP system, the user needs to possess analytical skills. The
system produces many data points. SAP relies on the efficiency of underlying
processes in order for businesses to gain the full benefit. The processes are designed
and executed by those that use the system.
7-13. Create a screen capture of an SAP screen. Underneath the image, provide an
answer to each of the following questions:
The Post Outgoing Payments screen is used as an example.
a. In which of the activities does this screen occur?
The screen occurs in the Post Payment activity.
b. What is the name of this screen?
This screen is called the Post Outgoing Payments Header screen.
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c. What is the name of the screen that precedes it? What screen comes after
it?
The screen that precedes the Post Payment Header screen is the Outgoing
Payment screen. The screen that follows the Post Payment Header screen is the
Post Outgoing Payments process open items screen.
d. What actor accomplishes this activity?
The actor that accomplishes this activity is Ann from accounting.
e. Describe an error that this actor may do on this screen that SAP will
prevent.
Without SAP, Ann could enter the wrong amount for payment. While SAP does
not outright prevent this action, it does provide a check figure in the “Not
assigned” box. If the value for the not assigned box is not zero, Ann will know
that there is an error.
7-14. Make an informal diagram of the four main actors: Supplier (Composite
Bikes), Purchasing (Maria), Warehouse (Wally), and Accounting (Ann). Draw
arrows that show the data that flows among the actors during this process.
Number the arrows and include on each arrow what data are included in the
message.
Case 7 Question 4
Supplier Purchasing Warehouse Accounting
Phase
Start
1. Purchase Requisition Request
Receive Purchase
Request
Create Purchase
Order
Fill Purchase Order
Create Goods
Receipt
Issue Payment
2. Required Material
3. PO information
4. Product
5. Invoicing Information
Send Invoice 6. Invoice
Receive Payment
Create Account
Payable
7. Receipt Confirmation
8. AP Information
9. Payment Data
End
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7-15. Using the same four main actors as in question 7-14, this time show with the
arrows how the material (the water bottles and cages) moves.
Case 7 Question 5
Supplier Purchasing Warehouse Accounting
Phase
Receive PO / Ship
Order
Receive Order /
Create Goods
Receipt
Start
End
1. Order Contents
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7-16. One concern of a business is fraud. One fraud technique is to create suppliers
who are not suppliers but are co-conspirators. The conspirator inside the
business accepts invoices for nonexistent deliveries. For this fraud scheme to
work, who at CBI has to take part? How can SAP processes decrease the
chance of this type of fraud?
For this scheme to be used, Wally, Maria, and Ann would all need to take part.
Maria would play a central role as the purchasing manager because she would
create both the fictitious vendor and the fraudulent purchase orders. Wally would
also play a role in the warehouse by creating the goods receipt document. By
creating the document, Wally would open up an account payable as well. In
accounting, Ann would be CBI’s last line of defense. Ann would post the payment
to the fictitious vendor, completing the fraud.
SAP processes can decrease this type of fraud by splitting the various processes up
between functional departments and actors within those departments. Access can be
restricted so that no single individual could complete each step necessary for the
fraud. By requiring more actors to take part, the likelihood of a coworker noticing
something is amiss increases. Another measure that can be taken is to utilize an
approved supplier list. This would allow purchase orders to only be placed to
vendors who meet certain requirements. One possible requirement is to undergo a
site visit by members of CBI’s management.
7-17. Select any of the main activities or subactivities in the Procurement process.
The activity used in this example is Create Purchase Order.
a. What event triggers this activity?
The activity is triggered by the purchasing manager approving a purchase
requisition. The purchase requisition may have been automatically generated by
the stock levels of a particular product dropping below a predetermined point.
The purchase requisition may have also been created for a product that CBI
does not normally stock, but needs for a special order or even a new product
line.
b. What activity follows this activity?
Following the Create Purchase Order activity is the Create Goods Receipt
activity.
c. For one data entry item for this activity, describe what would happen in the
rest of the process if that entry was erroneous.
One potential error would be ordering the wrong quantity of an item. This error
can cause problems if not enough are ordered, creating a stock-out, or if too
many are ordered, creating excess inventory. When the warehouse manager
goes to create the goods receipt, the items will be added to the inventory. Once
Ann receives the invoice for the order, a payment will be posted and CBI will
not have the product quantity it needs.
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d. For one data entry item for this activity, describe what limits (controls) you
would put in place on the data to prevent the type of error described in
item c.
To prevent an error like the one described above, CBI could implement a
reasonableness check for the create purchase order activity. For example, a
maximum order quantity of 25 could be set for a common component like a
popular road bike frame. On the other hand, the maximum order quantity might
only be five for a less popular specialty product like a cyclocross bike frame. In
the case of the road bike frame, this control would prevent 52 frames from being
ordered. In the case of the cyclocross bike, the smaller maximum order quantity
could prevent CBI from having a large quantity on-hand going into the off-peak
season.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
"I agree with the Princess," chimed the Judge. "What is this
unrest among the Egyptians due to? The education we ourselves
have given them."
"Yes, teach your dog to snap and he'll soon bite you."
"These are the tares in the harvest we are reaping, and perhaps
our Western grain doesn't suit this Eastern desert."
"Should think it doesn't, indeed. 'Liberty,' 'Equality,' 'Fraternity,'
'representative Institutions'! If you English come talking this
nonsense to the Egyptians what can you expect? Socialism, is it?
Well, if I am to be Prince, and you are to be Prince, who is to drive
the donkey? Excuse the word! I know! I tell you plainly. Good-bye,
my dear! You are looking perfect to-day. But then you are so happy.
I can see when young people are in love by their eyes, and yours
are shining like moons. After all, your Western ways are best. We
choose the husbands for our girls, thinking the silly things don't
know what is good for them, and the chicken isn't wiser than the
hen; but it's the young people, not the old ones, who have to live
together, so why shouldn't they choose for themselves?"
At that instant there passed from some remote corner of the
grounds a brougham containing two shrouded figures in close white
veils, and the Princess said—
"Look at that, now—that relic of barbarism! Shutting our women
up like canaries in a cage, while their men are enjoying the
sunshine. Life is a dancing girl—let her dance a little for all of us."
The Princess was about to go when General Graves appealed to
her. The Judge had been saying—
"I should call it a religious rather than a political unrest. You
may do what you will for the Moslem, but he never forgets that the
hand which bestows his benefits is that of an infidel."
"Yes, we're aliens here, there's no getting over it," said the
Adviser.
And the General said, "Especially when professional fanatics are
always reminding the Egyptians that we are not Mohammedans. By
the way, Princess, have you heard of the new preacher, the new
prophet, the new Mahdi, as they say?"
"Prophet! Mahdi! Another of them?"
"Yes, the comet that has just appeared in the firmament of
Alexandria."
"Some holy man, I suppose. Oh, I know. Holy man indeed!
Shake hands with him and count your rings, General! Another
impostor riding on the people's backs, and they can't see it, the
stupids! But the camel never can see his hump—not he! Good-bye,
girl. Get married soon and keep together as long as you can. Stretch
your legs to the length of your bed, my dear—why shouldn't you?
Say good-bye to Gordon? ... Certainly, where is he?"
At that moment Gordon was listening with head down to
something the General was saying with intense feeling.
"The only way to deal with religious impostors who sow
disaffection among the people is to suppress them with a strong
hand. Why not? Fear of their followers? They're fit for nothing but to
pray in their mosques, 'Away with the English, O Lord, but give us
water in due measure!' Fight? Not for an instant! There isn't an
ounce of courage in a hundred of them, and a score of good soldiers
would sweep all the native Egyptians of Alexandria into the sea."
Then Gordon, who had not yet spoken, lifted his head and
answered, in a rather nervous voice—
"No, no, no, sir! Ill usage may have made these people cowards
in the old days, but proper treatment since has made them men,
and there wasn't an Egyptian fellah on the field to-day who wouldn't
have followed me into the jaws of death if I had told him to. As for
our being aliens in religion"—the nervous voice became louder and
at the same time more tremulous—"that isn't everything. We're
aliens in sympathy and brotherhood and even in common courtesy
as well. What is the honest truth about us? Here we are to help the
Egyptians to regenerate their country, yet we neither eat nor drink
nor associate with them. How can we hope to win their hearts while
we hold them at arm's length? We've given them water, yes, water
in abundance, but have we given them—love?"
The woman in Gordon had leapt out before he knew it, and he
had swung a little aside as if ashamed, while the men cleared their
throats, and the Princess, notwithstanding that she had been
abusing her own people, suddenly melted in the eyes, and muttered
to herself, "Oh, our God!" and then, reaching over to kiss Helena,
whispered in her ear—
"You've got the best of the bunch, my dear, and if England
would only send us a few more of his sort we should hear less of
'Long live Egypt.' Now, General, you can see me to my carriage if
you would like to. By-bye, young people!"
At that moment the native servant to whom the Consul-General
had given the note came up and gave it to Gordon, who read it and
then handed it to Helena. It ran—
"Come to me immediately. Have something to say to you.—N."
"We'll drive you to the Agency in the car," said Helena, and they
moved away together.
In a crowded lane at the back of the pavilion people were
clamouring for their carriages and complaining of the idleness and
even rudeness of the Arab runners, but Helena's automobile was
brought up instantly, and when it was moving off, with the General
inside, Helena at the wheel, and Gordon by her side, the natives
touched their foreheads to the Colonel and said, "Bismillah!"
As soon as the car was clear away, and Gordon was alone with
Helena for the first time, there was one of those privateering
passages of love between them which lovers know how to smuggle
through even in public and the eye of day.
"Well!"
"Well!"
"Everybody has been saying the sweetest things to me and
you've never yet uttered a word."
"Did you really expect me to speak—there—before all those
people? But it was splendid, glorious, magnificent!" And then, the
steering-wheel notwithstanding, her gauntletted left hand went
down to where his right hand was waiting for it.
Crossing the iron bridge over the river, they drew up at the
British Agency, a large, ponderous, uninspired edifice, with its
ambuscaded back to the city and its defiant front to the Nile, and
there, as Gordon got down, the General, who still looked hot and
excited, said—
"You'll dine with us to-night, my boy—usual hour, you know?"
"With pleasure, sir," said Gordon, and then Helena leaned over
and whispered—
"May I guess what your father is going to talk about?"
"The demonstration?"
"Oh no!"
"What then?"
"The new prophet at Alexandria."
