Along the street passed slowly, by twos and threes, in a straggling procession, some of the most miserable creatures the eye of man has ever looked upon. Gaunt, half famished, with limbs reduced to skin and bone, or else swollen out of all shape by disease, they walked on with uneven, tottering footsteps. All were in filthy, ragged garments; some had rags clotted with blood tied about their heads or their arms, others limped along with the aid of sticks. Just under the window a woman dropped in the street, and lay as one dead. The man who was walking beside her stood and looked, without doing anything to help. How could he? Both his hands were gone.
The three young men ran to the street together. Jack proved the quickest, and was already kneeling on the ground and trying to raise the poor woman when the others came up. "It is no use," said the man beside her in a dreary, almost indifferent, tone. "She is dead."
"I don't know that," said Jack. "Give her air, for heaven's sake. Kevork, keep back the others. Barkev, you could fetch us some cordial."
It was not so easy to obey him; for those before had stopped, while those behind came crowding up, and with the strangers a few Armenians of the town. One of these pushed through the rest with an air of authority. "Make way, good people," he said; "I am a doctor."
He did not seem a very prosperous member of the fraternity, to judge by his dress; but then he was young, and had the world before him. He felt the woman's pulse and her heart, and said presently, "She is not dead; but she soon will be unless she gets proper care and nourishment. Who will help me to carry her into my dispensary close by?"
Jack volunteered, quite forgetting his recent illness; but Barkev raised an objection. "Better bring her to the Mission House," he said. "Miss Celandine has food and medicine, and will take good care of her."
"Miss Celandine will have her hands full. Besides, my place is near. Yes, sir, take her feet,"—he nodded to Jack. "I'll manage the rest. This way, please."
"You are a good fellow, Melkon Effendi, and I believe you are right," said Barkev, his attention claimed by another of the miserable group, who was begging in God's name for a bit of bread, as they had eaten nothing for several days but grass and roots.
Jack helped Melkon to lay his patient on the surgery table, and watched his efforts to restore animation. "Who are they?" he asked.
The young doctor answered in broken phrases without stopping his work. "From one of the villages—Rhoumkali—fugitives—there has been a massacre—wholesale—of our people—by Turks and Kourds."