“And to-morrow you ride to Miletis. When things are settled you will come and see me again, will you not? ’Tis nice to see one who has seen places that I have read of, but none I know have ever seen.”
“Surely,” said I.
“You are Christians also, Aryenis tells me. She wrote me a letter which came by a fast messenger yesterday. Your faith was a matter of some surprise, since we believed that most of those who lived beyond the desert were pagans.”
“We are. All the countries around us, even the old Greece, are Christian now.”
“Yes. That, of course, I knew. But we had no idea you came from so far, thinking rather you came from the nearer lands which were overrun by the slant-eyed folk, who—so our old books tell us—drove our people out across the desert.”
“I should like to see those old books when we have time. We wondered whence came your folk. Are you Greeks?”
“No, or so the books tell us. But there were some Greeks who came among us, bringing with them much knowledge of the arts, and, above all, of the true faith. It is a long story that I shall be pleased to tell you one day. But Aryenis comes, and you must ride. One should not be abroad after dark in time of war. We are not over-distant from the frontier even here, though it is many years since raiders came as far as Aornos.”
Aryenis joined us and said that we must go. The horses waited saddled.
“Good-bye, uncle mine. All will be ready, will it not?”
“It will, child. I see that you were right—as ever—in what you wrote.”