After the terraces came a forest of small pines, cool and fragrant. It was now nearing the middle of the afternoon and the locusts were at work, plying their sleepy rasps, infinitely numerous and monotonous. They emerged from the grove into a narrow path on the edge of a steep incline. The soldiers ran to a point a little farther on, where a pear tree, growing close by the side of a precipice, served as a ladder. They scrambled down its branches into the garden that surrounded a farmhouse not far distant.
"Was this a Turkish or a Christian house?" asked Lindbohm. The windows and doors were broken, and a pile of smashed furniture lay in the middle of the floor. A clematis vine, that had once carried its fragrant snow up to the tiny balcony, lay upon the ground, among the ruins of its trellis.
The Major shrugged his shoulders.
"Who knows?" he replied. "Whichever it was, the results are the same. If we look around, perhaps we may find a body somewhere."
"No, no," said the Swede; "I have no curiosity. Let us be going."
He furtively stooped and picked from the tangled clematis a crude rag doll, and slipped it into the tail pocket of the long coat. His little blue-eyed sister at home had once possessed such a doll, and this ruined house touched a very tender spot in his heart. The Turkish Major, white-haired, erect and slender, was strolling away through the stumps of what had been a pear orchard before the ax of the vandal had laid it low. Curtis was following, holding the crooked simitar clumsily away from his hip. Lindbohm wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his big pink hand.
"It's nice to have a wife and children," he mused, "to love them and bring them up. I'll help him find her, and then—America!"
They came to a broad white road cutting in twain the level greenness of an interminable vineyard. The vines along the highway were powdered white with dust and the dusty little grapes, green and hard, gave small comfort to the thirsty wayfarer. The three pedestrians cast their eyes down the long, shining stretch, over which the heat quivered visibly. They were standing beneath an olive tree at the edge of the rocky and wooded tract through which they had come. The only other shade visible for at least a mile was that made by a solitary brush watch-tower, far out in mid-field. The Turk sat down upon a rock, and, removing his fez, fanned with it his scanty gray locks.
"Do you know?" he asked, smiling sweetly at his companions, "the proverb of this country concerning people who walk in the sun?"
They said they had not heard it.