"I wonder," said Gordon, and with a wave of the hand he
disappeared behind a screen of purple blossom, as Helena and the
General faced home.
Their way lay up through the old city, where groups of
aggressive young students, at sight of the General's gold-laced cap,
started afresh the Kentish fire of their "Long live Egypt," up and up
until they reached the threatening old fortress on the spur of the
Mokattani Hills, and then through the iron-clamped gates to the wide
courtyard where the mosque of Mohammed Ali, with its spikey
minarets, stands on the edge of the ramparts like a cock getting
ready to crow, and drew up at the gate of a heavy-lidded house
which looks sleepily down on the city, the sinuous Nile, the sweeping
desert, the preponderating Pyramids, and the last saluting of the
sun. Then as Helena rose from her seat she saw that the General's
head had fallen back and his face was scarlet.
"Father, you are ill."
"Only a little faint—I'll be better presently."
But he stumbled in stepping out of the car, and Helena said—
"You are ill, and you must go to bed immediately, and let me
put Gordon off until to-morrow."
"No, let him come. I want to hear what the Consul-General had
to say to him."
In spite of himself he had to go to bed, though, and half-an-
hour later, having given him a sedative, Helena was saying—
"You've over-excited yourself again, Father. You were anxious
about Gordon when his horse fell and those abominable spears were
flying about."
"Not a bit of it. I knew he would come out all right. The fighting
devil isn't civilised out of the British blood yet, thank God! But those
Egyptians at the end—the ingrates, the dastards!"
"Father!"
"Oh, I am calm enough now—don't be afraid, girl. I was sorry to
hear Gordon standing up for them, though. A soldier every inch of
him, but how unlike his father! Never saw father and son so
different. Yet so much alike too! Fighting men both of them, Hope to
goodness they'll never come to grips. Heavens! that would be a bad
day for all of us."
And then drowsily, under the influence of the medicine—
"I wonder what Nuneham wanted with Gordon! Something
about those graceless tarbooshes, I suppose. He'll make them smart
for what they've done to-day. Wonderful man, Nuneham!
Wonderful!"
CHAPTER III
John Nuneham was the elder son of a financier of whose earlier life
little or nothing was ever learned. What was known of his later life
was that he had amassed a fortune by colonial speculation, bought a
London newspaper, and been made a baronet for services to his
political party. Having no inclination towards journalism the son
became a soldier, rose quickly to the rank of Brevet-Major, served
several years with his regiment abroad, and at six-and-twenty went
to India as Private Secretary to the Viceroy, who, quickly recognising
his natural tendency, transferred him to the administrative side and
put him on the financial staff. There he spent five years with
conspicuous success, obtaining rapid promotion, and being
frequently mentioned in the Viceroy's reports to the Foreign Minister.
Then his father died, without leaving a will, as the cable of the
solicitors informed him, and he returned to administer the estate.
Here a thunderbolt fell on him, for he found a younger brother, with
whom he had nothing in common and had never lived at peace,
preparing to dispute his right to his father's title and fortune on the
assumption that he was illegitimate, that is to say, was born before
the date of the marriage of his parents.
The allegation proved to be only too well founded, and as soon
as the elder brother had recovered from the shock of the truth, he
appealed to the younger one to leave things as they found them.
"After all, a man's eldest son is his eldest son—let matters rest,"
he urged; but his brother was obdurate. "Nobody knows what the
circumstances may have been—is there no ground of agreement?"
but his brother could see none.
"You can take the inheritance, if that's what you want, but let
me find a way to keep the title so as to save the family and avoid
scandal"; but his brother was unyielding.
"For our father's sake—it is not for a man's sons to rake up the
dead past of his forgotten life"; but the younger brother could not be
stirred.
"For our mother's sake—nobody wants his mother's good name
to be smirched, least of all when she's in her grave"; but the
younger brother remained unmoved.
"I promise never to marry. The title shall end with me. It shall
return to you or to your children"; but the younger brother would
not listen.
"England is the only Christian country in the world in which a
man's son is not always his son—for God's sake let me keep my
father's name?"
"It is mine, and mine alone," said the younger brother, and then
a heavy and solitary tear, the last he was to shed for forty years,
dropped slowly down John Nuneham's hard-drawn face, for at that
instant the well of his heart ran dry.
"As you will," he said. "But if it is your pride that is doing this I
shall humble it, and if it is your greed I shall live long enough to
make it ashamed."
From that day forward he dedicated his life to one object only,
the founding of a family that should far eclipse the family of his
brother, and his first step towards that end was to drop his father's
surname in the register of his regiment and assume his mother's
name of Lord.
At that moment England with two other European Powers had,
like Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, entered the fiery furnace of
Egyptian affairs, though not so much to withstand as to protect the
worship of the golden image. A line of Khedives, each seeking his
own advantage, had culminated in one more unscrupulous and
tyrannical than the rest, who had seized the lands of the people,
borrowed money upon them in Europe, wasted it in wicked personal
extravagance, as well as in reckless imperial expenditure that had
not yet had time to yield a return, and thus brought the country to
the brink of ruin, with the result that England was left alone at last
to occupy Egypt, much as Rome occupied Palestine, and to find a
man to administer her affairs in a position analogous to that of
Pontius Pilate. It found him in John Lord, the young Financial
Secretary who had distinguished himself in India.
His task was one of immense difficulty, for though nominally no
more than the British Consul-General, he was really the ruler of the
country, being representative of the sovereign whose soldiers held
Egypt in their grip. Realising at once that he was the official receiver
to a bankrupt nation, he saw that his first duty was to make it
solvent. He did make it solvent. In less than five years Egypt was
able to pay her debt to Europe. Therefore Europe was satisfied,
England was pleased, and John Lord was made Knight of the Order
of St. Michael and St. George.
Then he married a New England girl whom he had met in Cairo,
daughter of a Federal General in the Civil War, a gentle creature,
rather delicate, a little sentimental, and very religious.
During the first years their marriage was childless, and the wife,
seeing with a woman's sure eyes that her husband's hope had been
for a child, began to live within herself, and to weep when no one
could see. But at last a child came, and it was a son, and she was
overjoyed and the Consul-General was content. He allowed her to
christen the child by what name she pleased, so she gave him the
name of her great Christian hero, Charles George Gordon. They
called the boy Gordon, and the little mother was very happy.
But her health became still more delicate, so a nurse had to be
looked for, and they found one in an Egyptian woman—with a child
of her own—who, by power of a pernicious law of Mohammedan
countries, had been divorced through no fault of hers, at the whim
of a husband who wished to marry another wife. Thus Hagar, with
her little Ishmael, became foster-mother to the Consul-General's
son, and the two children were suckled together and slept in the
same cot.
Years passed, during which the boy grew up like a little Arab in
the Englishman's house, while his mother devoted herself more and
more to the exercises of her religion, and his father, without failing in
affectionate attention to either of them, seemed to bury his love for
both too deep in his heart and to seal it with a seal, although the
Egyptian nurse was sometimes startled late at night by seeing the
Consul-General coming noiselessly into her room before going to his
own, to see if it was well with his child.
Meantime as ruler of Egypt the Consul-General was going from
strength to strength, and seeing that the Nile is the most wonderful
river in the world and the father of the country through which it
flows, he determined that it should do more than moisten the lips of
the Egyptian desert while the vast body lay parched with thirst.
Therefore he took engineers up to the fork of the stream where the
clear and crystal Blue Nile of Khartoum, tumbling down in mighty
torrents from the volcanic gorges of the Abyssinian hills, crosses the
slow and sluggish White Nile of Omdurman, and told them to build
dams, so that the water should not be wasted into the sea, but
spread over the arid land, leaving the glorious sun of Egypt to do the
rest.
The effect was miraculous. Nature, the great wonder-worker,
had come to his aid, and never since the Spirit of God first moved
upon the face of the waters had anything so marvellous been seen.
The barren earth brought forth grass and the desert blossomed like
a rose. Land values increased; revenues were enlarged; poor men
became rich; rich men became millionaires; Egypt became a part of
Europe; Cairo became a European city; the record of the progress of
the country began to sound like a story from the "Arabian Nights,"
and the Consul-General's annual reports read like fresh chapters out
of the Book of Genesis, telling of the creation of a new heaven and a
new earth. The remaking of Egypt was the wonder of the world; the
faces of the Egyptians were whitened; England was happy, and Sir
John Lord was made a baronet. His son had gone to school in
England by this time, and from Eton he was to go on to Sandhurst
and to take up the career of a soldier.
Then, thinking the Englishman's mission on foreign soil was
something more than to make money, the Consul-General attempted
to regenerate the country. He had been sent out to re-establish the
authority of the Khedive, yet he proceeded to curtail it; to suppress
the insurrection of the people, yet he proceeded to enlarge their
liberties. Setting up a high standard of morals, both in public and
private life, he tolerated no trickery. Finding himself in a cockpit of
corruption, he put down bribery, slavery, perjury, and a hundred
kinds of venality and intrigue. Having views about individual justice
and equal rights before the law, he cleansed the law courts,
established a Christian code of morals between man and man, and
let the light of Western civilisation into the mud hut of the Egyptian
fellah.
Mentally, morally, and physically his massive personality became
the visible soul of Egypt. If a poor man was wronged in the remotest
village he said, "I'll write to Lord," and the threat was enough. He
became the visible conscience of Egypt, too, and if a rich man was
tempted to do a doubtful deed he thought of "the Englishman" and
the doubtful deed was not done.
The people at the top of the ladder trusted him, and the people
at the bottom, a simple, credulous, kindly race, who were such as
sixty centuries of mis-government had made them, touched their
breasts, their lips, and their foreheads at the mention of his name,
and called him "The Father of Egypt." England was proud, and Sir
John Lord was made a peer.
When the King's letter reached him he took it to his wife, who
now lay for long hours every day on the couch in the drawing-room,
and then wrote to his son, who had left Sandhurst and was serving
with his regiment in the Soudan, but he said nothing to anybody
else, and left even his secretary to learn the great news through the
newspapers.
He was less reserved when he came to select his title, and
remembering his brother he found a fierce joy in calling himself by
his father's name, thinking he had earned the right to it. Twenty-five
years had passed since he had dedicated his life to the founding of a
family that should eclipse and even humiliate the family of his
brother, and now his secret aim was realised. He saw a long line
succeeding him, his son, and his son's son, and his son's son's son,
all peers of the realm, and all Nunehams. His revenge was sweet; he
was very happy.
