He found a great red door set deep into the face of the rock. Page 169.
Sunshine did not try to argue with his brother, but made him as comfortable as the hot desert sand would allow and bade him be of good cheer and await his return, for he would surely find and bring him help. Then he began looking this way and that for some sign of a spring or a bit of an oasis. At last his eye was caught by a bright red something on the side of a rocky cliff not far away. He hastened to see what it might be and found that it was a great red door set deep into the face of the rock. His courage rose at the sight, for a door might have a kindly human being behind it. He approached and rapped sturdily upon it, whereupon it was slowly opened by an old man. Sunshine [[170]]was so relieved that he could have fallen upon the stooping shoulders and kissed the long, flowing beard. Quickly he told his story and entreated the old man to give him aid for Moonshine. The hermit, for such he declared himself to be, lost no time in accompanying Sunshine back to where his brother lay, and then he used all his skill to bring the exhausted boy back to health and strength.
At last he was successful, and the long and the short of it all was that the two lads took up their abode with the old hermit and lived with him as his own sons. Indeed, he soon declared that he could have loved no true sons any better. So the weeks and months went on, and the three dwelt happily together in their cave behind the red door in the desert. But as the year drew to a close, a great tragedy befell them.
It happened that the Khan who ruled over this country was a wicked, ill-tempered, suspicious monarch who hated and feared strangers above all men, because of [[171]]a prophecy concerning them. It was foretold that he should one day lose his throne and crown to some lad from a strange land. And so he had made a law that every youth who came into his kingdom from another country should be seized at once by his soldiers and cast into a cave where lived three fierce demon-bears.
For a long time no one had heard of the coming of Sunshine and Moonshine, for very rarely did any stray traveler or caravan pass the solitary red door in the cliff. But at length, in some mysterious way, the Khan learned of the two lads living with the hermit and sent his soldiers in angry haste to fetch them.
The old man spied the men coming across the desert and at once guessed their purpose, so, while they were still far off, he ran quickly to the two boys and bade them hide themselves away. Sunshine climbed into a barrel of mangos, crouching down until they covered him, and Moonshine hid in a sack of grain. When [[172]]the soldiers reached the red door, the hermit opened it willingly.
“Boys?” said he, in answer to their question. “I have no boys! I am an old man and have lived in this desert place many a long year without wife or child to bear me company. You must be mistaken!”
The soldiers pushed the hermit roughly aside and entered the cave.
“You had better not lie to the Khan’s soldiers!” said the captain threateningly.