"All the more reason why I should treat him as I should treat anybody else."
"Your only son."
"Humph!"
"If anything happens to him—if he dies before you—your family will come to an end when you are gone."
The old man trembled. The Sirdar was cutting him in the tenderest place—ploughing deep into his lifelong secret.
"Your name will be wiped out. You will have wiped it out, Nuneham."
The old man was shaking like a rock which vibrates in an earthquake. To steady his nerves he took a pen and held it firmly in the fingers of both hands.
"If you tell the Commandant to hand him over to the military authorities, it will be the same in the court of your conscience as if you had done it. You will have cut off your own line."
The old man fought hard with himself. It was a fearful struggle.
"More than that, it will be the same—it will be the same when you come to think of it—as if with that pen in your hands you had signed your own son's death-warrant."