Ere she could answer, there came a faint weak voice from one of the sufferers lying at their feet. "Christ will forgive you. Only, you have lost a grand opportunity."
Something in the voice sent a thrill of strange, sweet memories through the heart of John Grayson. He turned towards the spot from whence it came. "Who said that?" he asked. A man, horribly mutilated, pointed out to him a boy who was lying beside him, with a light rug thrown over him. Threading his way with difficulty through the mats on which the patients lay, Jack came to his side and knelt down. He saw a young face, white, wasted and drawn with pain, yet full of a strange, unutterable peace. And he knew it was the face he loved best in the house of Meneshian—after the one through whom his heart had got its death blow. "Gabriel!" he said.
"Who is it?" asked the boy. "Is it—no, it is not, it cannot be! And yet you have the eyes of Yon Effendi."
"You used to call me that in the old days. Oh, Gabriel! I thought they had killed you all."
"Yes, all," Gabriel said; and into his eyes there came, instead of tears, a light from beyond the sun, beyond the stars. "We have all come home now, except me. I am just a little late for the first gathering-up there, but I forget my pain in thinking of their happy meeting all together, and of the joy they have in seeing the Face of Christ. Besides, He is here with me too; and I think He will let me go to them soon."
Then a wave of bitter pain surged over the soul of John Grayson. He supposed Gabriel did not count as any longer one of them her who, in the earthly home, had been the dearest of them all. Could he think the heavenly home would be complete without her? "What you must have suffered, Yon Effendi!" Gabriel went on, looking at his changed face and grey hair. "But I never thought to see you again! We all made sure the Turks had taken and killed you."
"Would they had!" Jack said. "Gabriel, how did you escape when all the rest were killed?"
"When they killed us all, and our cousins the Vartonians too, they cut and wounded me, and left me for dead. I suppose I was a long time unconscious. When I came to myself, I was lying among the bodies, almost under them. I pushed my way out a little, that I might see. I did not want to live; but I knew how they would drag the dead—and the dying too—out of the town, and fling them into the ditches beneath the wall. I was afraid of that. So I lay very still until night came and all was quiet. Then I managed somehow to get myself free. I crept along slowly, I know not how; I think I fainted often by the way, but at last I came here, to the place in all the world most like to heaven. And here they will let me stay until I go to heaven itself." The boy's voice was beginning to fail through weakness.
"Don't try to speak any more," Jack said.
"Oh, but I want to tell you—Can you give me a drink?"