CHAPTER IV
If Lord Nuneham had died then, or if he had passed away from
Egypt, he would have left an enduring fame as one of the great
Englishmen who twice or thrice in a hundred years carve their
names on the granite page of the world's history; but he went on
and on, until it sometimes looked as if in the end it might be said of
him, in the phrase of the Arab proverb, that he had written his name
in water.
Having achieved one object of ambition, he set himself another,
and having tasted power he became possessed by the lust of it.
Great men had been in England when he first came to Egypt, and he
had submitted to their instructions without demur, but now, wincing
under the orders of inferior successors, he told himself, not idly
boasting, that nobody in London knew his work as well as he did,
and he must be liberated from the domination of Downing Street.
The work of emancipation was delicate but not difficult. There was
one power stronger than any Government, whereby public opinion
might be guided and controlled—the press.
The British Consul-General in Cairo was in a position of peculiar
advantage for guiding and controlling the press. He did guide and
control it. What he thought it well that Europe should know about
Egypt that it knew, and that only. The generally ill-informed public
opinion in England was corrected; the faulty praise and blame of the
British press was set right; within five years London had ceased to
send instructions to Cairo; and when a diplomatic question created a
fuss in Parliament the Consul-General was heard to say—
"I don't care a rush what the Government think, and I don't
care a straw what the Foreign Minister says; I have a power stronger
than either at my back—the public."
It was true, but it was also the beginning of the end. Having
attained to absolute power, he began to break up from the seeds of
dissolution which always hide in the heart of it. Hitherto he had
governed Egypt by guiding a group of gifted Englishmen who as
Secretaries and Advisers had governed the Egyptian Governors; but
now he desired to govern everything himself. As a consequence the
gifted men had to go, and their places were taken by subordinates
whose best qualification was their subservience to his strong and
masterful spirit.
Even that did not matter as long as his own strength served
him. He knew and determined everything, from the terms of treaties
with foreign Powers to the wages of the Khedive's English
coachman. With five thousand British bayonets to enforce his will, he
said to a man, "Do that," and the man did it, or left Egypt without
delay. No Emperor or Czar or King was ever more powerful, no Pope
more infallible; but if his rule was hard, it was also just, and for
some years yet Egypt was well governed.
"When a fish goes bad," the Arabs say, "is it first at the head or
at the tail?" As Lord Nuneham grew old, his health began to fail, and
he had to fall back on the weaklings who were only fit to carry out
his will. Then an undertone of murmuring was heard in Egypt. The
Government was the same, yet it was altogether different. The hand
was Esau's, but the voice was Jacob's. "The millstones are grinding,"
said the Egyptians, "but we see no flour."
The glowing fire of the great Englishman's fame began to turn
to ashes, and a cloud no bigger than a man's hand appeared in the
sky. His Advisers complained to him of friction with their Ministers;
his Inspectors, returning from tours in the country, gave him reports
of scant courtesy at the hands of natives, and to account for their
failures they worked up in his mind the idea of a vast racial and
religious conspiracy. The East was the East; the West was the West;
Moslem was Moslem; Christian was Christian; Egyptians cared more
about Islam than they did about good government, and Europeans
in the valley of the Nile, especially British soldiers and officials, were
living on the top of a volcano.
The Consul-General listened to them with a sour smile, but he
believed them and blundered. He was a sick man now, and he was
not really living in Egypt any longer—he was only sleeping at the
Agency; and he thought he saw the work of his lifetime in danger of
being undone. So, thinking to end fanaticism by one crushing
example, he gave his subordinates an order like that which the
ancient King of Egypt gave to the midwives, with the result that five
men were hanged and a score were flogged before their screaming
wives and children for an offence that had not a particle of religious
or political significance.
A cry of horror went up through Egypt; the Consul-General had
lost it; his forty years of great labour had been undone in a day.
As every knife is out when the bull is down, so the place-
hunting Pashas, the greedy Sheikhs, and the cruel Governors whose
corruptions he had suppressed found instruments to stab him, and
the people who had kissed the hand they dared not bite thought it
safe to bite the hand they need not kiss. He had opened the mouths
of his enemies, and in Eastern manner they assailed him first by
parables. Once there had been a great English eagle; its eyes were
clear and piercing; its talons were firm and relentless in their grip;
yet it was a proud and noble bird; it held its own against East and
West, and protected all who took refuge under its wing; but now the
eagle had grown old and weak; other birds, smaller and meaner, had
deprived it of its feathers and picked out its eyes, and it had become
blind and cruel and cowardly and sly—would nobody shoot it or shut
it up in a cage?
Rightly or wrongly, the Consul-General became convinced that
the Khedive was intriguing against him, and one day he drove to the
royal palace and demanded an audience. The interview that followed
was not the first of many stormy scenes between the real governor
of Egypt and its nominal ruler, and when Lord Nuneham strode out
with his face aflame, through the line of the quaking bodyguard, he
left the Khedive protesting plaintively to the people of his court that
he would sell up all and leave the country. At that the officials put
their heads together in private, concluded that the present condition
could not last, and asked themselves how, since it was useless to
expect England to withdraw the Consul-General, it was possible for
Egypt to get rid of him.
By this time Lord Nuneham, in the manner of all strong men
growing weak, had begun to employ spies, and one day a Syrian
Christian told him a secret story. He was to be assassinated. The
crime was to be committed in the Opera House, under the cover of a
general riot, on the night of the Khedive's State visit, when the
Consul-General was always present. As usual the Khedive was to rise
at the end of the first act and retire to the saloon overlooking the
square; as usual he was to send for Lord Nuneham to follow him,
and the moment of the Khedive's return to his box was to be the
signal for a rival demonstration of English and Egyptians that was to
end in the Consul-General's death. There was no reason to believe
the Khedive himself was party to the plot, or that he knew anything
about it, yet none the less it was necessary to stay away, to find an
excuse—illness at the last moment—anything.
Lord Nuneham was not afraid, but he sent up to the Citadel for
General Graves, and arranged that a battalion of infantry and a
battery of artillery were to be marched down to the Opera Square at
a message over the telephone from him.
"If anything happens, you know what to do," he said; and the
General knew perfectly.
Then the night came, and the moment the Khedive left his
palace the Consul-General heard of it. A moment later a message
was received at the Citadel, and a quarter of an hour afterwards
Lord Nuneham was taking his place at the Opera. The air of the
house tingled with excitement, and everything seemed to justify the
Syrian's story.
Sure enough, at the end of the first act the Khedive rose and
retired to the saloon, and sure enough at the next moment the
Consul-General was summoned to follow him. His Highness was very
gracious, very agreeable, all trace of their last stormy interview
being gone; and gradually Lord Nuneham drew him up to the
windows overlooking the public square.
There, under the sparkling light of a dozen electric lamps, in a
solid line surrounding the Opera House, stood a battalion of infantry,
with the guns of the artillery facing outward at every corner; and at
sight of them the Khedive caught his breath and said—
"What is the meaning of this, my lord?"
"Only a little attention to your Highness," said the Consul-
General in a voice that was intended to be heard all over the room.
At that instant somebody came up hurriedly and whispered to
the Khedive, who turned ashen white, ordered his carriage, and
went home immediately.
Next morning at eleven, Lord Nuneham, with the same force
drawn up in front of Abdeen Palace, went in to see the Khedive
again.
"There's a train for Alexandria at twelve," he said, "and a
steamer for Constantinople at five—your Highness will feel better for
a little holiday in Europe!" and half-an-hour afterwards the Khedive,
accompanied by several of his Court officials, was on his way to the
railway station, with the escort, in addition to his own bodyguard, of
a British regiment whose band was playing the Khedivial hymn.
He had got rid of the Khedive at a critical juncture, but he had
still to deal with a sovereign that would not easily be chloroformed
into silence. The Arabic press, to which he had been the first to give
liberty, began to attack him openly, to vilify him, and systematically
to misrepresent his actions, so that he who had been the great
torch-bearer of light in a dark country saw himself called the Great
Adventurer, the Tyrant, the Assassin, the worst Pharaoh Egypt had
ever known—a Pharaoh surrounded by a kindergarten of false
prophets, obsessed by preposterous fears of assassination and
deluded by phantoms of fanaticism.
His subordinates told him that these hysterical tirades were
inflaming the whole of Egypt; that their influence was in proportion
to their violence; that the huge, untaught mass of the Egyptian
people were listening to them; that there was not an ignorant fellah
possessed of one ragged garment who did not go to the coffee-
house at night to hear them read; that the lives of British officials
were in peril; and that the promulgation of sedition must be
stopped, or the British governance of the country could not go on.
A sombre fire shone in the Consul-General's eyes while he heard
their prophecy, but he believed it all the same, and when he spoke
contemptuously of incendiary articles as froth, and they answered
that froth could be stained with blood, he told himself that if fools
and ingrates spouting nonsense in Arabic could destroy whatever
germs of civilisation he had implanted in Egypt, the doctrine of the
liberty of the press was all moonshine.
And so, after sinister efforts to punish the whole people for the
excesses of their journalists by enlarging the British army and
making the country pay the expense, he found a means to pass a
new press law, to promulgate it by help of the Prime Minister, now
Regent in the Khedive's place, and to suppress every native
newspaper in Egypt in one day. By that blow the Egyptians were
staggered into silence, the British officials went about with stand-off
manners and airs of conscious triumph, and Lord Nuneham himself,
mistaking violence for power, thought he was master of Egypt once
more.
But low, very low on the horizon a new planet now rose in the
firmament. It was not the star of a Khedive jealous of Nuneham's
power, nor of an Egyptian Minister chafing under the orders of his
Under-Secretary, nor yet of a journalist vilifying England and flirting
with France, but that of a simple Arab in turban and caftan, a
swarthy son of the desert whose name no man had heard before,
and it was rising over the dome of the mosque within whose sacred
precincts neither the Consul-General nor his officials could intrude,
and where the march of British soldiers could not be made. There a
reverberation was being heard, a now voice was going forth, and it
was echoing and re-echoing through the hushed chambers that were
the heart of Islam.
When Lord Nuneham first asked about the Arab he was told
that the man was one Ishmael Ameer, out of the Libyan Desert, a
carpenter's son, and a fanatical, backward, unenlightened person of
no consequence whatever; but with his sure eye for the political
heavens, the Consul-General perceived that a planet of no common
magnitude had appeared in the Egyptian firmament, and that it
would avail him nothing to have suppressed the open sedition of the
newspapers if he had only driven it underground, into the mosques,
where it would be a hundredfold more dangerous..
If a political agitation was not to be turned into religious unrest,
if fanaticism was not to conquer civilisation and a holy war to carry
the country back to its old rotten condition of bankruptcy and
barbarity, that man out of the Libyan Desert must be put down. But
how and by whom? He himself was old—more than seventy years
old—his best days were behind him, the road in front of him must be
all downhill now; and when he looked around among the sycophants
who said, "Yes, my lord," "Excellent, my lord," "The very thing, my
lord," for some one to fight the powers of darkness that were
arrayed against him, he saw none.
It was in this mood that he had gone to the sham fight, merely
because he had to show himself in public; and there, sitting
immediately in front of the fine girl who was to be his daughter
soon, and feeling at one moment her quick breathing on his neck, he
had been suddenly caught up by the spirit of her enthusiasm and
had seen his son as he had never seen him before. Putting his
glasses to his eyes he had watched him—he and (as it seemed) the
girl together. Such courage, such fire, such resource, such insight,
such foresight! It must be the finest brain and firmest character in
Egypt, and it was his own flesh and blood, his own son Gordon!
Hitherto his attitude towards Gordon had been one of placid
affection, compounded partly of selfishness, being proud that he was
no fool and could forge along in his profession, and pleased to think
of him as the next link in the chain of the family he was founding;
but now everything was changed. The right man to put down
sedition was the man at his right hand. He would save England
against Egyptian aggression; he would save his father too, who was
old and whose strength was spent, and perhaps—why not?—he
would succeed him some day and carry on the traditions of his work
in the conquests of civilisation and its triumph in the dark countries
of the world.
For the first time for forty years a heavy and solitary tear
dropped slowly down the Consul-General's cheek, now deeply scored
with lines; but no one saw it, because few dared look into his face.
The man who had never unburdened himself to a living soul wished
to unburden himself at last, so he scribbled his note to Gordon and
then stepped into the carriage that was to take him home.
Meantime he was aware that some fool had provoked a
demonstration, but that troubled him hardly at all; and while the
crackling cries of "Long live Egypt!" were following him down the
arena he was being borne along as by invisible wings.
Thus the two aims in the great Proconsul's life had become one,
and that one aim centred in his son.
CHAPTER V
As Gordon went into the British Agency a small, wizened man with a
pock-marked face, wearing Oriental dress, came out. He was the
Grand Cadi (Chief Judge) of the Mohammedan courts and
representative of the Sultan of Turkey in Egypt, one who had
secretly hated the Consul-General and raved against the English rule
for years; and as he saluted obsequiously with his honeyed voice
and smiled with his crafty eyes, it flashed upon Gordon—he did not
know why—that just so must Caiaphas, the high priest, have looked
when he came out of Pilate's judgment hall after saying, "If thou let
this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend."
Gordon leapt up the steps and into the house as one who was
at home, and going first into the shaded drawing-room he found his
mother on the couch looking to the sunset and the Nile—a sweet old
lady in the twilight of life, with white hair, a thin face almost as
white, and the pale smile of a patient soul who had suffered pain.
With her, attending upon her, and at that moment handing a cup of

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  • 4. 1 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter 7 Supporting Procurement with SAP Chapter Objectives/Study Questions Q1. What are the fundamentals of a Procurement process? Q2. How did the Procurement process at CBI work before SAP? Q3. What were the problems with the Procurement process before SAP? Q4. How does CBI implement SAP? Q5. How does the Procurement process work at CBI after SAP? Q6. How can SAP improve supply chain processes at CBI? Q7. How does the use of SAP change CBI? Q8. What new IS will affect the Procurement process in 2024?
  • 5. 2 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. List of Key Terms • 3D printing – also known as additive manufacturing, objects are manufactured through the deposition of successive layers of material. • Augmented reality – computer data or graphics overlaid onto the physical environment. • Bottleneck – event that occurs when a limited resource greatly reduces the output of an integrated series of activities or processes. • Bullwhip effect – occurs when companies order more supplies than are needed due to a sudden change in demand. • Buy-in – selling a product or system for less than its true price. • Finished goods inventory – completed products awaiting delivery to customers. • Internal control – control that systematically limits the actions and behaviors of employees, processes, and systems within the organization to safeguard assets and to achieve objectives. • Invoice – an itemized bill sent by the supplier. • Lead time – the time required for a supplier to deliver an order. • Procurement – the process of obtaining goods and services such as raw materials, machine spare parts, and cafeteria series. It is an operational process executed hundreds or thousands of times a day in a large organization. The three main procurement activities are Order, Receive, and Pay. • Purchase order – a written document requesting delivery of a specified quantity of product or service in return for payment. • Purchase requisition (PR) – an internal company document that issues a request for a purchase. • Radio-frequency identification (RFID) – chips that broadcast data to receivers to display and record data that can be used to identify and track items in the supply chain. • Raw materials inventory – stores components like bicycle tires and other goods procured from suppliers. • Returns Management process – manages returns of a business’ faulty products. • Roll up – the accounting process to compile and summarize the accounting transactions into balance sheets and income statements. • Supplier evaluation process – process to determine the criteria for supplier selection that adds or removes suppliers from the list of approved suppliers. • Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) process – process that automates, simplifies, and accelerates a variety of supply chain processes. It helps companies reduce procurement costs, build collaborative supplier relationships, better manage supplier options, and improve time to market. • Supply chain management (SCM) – the design, planning, execution, and integration of all supply chain processes. It uses a collection of tools, techniques, and management activities to help businesses develop integrated supply chains that support organizational strategy. • Three-way match – the data on the invoice must match the purchase order and the goods receipt.
  • 6. 3 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. MIS InClass 7 1. Describe the order pattern from the customers to the retailer every week. The order pattern from the customers to the retailer was random from week to week. One week demand would be six bikes, and 12 the next. The following week demand would be for only two bikes. Sometimes the demand would trend upward, steadily increasing over a period of weeks. At other times, demand would slowly fall over a period of time. 2. Why did the ordering pattern between the suppliers in the supply chain evolve the way it did? Initially, the ordering pattern between the stations was very erratic. A bullwhip effect was created. As the game moved forward, product was able to work its way through the supply chain, so orders were able to be met. This created a pattern of over- ordering, which led to generally excessive inventory. As the randomness of the orders was realized, the orders through the supply chain moved up and down as well. 3. What are the objectives and measures for each team’s procurement process? The objectives for each station are to have less inventory and less backorders. To measure this, stations use the total cost. The total cost is 0.5 (inventory) +1 (backorders). 4. Where is the IS? What would more data allow? What data are most needed? There is not an IS present in the game. More data would allow materials planning within the supply chain. Customer demand is most needed. It takes a long time to get the customer data through the different stations. If the factory had a more direct view of customer demand, the backorder and inventory problems would not be as exaggerated downstream. 5. If you spent money on an IS, would it improve an activity, data flow, control, automation, or procedure? It would improve the linkage between the retailer and each of the stations in the supply chain. Without an IS, each station can only know what the demand is one station away, and there is an inherent lag. This lag can be reduced when every station understands what the customer demand actually is.
  • 7. 4 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 6. Create a BPMN diagram of your team’s weekly procurement process. Procurement Process for Wholesaler Purchasing Manager Warehouse Manager Fulfillment Manager Phase Receive Incoming Orders and Advance the order delay Fill the Order Place Order Receive Inventory and advance the shipping delay Record Back Log Start Enough inventory to fulfill Yes No Check Inventory Inventory Update Inventory Enough Inventory No End Yes Update Inventory
  • 8. 5 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. Using Your Knowledge 7-1. Two supply chain processes introduced in this chapter are Returns Management and Supplier Evaluation. a. Create a BPMN diagram of each of these processes. Returns Managment Retailer Factory Supplier Phase Start End Product Received by Retailer Product Returned to Factory Correct Supplier Charged for Defect Replacement Product issued to Customer Product Received by Factory Product Examined for Defect Supplier Charged
  • 9. 6 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. Supplier Evaluation Approved Supplier List Purchasing Manager Phase Approved Supplier DB Start End Suppliers are nominated Information Gathered Supplier Approved Update List Yes b. Specify efficiency and effectiveness objectives for each process and identify measures appropriate for CBI. Potential efficiency objective examples for: Returns Management: Fewer product returns. Supplier Evaluation: Time to approve suppliers.
  • 10. 7 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. Potential effectiveness objective examples for: Returns Management: Quality Controls. Supplier Evaluation: Sufficient number of approved suppliers. Potential efficiency measures for: Returns Management: Percentage of quality control tests passed and inspecting parts prior to assembly. Supplier Evaluation: Inventory turnover. Potential effectiveness measures for: Returns Management: Decrease in Product Returns account. Supplier Evaluation: Decrease in the number of suppliers removed from the list of approved suppliers. c. What new information system technologies could be used by CBI to improve these processes, as specified by your measures in part b? Can AR, RFID, or 3D printing be used to improve these processes? Yes, RFID could be used to track batches of parts that fail a quality control inspection, allowing CBI to find the parts before they are used to assemble other products. Augmented Reality could be used when inspecting a returned product. The parts in the product could be linked directly to the supplier, allowing CBI to quickly charge the supplier for the defect to reduce its own Returns allowance and increase its accounts receivable. 7-2. Which of the four nonroutine cognitive skills identified in Chapter 1 (i.e., abstract reasoning, systems thinking, collaboration, and experimentation) did you use to answer the previous question? Based on the example answer for question 1, the nonroutine cognitive skill of systems thinking was used to determine what available technologies could be used by CBI to help improve its processes and how the technologies could be leveraged to help each other. Abstract reasoning was also utilized to determine in which step of the process the technology could be used. 7-3. Which of the four skills in Exercise 7-2 would be most important for Wally’s replacement? Wally’s replacement will need to possess systems thinking in order to connect all of the inputs and outputs produced by CBI into one big system. The three remaining non-routine skills will also be important for Wally’s replacement. Technology moves quickly and to remain an effective manager, Wally’s replacement will need to move quickly as well. Over the course of ten or twenty years, the processes will also change, creating more opportunities for CBI to improve and become an even better business.
