"Every one? The kine, and the sheep and goats as well?"
"There's not a cow left to low nor a lamb to bleat of them all. The shepherds have come in, wounded and beaten, to tell us. Grandfather says they did all they could. Amaan! Amaan!"
By this time the women were all weeping. For them it meant ruin—almost starvation. But Gabriel touched his mother's hand caressingly, and whispered a word from the Psalm they had just sung in church: "His are the cattle upon a thousand hills."
"But that is unbearable!" Jack burst out.
"It has to be borne," Mariam said sadly.
"We shall see! I cannot believe such things are done—here even—and there is no remedy. A man's whole possessions swept away at a stroke. Hagop, where are the men?"
"In the great front room."
"I will go to them. Come, Gabriel."
But Hagop pulled his brother back. "You won't be let in," he said. "I was not."
"I am two years older."