“I have told you no lie,” replied the hermit, “but if you doubt my word, come in, look and see.”
For a moment the men hesitated, then, with an oath, the captain seized the hermit by his long white beard and shook him.
“So you thought you would give us the trouble of searching!” said he. “We’ll do no such thing! I know there is a boy here, and my orders are to fetch him, so bring him out at once—and I’ll teach you to hurry!” [[173]]
He raised his sword over the hermit’s head, but before he could bring it down, Sunshine had leaped from his hiding-place, had caught hold of the captain’s arm and had stayed the blow.
“Oho!” said the captain, and he flashed around upon the lad. “So you are here, after all—I was almost beginning to doubt!”
There was no use in struggling. The soldiers gathered around Sunshine, bound his hands behind his back, flung him on a horse and, without giving him a moment to bid farewell to the grief-stricken old hermit, rode away with him. Not until they had gone far over the desert on their way to the Khan’s city did the captain remember that he had been told there were two boys living with the hermit. He stopped abruptly, wheeled his horse and gave orders that the troop should return at once to the old man’s cave. Sunshine guessed what was in the captain’s mind, and his heart sank within him. “There [[174]]will be no possible escape for my brother,” he thought, “for the soldiers will come upon Moonshine unexpectedly before he has time to hide again!” Then he began planning and wondering if he could not, by craft, prevent the soldiers from returning. At last he groaned aloud.
“Woe is me!” he said. “Alas! And woe is me! Would that I had died with my brother before this evil fate befell me!”
“What do you mean by that?” said the captain, who had heard his sorrowful words.
“What should I mean but what I say?” said Sunshine, with another groan. “When you stood at the door of our cave we had but just returned from digging the grave of my brother. And now, surely, the poor old man, our foster-father, will die of grief, for both his sons are lost to him—all in the space of a day!”
The captain drew rein, and the soldiers behind him halted respectfully. The heat of the desert was great, and he had no desire [[175]]to travel the long distance back to the cave of the red door, to no purpose.