By far Euphrates

A group of Moslems were loitering idly beside the beautiful Pool of Abraham, watching the sacred fish and feeding them with crumbs and corn. They were talking over the events of the last few days. Some of them—who would not have hurt one of those little fishes for any consideration—were boasting how many Christian dogs they had killed, or detailing yet more horrible deeds of devotion and of prowess. "But now," observed one of them, "we are not to kill any more. The 'Paydoss' has gone forth."

"Truth to say," another answered, "there are but few left to kill. And those are mostly old women and little children."

"It were well," a third remarked, "to take some order about the burying, and that quickly, or we shall have a pestilence among us, and true Believers have no charm against that any more than Christians. Allah, who comes here?"

A weird, ghastly figure strode in amongst them, coming down to the very margin of the pool. His clothing was scorched and torn, his hair grey—almost white—and his hollow cheeks and wasted face gave the more awful expressiveness to large eyes full of horror. He looked down into the bright, pure waters of the Pool. "Much water there," he said; "but it will not put out the fire. There is nothing will put that out, for ever and for ever."

One tried to lay hands on him, another drew a dagger. But his pale lips only curled with a scornful smile. "You cannot kill me," he said; "I am an Englishman. There is a mark set upon me that no man may hurt me. It means, 'He saved himself: others he did not save.'"

"Put that up," said one of the Turks to his comrade with the dagger. "Do you not see the man is mad?"

Moslems think it wrong to kill a madman; they even honour him, as one inspired by Allah. Nor does their law allow them to receive a madman as a convert to Islam.

"Englishman?" another queried. "Nonsense about Englishmen! There are no Englishmen here."

"That, no doubt, is part of his madness. He is a Giaour, whom it is the will of Allah to save alive."

A young man, dressed à la Frank, joined the group. "Whom have you got here?" he asked.

"Some Giaour, driven mad by the loss of his friends," answered one of the others.

The Giaour turned, and looked the new comer steadily in the face.

The Turk looked at him, with a perplexed, bewildered air.

"Osman Effendi, how many Giaours have you killed?" the Christian asked.

"One," Osman answered. "But he was a prince amongst them. It was enough. Madman, I seem to know your eyes. Who are you?" He gave him another long, scrutinizing look. Then he said with a start, "Can it be? Is it possible? Are you Grayson Effendi? How have you come here? I sought for you; and heard you had gone to the church. Then I gave you up for lost."

"I am lost," Jack said.

"Nay, friend, you are saved, thanks to Allah the Compassionate. But how, in His Name, did you get out?"

"I have not the least idea," Jack said. "The last thing I saw was those children, falling down into the fire. The first thing I remember after that, I was walking among dead bodies in the churchyard. There were plenty of Turks about, but they did not kill me. No one will kill me."

"I fear you are right enough," said Osman aside to the others. "It is a pity." Then to Jack, "Come home with me, Grayson Effendi. I will take care of you, and give you meat and drink. Then you shall lie down and sleep——"

"No; I shall never sleep again. I dare not. I should see the burning church, and the woman who threw her children into the fire."

"Poor fellow! He is certainly mad," said another Turk.

Jack turned and faced him. "I am not mad," he said. "I remember all my past life. I am an Englishman. My name is John Grayson. You have taken my wife away."

"That at least is madness," some one observed.

"Not altogether," whispered Osman. "There was a betrothal, or something, to a beautiful Armenian girl. Franks take these things hard." Then aloud, "But come with me, Grayson Effendi, you will be quite safe."

Jack yielded so far as to walk away with him from the group. But when they had gone a little distance he stopped, and said, very quietly, "Osman Effendi, I thank you. But I cannot enter the house of a Turk. I must go back to the ruined dwellings of my friends. I would say 'God bless you!' if, in the face of what I have seen, I could still believe in God. I cannot. Farewell."

He took the nearest turning which led to the Armenian Quarter, and soon found himself in the midst of horrors which the effects of no siege, no battle known to history, could have equalled. The dead—and the dying too, who lay undistinguished amongst them—were being dragged to the great trenches outside the town, which the Moslems had dug to receive them. There were many houses, like that of the Vartonians, in which no human creature, not even the babe in arms, was left alive.

