“Oh, don’t mind that, Father,” he answered gaily, for Roderick is a cheerful soul. “As Fung say, there no house without door, although plenty people made blind and can’t see it. But we not blind, or we dead long ago. Find door by and by, but here come man to talk to you.”
The man proved to be Japhet, who had been sent by the Child of Kings to summon us, as she had news to tell. So I woke the others, and after I had dressed the Professor’s flesh wounds, which were stiff and sore, we joined her where she sat in the gateway tower of the inner wall. She greeted us rather sadly, asked Oliver how he had slept and Higgs if his cuts hurt him. Then she turned to my son, and congratulated him upon his wonderful escape and upon having found a father if he had lost a wife.
“Truly,” she added, “you are a fortunate man to be so well loved, O son of Adams. To how many sons are given fathers who for fourteen long years, abandoning all else, would search for them in peril of their lives, enduring slavery and blows and starvation and the desert’s heat and cold for the sake of a long-lost face? Such faithfulness is that of my forefather David for his brother Jonathan, and such love it is that passes the love of women. See that you pay it back to him, and to his memory until the last hour of your life, child of Adams.”
“I will, indeed, I will, O Walda Nagasta,” answered Roderick, and throwing his arms about my neck he embraced me before them all. It is not too much to say that this kiss of filial devotion more than repaid me for all I had undergone for his beloved sake. For now I knew that I had not toiled and suffered for one of no worth, as is so often the lot of true hearts in this bitter world.
Just then some of Maqueda’s ladies brought food, and at her bidding we breakfasted.
“Be sparing,” she said with a melancholy little laugh, “for I know not how long our store will last. Listen! I have received a last offer from my uncle Joshua. An arrow brought it—not a man; I think that no man would come lest his fate should be that of the traitor of yesterday,” and she produced a slip of parchment that had been tied to the shaft of an arrow and, unfolding it, read as follows—
“O Walda Nagasta, deliver up to death the Gentiles who have bewitched you and led you to shed the blood of so many of your people, and with them the officers of the Mountaineers, and the rest shall be spared. You also I will forgive and make my wife. Resist, and all who cling to you shall be put to the sword, and to yourself I promise nothing.
“Written by order of the Council,
“Joshua, Prince of the Abati.”
“What answer shall I send?” she asked, looking at us curiously.