  • 11. 8 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 7-4. The Procurement process in this chapter is an inbound logistics operational process. Name two other operational processes at CBI. Describe two inbound logistics managerial processes and two strategic processes. Examples of two other operational processes are Accounts Payable and Conducting Sales. Examples of inbound logistics managerial processes include materials requirement planning and production assembly employee scheduling. Examples of strategic processes include budget planning and determining future warehouse space requirements. 7-5. If a warehouse worker opens a box and the contents are broken, those items will be returned to the supplier. Add this activity to the BPMN diagram of the Procurement process (Figure 7-14). Updated BPMN for Figure 7-12 Purchasing Manager Warehouse Manager SAP Application Accountant Phase Start Update DB Create Purchase Requisition Create Purchase Order Receive Goods Receive Invoice Yes Consistent 3 Way Match Pay Supplier Yes End Retrieve Three-Way Match Data Update DB SAP DB No Product in Acceptable Condition Return Product to Supplier No 7-6. For the Procurement process after SAP implementation, what are the triggers for each activity to start? For example, what action (trigger) initiates the Create PO activity? To start, the raw material inventory for a given product must drop below a predetermined level. This will cause a purchase requisition to be created. Once a PR is created, the purchasing manager must approve it in order to create a purchase order. Once a PO is created and the materials are delivered, a goods receipt is
  • 12. 9 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. created. Once the goods are added to the inventory, the goods receipt creates an entry in accounts payable. Once CBI receives the invoice for the PO, the receive invoice process is triggered. This allows the Pay supplier activity to begin. Before the post outgoing payment activity can be completed, the data from the PO, goods receipt, and invoice must all be correct (the three-way match). 7-7. What kinds of errors can Wally, Maria, and Ann make that are not captured by SAP? One example is that Wally might count 20 bottles and 30 cages but mistakenly enter 20 cages and 30 bottles. Describe a particularly harmful mistake that each can make and how the process could be changed to prevent that error. Wally could accidentally miss clicking OK for one of the products in the Goods Receipt Screen. Maria could select the wrong supplier for a particular material. Ann could select the wrong supplier to which to issue a payment. A particularly harmful mistake that Wally could make is to forget to create a good receipt altogether. To improve this process, augmented reality and RFID tags could be used to identify materials that have been shipped by the supplier but have yet to be entered into inventory at CBI. Maria could mistype a part number to be ordered. To prevent this, a check could be run to confirm that the part number ordered is below the minimum stock on hand. Ann could pay the wrong vendor. To prevent this, checks could be used to ensure that the vendor being paid has an unpaid invoice with CBI and that the amount of payment is less than or equal to the amount of the accounts payable for that particular vendor. 7-8. How does a pizza shop’s Procurement process differ from CBI’s? What do you believe is the corporate strategy of your favorite pizza franchise? What are the objectives and measures of its Procurement process to support this strategy? A pizza shop’s procurement process would need to be more efficient than CBI’s. Pizza shops carry perishable items on their inventory, which means inventory must be turned over quickly. Pizza shops also generally have narrow margins. This means that there is not as much room to carry excess inventory like CBI might be able to. Papa John’s, with over 3,500 locations, aims to provide better pizzas by using better ingredients. This can be particularly difficult due to the need for fresh vegetables. Because of this, the chain has local suppliers for each location. To support the strategy, Papa John’s should have relatively small amounts of raw materials on hand to make sure that the ingredients are fresh. This can be measured by the inventory turnover for each ingredient. Another measure is the response time by suppliers to provide the fresh ingredients. This can be measured by the order fulfillment time. 7-9. 3D printing has many benefits for businesses. Suggest three products that CBI might print instead of procure with traditional means and three that your university might print. Suggested answers for CBI: • Any plastic parts for its bicycles, ranging from wheel reflector shells to handle- bar plugs and from tire filler caps to water bottles and helmet shells.
  • 13. 10 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. • Promotional materials such as key chains, custom signage for store display, etc. • With the right technology and printer cartridges, metal parts may be part of the process in the future. There are currently experiments with titanium printing that would allow the printing of high-end gears, derailleurs, etc. Suggested answers for a university: • Athletic equipment (think football, hockey, etc.). • Keys, most universities spend significant funds on key manufacture and control. • Soft and hard goods with the university seal/logo for sale in the bookstore and at events. Students will certainly have a plethora of suggestions. Which procurement objectives does 3D printing support? Procurement is primarily associated with inbound logistics. It is the process by which goods are ordered, received, stored, disseminated within the organization, and paid for. 3D printing affects ordering (to some extent), receipt, storage, and dissemination (depending upon where printing occurs relative to the ultimate user’s location). 7-10. Augmented reality will help employees find items in a warehouse, but this IS may also support many other processes. Name two and describe how AR will improve them. Use Google Glass as one example of using AR, and use another example of AR for your other process. AR could assist with navigation though a large facility to locate an individual or functional location. AR could also be used to help a person during a presentation by presenting context sensitive information viewable only by the presenter regardless of the presenter’s proximity to a computer (think Google Glass). In a more traditional sense, AR could present 3D images of complex designs to assist in product repair, virtual design interaction, etc. If AR is tied to GPS, which is certainly a reality, your smartphone can present an AR view of your current location to give you information about your surroundings, or possibly suggest possibilities for a sales call close to you, for example.
  • 14. 11 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. Collaboration Exercise 7 1. Figure 7-8 lists problems with the Procurement process at CBI. Which of these would apply to the university? Which would not? What are some procurement problems that might be unique to an athletics department? In the Accounting role, three-way match discrepancies and the lack of real time accounting data would apply at university. Purchasing agents could be spread across many departments and colleges. Internal controls could also be weak in the Purchasing role. The problems with finished goods inventory and raw materials inventory would not apply to the university. The athletics department, on the other hand, may face issues with procurement due to the need for a very specialized piece of athletic equipment that is only offered by a limited number of suppliers. An athletics department might also face issues with increased procurement costs because of low order volumes. It might be difficult to obtain economies of scale when there are only 25 hockey players who need hockey skates ordered for the season. 2. Figure 7-12 lists objectives and measures that the managers at CBI determined for the Procurement process. What objectives and measures would you suggest for the university? What objectives and measures would you expect the athletics director to suggest (do not use the objectives and measures from Chapter 6)? For the university, an objective should be to reduce inventory. Another objective could be to reduce costs. Measures for these objectives would be decreasing inventory costs from 25% of sales to 15% and to reduce product costs by 5%. The athletics department should use objectives like reduce cost and increase the volume of cross-selling. Measures could include reducing product costs by 10% and increasing cross-selling revenues by 25%. 3. Figure 7-28 lists the impacts of SAP on an organization. Which of these impacts would affect the athletics department? Of the four items listed, new skills needed and process focus would affect the athletics department. The department will need to train employees to be proficient with the supply chain management system, and to utilize employees’ abstract reasoning and analytical skills. The athletics department will also need to focus on processes. The inputs and outputs into the system will provide more data for the department’s customers and suppliers. 4. Chapter 1 explained four nonroutine cognitive skills: abstract reasoning, systems thinking, collaboration, and experimentation. Explain how implementing the new Procurement process at CBI will require each of these skills from the members of the SAP implementation team. Abstract reasoning is needed to create and manipulate the models for CBI’s processes. Ultimately, the process used by the employees and the process that the SAP software is designed to aid must be the same. It may require the human processes and computer processes to be tweaked in order to work together. Systems thinking will be needed in order to fully realize the benefits provided by SAP. The ERP system creates many inputs and outputs which can be used by the company to
  • 15. 12 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. increase the efficiency of it processes and to increase its operating margins. It is up to the employees to realize how the data can be used. Collaboration is essential for a successful implementation. Employees from different areas of the company will need to work together toward a common goal for the investment in the system to be worthwhile. Experimentation is needed to pursue potential solutions to problems in the processes and to foster learning opportunities. Not every experiment will be successful; the opportunity comes in learning something from a failed experiment other than the knowledge that what was tried did not work.
  • 16. 13 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. Active Case 7: SAP PROCUREMENT TUTORIAL 7-11. Describe your first impressions of SAP. SAP can seem very large and daunting at first glance. Users may have feelings of confusion and even intimidation. Many textboxes create many opportunities for user error. However, while SAP may seem a little overwhelming, the system has many controls in place. Some of these controls include data validation (selecting vendors or products from a pre-populated list), and auto-completed fields, which prevent user inputs from being incorrectly entered.| 7-12. What types of skills are necessary to use this system? In order to use the SAP system, the user needs to possess analytical skills. The system produces many data points. SAP relies on the efficiency of underlying processes in order for businesses to gain the full benefit. The processes are designed and executed by those that use the system. 7-13. Create a screen capture of an SAP screen. Underneath the image, provide an answer to each of the following questions: The Post Outgoing Payments screen is used as an example. a. In which of the activities does this screen occur? The screen occurs in the Post Payment activity. b. What is the name of this screen? This screen is called the Post Outgoing Payments Header screen.
  • 17. 14 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. c. What is the name of the screen that precedes it? What screen comes after it? The screen that precedes the Post Payment Header screen is the Outgoing Payment screen. The screen that follows the Post Payment Header screen is the Post Outgoing Payments process open items screen. d. What actor accomplishes this activity? The actor that accomplishes this activity is Ann from accounting. e. Describe an error that this actor may do on this screen that SAP will prevent. Without SAP, Ann could enter the wrong amount for payment. While SAP does not outright prevent this action, it does provide a check figure in the “Not assigned” box. If the value for the not assigned box is not zero, Ann will know that there is an error. 7-14. Make an informal diagram of the four main actors: Supplier (Composite Bikes), Purchasing (Maria), Warehouse (Wally), and Accounting (Ann). Draw arrows that show the data that flows among the actors during this process. Number the arrows and include on each arrow what data are included in the message. Case 7 Question 4 Supplier Purchasing Warehouse Accounting Phase Start 1. Purchase Requisition Request Receive Purchase Request Create Purchase Order Fill Purchase Order Create Goods Receipt Issue Payment 2. Required Material 3. PO information 4. Product 5. Invoicing Information Send Invoice 6. Invoice Receive Payment Create Account Payable 7. Receipt Confirmation 8. AP Information 9. Payment Data End
  • 18. 15 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 7-15. Using the same four main actors as in question 7-14, this time show with the arrows how the material (the water bottles and cages) moves. Case 7 Question 5 Supplier Purchasing Warehouse Accounting Phase Receive PO / Ship Order Receive Order / Create Goods Receipt Start End 1. Order Contents
  • 19. 16 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 7-16. One concern of a business is fraud. One fraud technique is to create suppliers who are not suppliers but are co-conspirators. The conspirator inside the business accepts invoices for nonexistent deliveries. For this fraud scheme to work, who at CBI has to take part? How can SAP processes decrease the chance of this type of fraud? For this scheme to be used, Wally, Maria, and Ann would all need to take part. Maria would play a central role as the purchasing manager because she would create both the fictitious vendor and the fraudulent purchase orders. Wally would also play a role in the warehouse by creating the goods receipt document. By creating the document, Wally would open up an account payable as well. In accounting, Ann would be CBI’s last line of defense. Ann would post the payment to the fictitious vendor, completing the fraud. SAP processes can decrease this type of fraud by splitting the various processes up between functional departments and actors within those departments. Access can be restricted so that no single individual could complete each step necessary for the fraud. By requiring more actors to take part, the likelihood of a coworker noticing something is amiss increases. Another measure that can be taken is to utilize an approved supplier list. This would allow purchase orders to only be placed to vendors who meet certain requirements. One possible requirement is to undergo a site visit by members of CBI’s management. 7-17. Select any of the main activities or subactivities in the Procurement process. The activity used in this example is Create Purchase Order. a. What event triggers this activity? The activity is triggered by the purchasing manager approving a purchase requisition. The purchase requisition may have been automatically generated by the stock levels of a particular product dropping below a predetermined point. The purchase requisition may have also been created for a product that CBI does not normally stock, but needs for a special order or even a new product line. b. What activity follows this activity? Following the Create Purchase Order activity is the Create Goods Receipt activity. c. For one data entry item for this activity, describe what would happen in the rest of the process if that entry was erroneous. One potential error would be ordering the wrong quantity of an item. This error can cause problems if not enough are ordered, creating a stock-out, or if too many are ordered, creating excess inventory. When the warehouse manager goes to create the goods receipt, the items will be added to the inventory. Once Ann receives the invoice for the order, a payment will be posted and CBI will not have the product quantity it needs.
  • 20. 17 of 17 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. d. For one data entry item for this activity, describe what limits (controls) you would put in place on the data to prevent the type of error described in item c. To prevent an error like the one described above, CBI could implement a reasonableness check for the create purchase order activity. For example, a maximum order quantity of 25 could be set for a common component like a popular road bike frame. On the other hand, the maximum order quantity might only be five for a less popular specialty product like a cyclocross bike frame. In the case of the road bike frame, this control would prevent 52 frames from being ordered. In the case of the cyclocross bike, the smaller maximum order quantity could prevent CBI from having a large quantity on-hand going into the off-peak season.
  • 21. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
  • 22. "I agree with the Princess," chimed the Judge. "What is this unrest among the Egyptians due to? The education we ourselves have given them." "Yes, teach your dog to snap and he'll soon bite you." "These are the tares in the harvest we are reaping, and perhaps our Western grain doesn't suit this Eastern desert." "Should think it doesn't, indeed. 'Liberty,' 'Equality,' 'Fraternity,' 'representative Institutions'! If you English come talking this nonsense to the Egyptians what can you expect? Socialism, is it? Well, if I am to be Prince, and you are to be Prince, who is to drive the donkey? Excuse the word! I know! I tell you plainly. Good-bye, my dear! You are looking perfect to-day. But then you are so happy. I can see when young people are in love by their eyes, and yours are shining like moons. After all, your Western ways are best. We choose the husbands for our girls, thinking the silly things don't know what is good for them, and the chicken isn't wiser than the hen; but it's the young people, not the old ones, who have to live together, so why shouldn't they choose for themselves?" At that instant there passed from some remote corner of the grounds a brougham containing two shrouded figures in close white veils, and the Princess said— "Look at that, now—that relic of barbarism! Shutting our women up like canaries in a cage, while their men are enjoying the sunshine. Life is a dancing girl—let her dance a little for all of us." The Princess was about to go when General Graves appealed to her. The Judge had been saying— "I should call it a religious rather than a political unrest. You may do what you will for the Moslem, but he never forgets that the
  • 23. hand which bestows his benefits is that of an infidel." "Yes, we're aliens here, there's no getting over it," said the Adviser. And the General said, "Especially when professional fanatics are always reminding the Egyptians that we are not Mohammedans. By the way, Princess, have you heard of the new preacher, the new prophet, the new Mahdi, as they say?" "Prophet! Mahdi! Another of them?" "Yes, the comet that has just appeared in the firmament of Alexandria." "Some holy man, I suppose. Oh, I know. Holy man indeed! Shake hands with him and count your rings, General! Another impostor riding on the people's backs, and they can't see it, the stupids! But the camel never can see his hump—not he! Good-bye, girl. Get married soon and keep together as long as you can. Stretch your legs to the length of your bed, my dear—why shouldn't you? Say good-bye to Gordon? ... Certainly, where is he?" At that moment Gordon was listening with head down to something the General was saying with intense feeling. "The only way to deal with religious impostors who sow disaffection among the people is to suppress them with a strong hand. Why not? Fear of their followers? They're fit for nothing but to pray in their mosques, 'Away with the English, O Lord, but give us water in due measure!' Fight? Not for an instant! There isn't an ounce of courage in a hundred of them, and a score of good soldiers would sweep all the native Egyptians of Alexandria into the sea." Then Gordon, who had not yet spoken, lifted his head and answered, in a rather nervous voice—
  • 24. "No, no, no, sir! Ill usage may have made these people cowards in the old days, but proper treatment since has made them men, and there wasn't an Egyptian fellah on the field to-day who wouldn't have followed me into the jaws of death if I had told him to. As for our being aliens in religion"—the nervous voice became louder and at the same time more tremulous—"that isn't everything. We're aliens in sympathy and brotherhood and even in common courtesy as well. What is the honest truth about us? Here we are to help the Egyptians to regenerate their country, yet we neither eat nor drink nor associate with them. How can we hope to win their hearts while we hold them at arm's length? We've given them water, yes, water in abundance, but have we given them—love?" The woman in Gordon had leapt out before he knew it, and he had swung a little aside as if ashamed, while the men cleared their throats, and the Princess, notwithstanding that she had been abusing her own people, suddenly melted in the eyes, and muttered to herself, "Oh, our God!" and then, reaching over to kiss Helena, whispered in her ear— "You've got the best of the bunch, my dear, and if England would only send us a few more of his sort we should hear less of 'Long live Egypt.' Now, General, you can see me to my carriage if you would like to. By-bye, young people!" At that moment the native servant to whom the Consul-General had given the note came up and gave it to Gordon, who read it and then handed it to Helena. It ran— "Come to me immediately. Have something to say to you.—N."
  • 25. "We'll drive you to the Agency in the car," said Helena, and they moved away together. In a crowded lane at the back of the pavilion people were clamouring for their carriages and complaining of the idleness and even rudeness of the Arab runners, but Helena's automobile was brought up instantly, and when it was moving off, with the General inside, Helena at the wheel, and Gordon by her side, the natives touched their foreheads to the Colonel and said, "Bismillah!" As soon as the car was clear away, and Gordon was alone with Helena for the first time, there was one of those privateering passages of love between them which lovers know how to smuggle through even in public and the eye of day. "Well!" "Well!" "Everybody has been saying the sweetest things to me and you've never yet uttered a word." "Did you really expect me to speak—there—before all those people? But it was splendid, glorious, magnificent!" And then, the steering-wheel notwithstanding, her gauntletted left hand went down to where his right hand was waiting for it. Crossing the iron bridge over the river, they drew up at the British Agency, a large, ponderous, uninspired edifice, with its ambuscaded back to the city and its defiant front to the Nile, and there, as Gordon got down, the General, who still looked hot and excited, said— "You'll dine with us to-night, my boy—usual hour, you know?" "With pleasure, sir," said Gordon, and then Helena leaned over and whispered—
  • 26. "May I guess what your father is going to talk about?" "The demonstration?" "Oh no!" "What then?" "The new prophet at Alexandria." "I wonder," said Gordon, and with a wave of the hand he disappeared behind a screen of purple blossom, as Helena and the General faced home. Their way lay up through the old city, where groups of aggressive young students, at sight of the General's gold-laced cap, started afresh the Kentish fire of their "Long live Egypt," up and up until they reached the threatening old fortress on the spur of the Mokattani Hills, and then through the iron-clamped gates to the wide courtyard where the mosque of Mohammed Ali, with its spikey minarets, stands on the edge of the ramparts like a cock getting ready to crow, and drew up at the gate of a heavy-lidded house which looks sleepily down on the city, the sinuous Nile, the sweeping desert, the preponderating Pyramids, and the last saluting of the sun. Then as Helena rose from her seat she saw that the General's head had fallen back and his face was scarlet. "Father, you are ill." "Only a little faint—I'll be better presently." But he stumbled in stepping out of the car, and Helena said— "You are ill, and you must go to bed immediately, and let me put Gordon off until to-morrow." "No, let him come. I want to hear what the Consul-General had to say to him."