On and on he wandered, from one horror to another. What he saw, in its details, is best left untold. He was not mad; the consciousness of the past was coming back upon him, every moment more clearly and fully. As the human heart will ever do, in the most overpowering, most universal agony, he still reverted to his own. "Shushan! Shushan!" was his cry, amidst the reeking ruins of the devastated city. Always, everywhere, it is not the "all" we care for, but the "one." We are made so.

He bore his burden alone, in the blank unbelief of utter despair. "Cold, strong, passionless, like a dead man's clasp," there closed about his heart the horror of "the everlasting No," choking it to death. No hope, no love, no God, no Christ.

How long he wandered in that ghastly scene of death he could not tell. Some desultory plundering was still going on; parties of Turks, chiefly of the lowest class, sometimes met him, but no one thought of killing him. The killing was over, and even if it had been otherwise, his supposed madness would have secured his safety. Sometimes he saw an Armenian in the distance, gliding ghost-like in the shadow of a wall; but if he hailed the phantom, it would vanish instantly into some hiding-place near at hand. He barely noticed the change of day into night or of night into day again. As the claims of his physical nature asserted themselves he took food, almost without thinking; plenty of it lay about, uncared for, in the desolated homes. The one thing he did not dare to do was to sleep. He feared the dreams that would be sure to come—he feared still more the awakening.

After what seemed to himself a long time, he thought he heard a faint cry from the interior of a house in the courtyard of which he was standing. He went in, and was guided by the sound to a store closet, where food had been laid up. There, on the ground, her head upon a sack of bulghour, lay a woman quite dead, beside her a little baby, probably dying also.

Better let it die so, reason would have said, and perhaps kindness too. Nature is stronger than either. Jack stooped down, took up in his arms the little wailing babe, and tried to soothe its cries. Evidently it was starving. What should he do? He could not give it rice or bulghour, and hard, dry bread, even dipped in fruit syrup, would not be more suitable. How could he feed a baby? Then all at once he thought of the Mission House. Miss Celandine would know what to do. He had often thought of her before; but either he supposed her out of reach, as for some time past she had almost been, or else unconsciously he shrank from going where he used to find Shushan. Moreover, for aught he knew, she might by this time have left the place. He thought Osman told him she had got her passport at last.

However, he soon found himself treading the familiar way by which he had gone so often to visit Shushan. How clearly he saw her now, in all her winning loveliness, her sweet eyes full of joy, coming to meet him with her little hand stretched out, English fashion, and on her lips the one word, "Shack!" He had not seen her so clearly since Osman's tale turned his heart to stone.

As he went he held the little babe close to his breast to keep it warm, and half feared it would die by the way. He found the great gate of the Mission House, and saw forms, like shadows, creeping in and out—wretched objects, most of them with bandaged limbs or heads. The spacious courtyard seemed turned into a hospital; men, women and little children sat or stood about, waiting to be treated. He asked some one where he might find Miss Celandine, and was directed to the Church.

What a transformation that beautiful church had undergone since he saw it last! If the yard was the hospital for out-patients, the church was the ward where those lay who could not be removed. It was crammed from end to end with men and boys—the wounded and the dying. Their mats were placed on the floor, so close together that it was hard to move among them.

Still, the first thought of relief and softness came to Jack as he stood there and looked around him. There at least love reigned, not hate. Once more he was amongst beings who were human, and who pitied and helped one another.

He did not see Miss Celandine there, but an Armenian woman, with a sweet, serene face, came towards him and enquired what he wanted. He showed her the babe. "Can you save it?" he asked.

"We will try," she answered, taking it gently from him. "Poor little one! I fear it is too late. Does it belong to you? Is it perhaps your little grandchild?" she asked, looking up at him.

It occurred to Jack that the question was a strange one; but—was anything strange now? He answered, "No; I found it just now, beside its dead mother. I know not who they are."

"Where is Miss Celandine, Anna Hanum?" asked a servant, coming up. "There is a boy here in great distress, who wants to speak with her."

"She will be here just now," said the woman who was speaking to Jack. "Where is the boy?"

He came running in after the messenger, pale and crying, as one in sore trouble. He seemed to know Anna Hanum, and began to pour out to her his tale of sorrow. Its burden was, "I have denied my Lord. I have denied the Lord Jesus Christ! Will He ever forgive me?"

"How was it, my poor child?" the woman asked pityingly.

