“I don’t know how he managed it,” said Charlie, in his driest tones.
“Nor do I,” cried Cecil, with a burst of hysterical laughter. “But you must have been wounded, Charlie. You could never have been thrown down that cliff without being hurt. Besides, he saw you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Charlie. “Have you and Hanna been concocting horrors between you? Don’t you believe now that I am alive?”
“But I have seen it,” persisted Cecil, “over and over again.”
“Oh, this is hopeless,” said Charlie. “Leave it alone for the present, my darling, and let us puzzle it out afterwards. Taking it for granted that I am alive, are you glad to see me?”
“Glad? Oh, Charlie!” Cecil’s tone was answer enough.
“Let me look at you, dear,” she said, after a blissful pause, and raising her head from his shoulder she scanned his face. Very thin, very bright-eyed, very weather-beaten, it was the face of the old Charlie still, but there seemed to her to be in it a strength and a purpose which it had lacked in former days.
“And you, Cecil? You have been ill, I’m certain. Been crying over me, thinking I was dead, poor little girl?” and he kissed her tenderly.
“Oh, what do I signify?” she cried. “Tell me about yourself, Charlie. Where have you been?”
“In the hills, slave to an old brute of a Kurd named Ismail Khan Beg. They didn’t treat me badly at first, except that they took away my own clothes and gave me some of their old ones to wear. When a Kurd has done with his things, Cecil, I can tell you they are rags and something more—ugh! Well, they got rather fond of me, because I doctored them a little, and so on; but it didn’t do me much good after all, for old Ismail took it into his head to offer to adopt me as his heir, if I would become a Mohammedan and join the tribe. There was a giddy pinnacle of success for you, Cecil! but I didn’t mount it, and they all turned rusty. The less said about the last few months the better——”