  • 27. In spite of himself he had to go to bed, though, and half-an- hour later, having given him a sedative, Helena was saying— "You've over-excited yourself again, Father. You were anxious about Gordon when his horse fell and those abominable spears were flying about." "Not a bit of it. I knew he would come out all right. The fighting devil isn't civilised out of the British blood yet, thank God! But those Egyptians at the end—the ingrates, the dastards!" "Father!" "Oh, I am calm enough now—don't be afraid, girl. I was sorry to hear Gordon standing up for them, though. A soldier every inch of him, but how unlike his father! Never saw father and son so different. Yet so much alike too! Fighting men both of them, Hope to goodness they'll never come to grips. Heavens! that would be a bad day for all of us." And then drowsily, under the influence of the medicine— "I wonder what Nuneham wanted with Gordon! Something about those graceless tarbooshes, I suppose. He'll make them smart for what they've done to-day. Wonderful man, Nuneham! Wonderful!" CHAPTER III John Nuneham was the elder son of a financier of whose earlier life little or nothing was ever learned. What was known of his later life was that he had amassed a fortune by colonial speculation, bought a
  • 28. London newspaper, and been made a baronet for services to his political party. Having no inclination towards journalism the son became a soldier, rose quickly to the rank of Brevet-Major, served several years with his regiment abroad, and at six-and-twenty went to India as Private Secretary to the Viceroy, who, quickly recognising his natural tendency, transferred him to the administrative side and put him on the financial staff. There he spent five years with conspicuous success, obtaining rapid promotion, and being frequently mentioned in the Viceroy's reports to the Foreign Minister. Then his father died, without leaving a will, as the cable of the solicitors informed him, and he returned to administer the estate. Here a thunderbolt fell on him, for he found a younger brother, with whom he had nothing in common and had never lived at peace, preparing to dispute his right to his father's title and fortune on the assumption that he was illegitimate, that is to say, was born before the date of the marriage of his parents. The allegation proved to be only too well founded, and as soon as the elder brother had recovered from the shock of the truth, he appealed to the younger one to leave things as they found them. "After all, a man's eldest son is his eldest son—let matters rest," he urged; but his brother was obdurate. "Nobody knows what the circumstances may have been—is there no ground of agreement?" but his brother could see none. "You can take the inheritance, if that's what you want, but let me find a way to keep the title so as to save the family and avoid scandal"; but his brother was unyielding. "For our father's sake—it is not for a man's sons to rake up the dead past of his forgotten life"; but the younger brother could not be
  • 29. stirred. "For our mother's sake—nobody wants his mother's good name to be smirched, least of all when she's in her grave"; but the younger brother remained unmoved. "I promise never to marry. The title shall end with me. It shall return to you or to your children"; but the younger brother would not listen. "England is the only Christian country in the world in which a man's son is not always his son—for God's sake let me keep my father's name?" "It is mine, and mine alone," said the younger brother, and then a heavy and solitary tear, the last he was to shed for forty years, dropped slowly down John Nuneham's hard-drawn face, for at that instant the well of his heart ran dry. "As you will," he said. "But if it is your pride that is doing this I shall humble it, and if it is your greed I shall live long enough to make it ashamed." From that day forward he dedicated his life to one object only, the founding of a family that should far eclipse the family of his brother, and his first step towards that end was to drop his father's surname in the register of his regiment and assume his mother's name of Lord. At that moment England with two other European Powers had, like Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, entered the fiery furnace of Egyptian affairs, though not so much to withstand as to protect the worship of the golden image. A line of Khedives, each seeking his own advantage, had culminated in one more unscrupulous and tyrannical than the rest, who had seized the lands of the people,
  • 30. borrowed money upon them in Europe, wasted it in wicked personal extravagance, as well as in reckless imperial expenditure that had not yet had time to yield a return, and thus brought the country to the brink of ruin, with the result that England was left alone at last to occupy Egypt, much as Rome occupied Palestine, and to find a man to administer her affairs in a position analogous to that of Pontius Pilate. It found him in John Lord, the young Financial Secretary who had distinguished himself in India. His task was one of immense difficulty, for though nominally no more than the British Consul-General, he was really the ruler of the country, being representative of the sovereign whose soldiers held Egypt in their grip. Realising at once that he was the official receiver to a bankrupt nation, he saw that his first duty was to make it solvent. He did make it solvent. In less than five years Egypt was able to pay her debt to Europe. Therefore Europe was satisfied, England was pleased, and John Lord was made Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. Then he married a New England girl whom he had met in Cairo, daughter of a Federal General in the Civil War, a gentle creature, rather delicate, a little sentimental, and very religious. During the first years their marriage was childless, and the wife, seeing with a woman's sure eyes that her husband's hope had been for a child, began to live within herself, and to weep when no one could see. But at last a child came, and it was a son, and she was overjoyed and the Consul-General was content. He allowed her to christen the child by what name she pleased, so she gave him the name of her great Christian hero, Charles George Gordon. They called the boy Gordon, and the little mother was very happy.
  • 31. But her health became still more delicate, so a nurse had to be looked for, and they found one in an Egyptian woman—with a child of her own—who, by power of a pernicious law of Mohammedan countries, had been divorced through no fault of hers, at the whim of a husband who wished to marry another wife. Thus Hagar, with her little Ishmael, became foster-mother to the Consul-General's son, and the two children were suckled together and slept in the same cot. Years passed, during which the boy grew up like a little Arab in the Englishman's house, while his mother devoted herself more and more to the exercises of her religion, and his father, without failing in affectionate attention to either of them, seemed to bury his love for both too deep in his heart and to seal it with a seal, although the Egyptian nurse was sometimes startled late at night by seeing the Consul-General coming noiselessly into her room before going to his own, to see if it was well with his child. Meantime as ruler of Egypt the Consul-General was going from strength to strength, and seeing that the Nile is the most wonderful river in the world and the father of the country through which it flows, he determined that it should do more than moisten the lips of the Egyptian desert while the vast body lay parched with thirst. Therefore he took engineers up to the fork of the stream where the clear and crystal Blue Nile of Khartoum, tumbling down in mighty torrents from the volcanic gorges of the Abyssinian hills, crosses the slow and sluggish White Nile of Omdurman, and told them to build dams, so that the water should not be wasted into the sea, but spread over the arid land, leaving the glorious sun of Egypt to do the rest.
  • 32. The effect was miraculous. Nature, the great wonder-worker, had come to his aid, and never since the Spirit of God first moved upon the face of the waters had anything so marvellous been seen. The barren earth brought forth grass and the desert blossomed like a rose. Land values increased; revenues were enlarged; poor men became rich; rich men became millionaires; Egypt became a part of Europe; Cairo became a European city; the record of the progress of the country began to sound like a story from the "Arabian Nights," and the Consul-General's annual reports read like fresh chapters out of the Book of Genesis, telling of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. The remaking of Egypt was the wonder of the world; the faces of the Egyptians were whitened; England was happy, and Sir John Lord was made a baronet. His son had gone to school in England by this time, and from Eton he was to go on to Sandhurst and to take up the career of a soldier. Then, thinking the Englishman's mission on foreign soil was something more than to make money, the Consul-General attempted to regenerate the country. He had been sent out to re-establish the authority of the Khedive, yet he proceeded to curtail it; to suppress the insurrection of the people, yet he proceeded to enlarge their liberties. Setting up a high standard of morals, both in public and private life, he tolerated no trickery. Finding himself in a cockpit of corruption, he put down bribery, slavery, perjury, and a hundred kinds of venality and intrigue. Having views about individual justice and equal rights before the law, he cleansed the law courts, established a Christian code of morals between man and man, and let the light of Western civilisation into the mud hut of the Egyptian fellah.
  • 33. Mentally, morally, and physically his massive personality became the visible soul of Egypt. If a poor man was wronged in the remotest village he said, "I'll write to Lord," and the threat was enough. He became the visible conscience of Egypt, too, and if a rich man was tempted to do a doubtful deed he thought of "the Englishman" and the doubtful deed was not done. The people at the top of the ladder trusted him, and the people at the bottom, a simple, credulous, kindly race, who were such as sixty centuries of mis-government had made them, touched their breasts, their lips, and their foreheads at the mention of his name, and called him "The Father of Egypt." England was proud, and Sir John Lord was made a peer. When the King's letter reached him he took it to his wife, who now lay for long hours every day on the couch in the drawing-room, and then wrote to his son, who had left Sandhurst and was serving with his regiment in the Soudan, but he said nothing to anybody else, and left even his secretary to learn the great news through the newspapers. He was less reserved when he came to select his title, and remembering his brother he found a fierce joy in calling himself by his father's name, thinking he had earned the right to it. Twenty-five years had passed since he had dedicated his life to the founding of a family that should eclipse and even humiliate the family of his brother, and now his secret aim was realised. He saw a long line succeeding him, his son, and his son's son, and his son's son's son, all peers of the realm, and all Nunehams. His revenge was sweet; he was very happy.
  • 34. CHAPTER IV If Lord Nuneham had died then, or if he had passed away from Egypt, he would have left an enduring fame as one of the great Englishmen who twice or thrice in a hundred years carve their names on the granite page of the world's history; but he went on and on, until it sometimes looked as if in the end it might be said of him, in the phrase of the Arab proverb, that he had written his name in water. Having achieved one object of ambition, he set himself another, and having tasted power he became possessed by the lust of it. Great men had been in England when he first came to Egypt, and he had submitted to their instructions without demur, but now, wincing under the orders of inferior successors, he told himself, not idly boasting, that nobody in London knew his work as well as he did, and he must be liberated from the domination of Downing Street. The work of emancipation was delicate but not difficult. There was one power stronger than any Government, whereby public opinion might be guided and controlled—the press. The British Consul-General in Cairo was in a position of peculiar advantage for guiding and controlling the press. He did guide and control it. What he thought it well that Europe should know about Egypt that it knew, and that only. The generally ill-informed public opinion in England was corrected; the faulty praise and blame of the British press was set right; within five years London had ceased to send instructions to Cairo; and when a diplomatic question created a fuss in Parliament the Consul-General was heard to say—
  • 35. "I don't care a rush what the Government think, and I don't care a straw what the Foreign Minister says; I have a power stronger than either at my back—the public." It was true, but it was also the beginning of the end. Having attained to absolute power, he began to break up from the seeds of dissolution which always hide in the heart of it. Hitherto he had governed Egypt by guiding a group of gifted Englishmen who as Secretaries and Advisers had governed the Egyptian Governors; but now he desired to govern everything himself. As a consequence the gifted men had to go, and their places were taken by subordinates whose best qualification was their subservience to his strong and masterful spirit. Even that did not matter as long as his own strength served him. He knew and determined everything, from the terms of treaties with foreign Powers to the wages of the Khedive's English coachman. With five thousand British bayonets to enforce his will, he said to a man, "Do that," and the man did it, or left Egypt without delay. No Emperor or Czar or King was ever more powerful, no Pope more infallible; but if his rule was hard, it was also just, and for some years yet Egypt was well governed. "When a fish goes bad," the Arabs say, "is it first at the head or at the tail?" As Lord Nuneham grew old, his health began to fail, and he had to fall back on the weaklings who were only fit to carry out his will. Then an undertone of murmuring was heard in Egypt. The Government was the same, yet it was altogether different. The hand was Esau's, but the voice was Jacob's. "The millstones are grinding," said the Egyptians, "but we see no flour."