"They killed my father and my mother," he said. "Then they held a knife to my throat, and asked me to be a Moslem and save my life. In my terror I said—I know not what. But it must have been 'yes,' for they spared me, took me to a Turkish house, and gave me food. They kept me shut up until now, when I ran away and came here. Will Christ ever forgive me? Oh, do you think He will ever forgive me?"

Ere she could answer, there came a faint weak voice from one of the sufferers lying at their feet. "Christ will forgive you. Only, you have lost a grand opportunity."

Something in the voice sent a thrill of strange, sweet memories through the heart of John Grayson. He turned towards the spot from whence it came. "Who said that?" he asked. A man, horribly mutilated, pointed out to him a boy who was lying beside him, with a light rug thrown over him. Threading his way with difficulty through the mats on which the patients lay, Jack came to his side and knelt down. He saw a young face, white, wasted and drawn with pain, yet full of a strange, unutterable peace. And he knew it was the face he loved best in the house of Meneshian—after the one through whom his heart had got its death blow. "Gabriel!" he said.

"Who is it?" asked the boy. "Is it—no, it is not, it cannot be! And yet you have the eyes of Yon Effendi."

"You used to call me that in the old days. Oh, Gabriel! I thought they had killed you all."

"Yes, all," Gabriel said; and into his eyes there came, instead of tears, a light from beyond the sun, beyond the stars. "We have all come home now, except me. I am just a little late for the first gathering-up there, but I forget my pain in thinking of their happy meeting all together, and of the joy they have in seeing the Face of Christ. Besides, He is here with me too; and I think He will let me go to them soon."

Then a wave of bitter pain surged over the soul of John Grayson. He supposed Gabriel did not count as any longer one of them her who, in the earthly home, had been the dearest of them all. Could he think the heavenly home would be complete without her? "What you must have suffered, Yon Effendi!" Gabriel went on, looking at his changed face and grey hair. "But I never thought to see you again! We all made sure the Turks had taken and killed you."

"Would they had!" Jack said. "Gabriel, how did you escape when all the rest were killed?"

"When they killed us all, and our cousins the Vartonians too, they cut and wounded me, and left me for dead. I suppose I was a long time unconscious. When I came to myself, I was lying among the bodies, almost under them. I pushed my way out a little, that I might see. I did not want to live; but I knew how they would drag the dead—and the dying too—out of the town, and fling them into the ditches beneath the wall. I was afraid of that. So I lay very still until night came and all was quiet. Then I managed somehow to get myself free. I crept along slowly, I know not how; I think I fainted often by the way, but at last I came here, to the place in all the world most like to heaven. And here they will let me stay until I go to heaven itself." The boy's voice was beginning to fail through weakness.

"Don't try to speak any more," Jack said.

"Oh, but I want to tell you—Can you give me a drink?"

Jack saw a pitcher of water cooled with snow, and a cup beside it, not far off. He poured out some and brought it.

"Will you lift my head a little and put it to my lips?" Gabriel said. "My hands are cut in pieces. Thank you. That is good. I want to tell you how God brought home the three who were away from us that day."

"The three?"

"You did not know that our dear grandfather had gone, the night before, to visit his old friends the Nazarians? And he found them so frightened, with only women there in the house, that he stayed. But in the morning, when we knew what was coming, Kevork went to seek for him, that we might die all together. Neither of them ever came back to us. Only yesterday did we hear about Kevork. One of the sheiks made his followers bring him all the strong, fine-looking young men he could find. About a hundred were brought to him. He had them held down hand and foot by his followers, while he cut their throats with his own hand, reciting all the time verses from the Koran. Kevork was among them."

"And our dear Father Hohannes?"

"He was at the Nazarians, as I said. He thought that perhaps the Turks, having killed the men, might be satisfied and go away. So he bade the women conceal themselves, and sat calmly at the door reading his Bible. When they saw him there, they said, 'You are an old man with white hair; we will spare you, if you will only acknowledge the Prophet. You need not speak; just lift up one finger.' 'I will not lift up one finger,' said he. Then they dragged him out into the street to kill him, and—and—Yon Effendi, I can tell you no more. Spare me!" He turned his white face away with a look of agony.

"Dear boy! dear child! tell me no more if it hurts you so," Jack whispered soothingly. "However dreadful it may have been, it is over now."

