Horace translated the remark to the doctor.
There were not a great many people about, but as they went along the number increased. They crossed a busy street, turned down a lane on the other side, and then walked for upwards of half an hour, turning frequently, and as far as Horace could guess, making a wide detour, and again approaching the busy part of the town. Presently the officer stopped near the corner of a lane in a quiet street, and began to talk in an animated tone about the size of the town and other matters, until he saw that the street was for a moment empty; then he turned sharply down the lane, which ran between the backs of two sets of houses, went for a hundred yards, and then stopped at a door in the wall; opened it with the key, hurried them in, and locked the door behind him.
“Allah be praised!” he again said; “you are safe thus far. Now come in, they are anxiously expecting us.”
He entered the house, which stood in a small inclosure, and led the way into a room. They were received at the door by a Turk, whom both recognized at once as Osman Bey, one of the principal Turks they had carried from Athens. He repeated the officer’s pious exclamation:
“Allah be praised for his mercies!” and then in Greek he said, “Truly I am rejoiced, my friends, that Allah has granted me an opportunity of showing that I am not ungrateful, and that as you saved me and mine from death, so have I been able to save you; and I am doubly glad in seeing, what I knew not before, that one of you is the son of the Englishman to whom principally we owed our escape.”
“We are grateful, indeed,” Horace said; “but at present we understand nothing. This officer has told us nothing whatever.”
“This officer is my son, and is only an officer for the occasion,” Osman Bey said. “But come into the next room; my wife and daughters are eagerly expecting you.”
Three ladies rose from a divan on which they were sitting when the bey entered the room. They were lightly veiled, but the bey said: