"No; he left me some food, though I was too miserable to care for it. At last he came, and told me he had been imprisoned for assaulting the soldier who wanted to kill me; his relatives, as he suspected, having contrived the thing to keep him out of harm's way, since he knew they thought him lacking in a proper zeal for Islam. But, on my account, and still more on that of the Badvellie's children, whom he wanted to save, he had been very eager to get out, and managed it at last, with large backsheesh. He told me all the terrible news—of those who were dead, and of those who, less happy, were living still."
After a sad pause he went on. "For myself, I am grateful to him. He supplied all my wants, and kept me concealed there many days. At last, yesterday, he came to me and said, 'I can hide you no longer. People are beginning to suspect something. If they find you, they will kill you, and kill me also for giving you shelter.' I said, 'For myself I care not, for what have I left to live for?' but added that I could not bear he should suffer on my account. So he said the best he could do for me was to give me a Frank dress, arranged as Mussulmans wear it, and money enough to keep me for the present. Which he did, and may God reward him, and number him—if it so may be with any Turk—amongst His redeemed!"
"Amen!" Jack said. He did not like to tell Kevork, what Osman evidently had not told him, that the father of Oriort Elmas had fallen by his hand. There was no need for more, for now they were at the gate of the Mission House. "It is best," Jack said, "that I should bring you first to Miss Celandine; she will know what to do. For we must not tell Gabriel too suddenly; he is ill and weak. You must be prepared, Kevork, to see him greatly changed."
Yet the meeting between the brothers seemed to fan the feeble, flickering spark of Gabriel's life into a flame. It was another tie to earth to feel he had one brother there left him still—"No, two brothers," as he said, looking lovingly at Jack.
A little while afterwards, Jack was sent for one day by Miss Celandine. "Franks have come to her from Aintab," said the excited messenger.
Delighted to think that Miss Celandine's long loneliness was over, Jack went to her at once. He found her in earnest converse with a grey-haired American missionary, whom, in introducing Jack to him, she called Dr. Sandeman. Then she said to Jack, "I want you very much, Mr. Grayson. Baron Vartonian is in there," glancing at the door of an inner room. "He came with Dr. Sandeman. He has just heard that of all his large family there remains to him now not one. You know more about them than any one else who is living now, save Gabriel. Will you go in and speak to him, and comfort him if you can?"
Though his heart fainted within him at the thought of such a sorrow, Jack went into the inner room. There were two persons there. Old Baron Vartonian sat on the divan, his head bowed down upon both his hands, his face hidden. Now and then the sound of low, deep moans—such moans as only come from a strong man's deepest heart—broke the stillness.
Beside him stood a young man with a face incredibly pale and worn and wasted, as if with some great agony, though its look was one of past rather than of present suffering.
"The look of one that had travailed sore,
But whose pangs were ended now."