  • 36. The glowing fire of the great Englishman's fame began to turn to ashes, and a cloud no bigger than a man's hand appeared in the sky. His Advisers complained to him of friction with their Ministers; his Inspectors, returning from tours in the country, gave him reports of scant courtesy at the hands of natives, and to account for their failures they worked up in his mind the idea of a vast racial and religious conspiracy. The East was the East; the West was the West; Moslem was Moslem; Christian was Christian; Egyptians cared more about Islam than they did about good government, and Europeans in the valley of the Nile, especially British soldiers and officials, were living on the top of a volcano. The Consul-General listened to them with a sour smile, but he believed them and blundered. He was a sick man now, and he was not really living in Egypt any longer—he was only sleeping at the Agency; and he thought he saw the work of his lifetime in danger of being undone. So, thinking to end fanaticism by one crushing example, he gave his subordinates an order like that which the ancient King of Egypt gave to the midwives, with the result that five men were hanged and a score were flogged before their screaming wives and children for an offence that had not a particle of religious or political significance. A cry of horror went up through Egypt; the Consul-General had lost it; his forty years of great labour had been undone in a day. As every knife is out when the bull is down, so the place- hunting Pashas, the greedy Sheikhs, and the cruel Governors whose corruptions he had suppressed found instruments to stab him, and the people who had kissed the hand they dared not bite thought it safe to bite the hand they need not kiss. He had opened the mouths
  • 37. of his enemies, and in Eastern manner they assailed him first by parables. Once there had been a great English eagle; its eyes were clear and piercing; its talons were firm and relentless in their grip; yet it was a proud and noble bird; it held its own against East and West, and protected all who took refuge under its wing; but now the eagle had grown old and weak; other birds, smaller and meaner, had deprived it of its feathers and picked out its eyes, and it had become blind and cruel and cowardly and sly—would nobody shoot it or shut it up in a cage? Rightly or wrongly, the Consul-General became convinced that the Khedive was intriguing against him, and one day he drove to the royal palace and demanded an audience. The interview that followed was not the first of many stormy scenes between the real governor of Egypt and its nominal ruler, and when Lord Nuneham strode out with his face aflame, through the line of the quaking bodyguard, he left the Khedive protesting plaintively to the people of his court that he would sell up all and leave the country. At that the officials put their heads together in private, concluded that the present condition could not last, and asked themselves how, since it was useless to expect England to withdraw the Consul-General, it was possible for Egypt to get rid of him. By this time Lord Nuneham, in the manner of all strong men growing weak, had begun to employ spies, and one day a Syrian Christian told him a secret story. He was to be assassinated. The crime was to be committed in the Opera House, under the cover of a general riot, on the night of the Khedive's State visit, when the Consul-General was always present. As usual the Khedive was to rise at the end of the first act and retire to the saloon overlooking the
  • 38. square; as usual he was to send for Lord Nuneham to follow him, and the moment of the Khedive's return to his box was to be the signal for a rival demonstration of English and Egyptians that was to end in the Consul-General's death. There was no reason to believe the Khedive himself was party to the plot, or that he knew anything about it, yet none the less it was necessary to stay away, to find an excuse—illness at the last moment—anything. Lord Nuneham was not afraid, but he sent up to the Citadel for General Graves, and arranged that a battalion of infantry and a battery of artillery were to be marched down to the Opera Square at a message over the telephone from him. "If anything happens, you know what to do," he said; and the General knew perfectly. Then the night came, and the moment the Khedive left his palace the Consul-General heard of it. A moment later a message was received at the Citadel, and a quarter of an hour afterwards Lord Nuneham was taking his place at the Opera. The air of the house tingled with excitement, and everything seemed to justify the Syrian's story. Sure enough, at the end of the first act the Khedive rose and retired to the saloon, and sure enough at the next moment the Consul-General was summoned to follow him. His Highness was very gracious, very agreeable, all trace of their last stormy interview being gone; and gradually Lord Nuneham drew him up to the windows overlooking the public square. There, under the sparkling light of a dozen electric lamps, in a solid line surrounding the Opera House, stood a battalion of infantry,
  • 39. with the guns of the artillery facing outward at every corner; and at sight of them the Khedive caught his breath and said— "What is the meaning of this, my lord?" "Only a little attention to your Highness," said the Consul- General in a voice that was intended to be heard all over the room. At that instant somebody came up hurriedly and whispered to the Khedive, who turned ashen white, ordered his carriage, and went home immediately. Next morning at eleven, Lord Nuneham, with the same force drawn up in front of Abdeen Palace, went in to see the Khedive again. "There's a train for Alexandria at twelve," he said, "and a steamer for Constantinople at five—your Highness will feel better for a little holiday in Europe!" and half-an-hour afterwards the Khedive, accompanied by several of his Court officials, was on his way to the railway station, with the escort, in addition to his own bodyguard, of a British regiment whose band was playing the Khedivial hymn. He had got rid of the Khedive at a critical juncture, but he had still to deal with a sovereign that would not easily be chloroformed into silence. The Arabic press, to which he had been the first to give liberty, began to attack him openly, to vilify him, and systematically to misrepresent his actions, so that he who had been the great torch-bearer of light in a dark country saw himself called the Great Adventurer, the Tyrant, the Assassin, the worst Pharaoh Egypt had ever known—a Pharaoh surrounded by a kindergarten of false prophets, obsessed by preposterous fears of assassination and deluded by phantoms of fanaticism.
  • 40. His subordinates told him that these hysterical tirades were inflaming the whole of Egypt; that their influence was in proportion to their violence; that the huge, untaught mass of the Egyptian people were listening to them; that there was not an ignorant fellah possessed of one ragged garment who did not go to the coffee- house at night to hear them read; that the lives of British officials were in peril; and that the promulgation of sedition must be stopped, or the British governance of the country could not go on. A sombre fire shone in the Consul-General's eyes while he heard their prophecy, but he believed it all the same, and when he spoke contemptuously of incendiary articles as froth, and they answered that froth could be stained with blood, he told himself that if fools and ingrates spouting nonsense in Arabic could destroy whatever germs of civilisation he had implanted in Egypt, the doctrine of the liberty of the press was all moonshine. And so, after sinister efforts to punish the whole people for the excesses of their journalists by enlarging the British army and making the country pay the expense, he found a means to pass a new press law, to promulgate it by help of the Prime Minister, now Regent in the Khedive's place, and to suppress every native newspaper in Egypt in one day. By that blow the Egyptians were staggered into silence, the British officials went about with stand-off manners and airs of conscious triumph, and Lord Nuneham himself, mistaking violence for power, thought he was master of Egypt once more. But low, very low on the horizon a new planet now rose in the firmament. It was not the star of a Khedive jealous of Nuneham's power, nor of an Egyptian Minister chafing under the orders of his
  • 41. Under-Secretary, nor yet of a journalist vilifying England and flirting with France, but that of a simple Arab in turban and caftan, a swarthy son of the desert whose name no man had heard before, and it was rising over the dome of the mosque within whose sacred precincts neither the Consul-General nor his officials could intrude, and where the march of British soldiers could not be made. There a reverberation was being heard, a now voice was going forth, and it was echoing and re-echoing through the hushed chambers that were the heart of Islam. When Lord Nuneham first asked about the Arab he was told that the man was one Ishmael Ameer, out of the Libyan Desert, a carpenter's son, and a fanatical, backward, unenlightened person of no consequence whatever; but with his sure eye for the political heavens, the Consul-General perceived that a planet of no common magnitude had appeared in the Egyptian firmament, and that it would avail him nothing to have suppressed the open sedition of the newspapers if he had only driven it underground, into the mosques, where it would be a hundredfold more dangerous.. If a political agitation was not to be turned into religious unrest, if fanaticism was not to conquer civilisation and a holy war to carry the country back to its old rotten condition of bankruptcy and barbarity, that man out of the Libyan Desert must be put down. But how and by whom? He himself was old—more than seventy years old—his best days were behind him, the road in front of him must be all downhill now; and when he looked around among the sycophants who said, "Yes, my lord," "Excellent, my lord," "The very thing, my lord," for some one to fight the powers of darkness that were arrayed against him, he saw none.
  • 42. It was in this mood that he had gone to the sham fight, merely because he had to show himself in public; and there, sitting immediately in front of the fine girl who was to be his daughter soon, and feeling at one moment her quick breathing on his neck, he had been suddenly caught up by the spirit of her enthusiasm and had seen his son as he had never seen him before. Putting his glasses to his eyes he had watched him—he and (as it seemed) the girl together. Such courage, such fire, such resource, such insight, such foresight! It must be the finest brain and firmest character in Egypt, and it was his own flesh and blood, his own son Gordon! Hitherto his attitude towards Gordon had been one of placid affection, compounded partly of selfishness, being proud that he was no fool and could forge along in his profession, and pleased to think of him as the next link in the chain of the family he was founding; but now everything was changed. The right man to put down sedition was the man at his right hand. He would save England against Egyptian aggression; he would save his father too, who was old and whose strength was spent, and perhaps—why not?—he would succeed him some day and carry on the traditions of his work in the conquests of civilisation and its triumph in the dark countries of the world. For the first time for forty years a heavy and solitary tear dropped slowly down the Consul-General's cheek, now deeply scored with lines; but no one saw it, because few dared look into his face. The man who had never unburdened himself to a living soul wished to unburden himself at last, so he scribbled his note to Gordon and then stepped into the carriage that was to take him home.
  • 43. Meantime he was aware that some fool had provoked a demonstration, but that troubled him hardly at all; and while the crackling cries of "Long live Egypt!" were following him down the arena he was being borne along as by invisible wings. Thus the two aims in the great Proconsul's life had become one, and that one aim centred in his son. CHAPTER V As Gordon went into the British Agency a small, wizened man with a pock-marked face, wearing Oriental dress, came out. He was the Grand Cadi (Chief Judge) of the Mohammedan courts and representative of the Sultan of Turkey in Egypt, one who had secretly hated the Consul-General and raved against the English rule for years; and as he saluted obsequiously with his honeyed voice and smiled with his crafty eyes, it flashed upon Gordon—he did not know why—that just so must Caiaphas, the high priest, have looked when he came out of Pilate's judgment hall after saying, "If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend." Gordon leapt up the steps and into the house as one who was at home, and going first into the shaded drawing-room he found his mother on the couch looking to the sunset and the Nile—a sweet old lady in the twilight of life, with white hair, a thin face almost as white, and the pale smile of a patient soul who had suffered pain. With her, attending upon her, and at that moment handing a cup of