"It was not so very dreadful," Gabriel said, after a pause. "It was soon over. But oh, Yon Effendi, there is more! I said three were absent from us." His dark, wistful eyes, so full of pain, gazed piteously into the wondering face bent over him.

A distant suspicion of who the third might mean dawned for the first time on John Grayson. "You said three were brought home to Heaven—Hohannes, Kevork, and——"

"Shushan."

In unutterable anguish John Grayson turned his face away. "No," he murmured hoarsely, "Shushan is not in Heaven but—in Hell."

Gabriel half raised himself in his intense excitement. "Then you don't know——"

"It is you who don't know," Jack interrupted bitterly. "There is no such blessedness as death for her—or for me."

"Oh, but you don't know," Gabriel said again. "Yon Effendi, listen—you must listen to me. I have comfort for you."

"What comfort possible for me?"

"The comfort of God; our Shushan is with Him."

Jack turned, and looked again in the face of Gabriel. His own was set and drawn in its anguish of suspense. His lips moved, but only one word would come—"Speak."

"As they were killing my grandfather, zaptiehs passed by with Shushan guarded in their midst. She saw his white hair,—his face,—and broke through them all to throw her arms around him and plead for his life. They were taken by surprise, and did not stop her in time. No one knows how it happened, but, in the confusion, a sword meant for him went right through her heart."

John Grayson sprang to his feet, with a cry that made all the wounded round them turn on their mats and look up in wonder. He never even heard Gabriel's concluding word: "So, as I said, they are all now with Christ." But in another moment he was on the ground again beside him, his whole frame shaking with a storm of sobs—hoarse, heavy, uncontrollable,—surging up from the very depths of a strong man's soul. After the sobs came tears—tears again at last! No longer were the heavens iron and the earth brass; all the flood-gates were open now, and there was a very great rain.

He knew nothing until Miss Celandine's firm, gentle hand was laid upon his shoulder.

"My friend," she said, "I know not who you are, nor what your grief may be. But I cannot let you disturb all the others who are here. Especially, you are doing great harm to my patient beside you."

"Don't you know me, Miss Celandine?" Jack faltered out, struggling for composure. "Don't you remember John Grayson?"

"John Grayson! But he was a youth, and your hair is grey."

"With anguish. But now I remember no more my anguish, for God has had mercy upon me. My Shushan is with Him."

"Yes, we know it, and thank God for her."

Chapter XXI "GOD SATISFIED AND EARTH UNDONE"

John Grayson had been directed by Miss Celandine to go to the parlour where Shushan had bidden him farewell, and to wait for her there. It looked as if it had had many occupants since, and as if some of them were still in possession. Yet for the moment he was alone, a thing unusual in that crowded house. His heart was filled with a sense of unspeakable rest;—and, after rest, came thankfulness;—and with thankfulness a fresh burst of weeping, his tears growing ever gentler, ever softer and more full of healing.

In those blessed tears he found again his hope and his God. Christ was no dream, but a living, loving Power, strong to save. He had been with his beloved one, and had delivered her. Once more, in the darkness, his hand touched that right Hand, so strong and so tender, which at once upholds the universe, and supports the failing heart of every tried and tempted "wrestler with the Spirit until the breaking of the day."

So already the cross of Christ, laid upon both their heads, had been taken from Shushan's young brow, and she had received instead of it the crown of life! While he—who loved her, who would love her until his life's end—he had to bear it still. But it was the cross of Christ, and not the brand of Cain. Not that. Never that again! Never more would he wander aimlessly amidst the dying and the dead,—

that hideous travesty of the enemy's splendid, unconscious testimony to his crucified Lord: "He saved himself, others he did not save."

Rather perhaps might he be permitted, in some humble way, to follow Him, and help to save others. Of himself, there seemed little left to save now. The traveller whose purse is empty sings before the thieves; and if he has been just relieved of a crushing, killing burden, his song may even be one of thanksgiving.

He did not know how long he had been waiting in that room, when another person came in and sat down, waiting also. She had with her three pale, frightened-looking little children. Had he judged by her dress alone, he would have thought her an Armenian woman of the very poorest class; but one look in her face made him know her as a lady. It was a very sorrowful face—what Armenian face was not sorrowful then?—but it was also very beautiful, and it bore the unmistakable impress of a refined and cultured mind. He felt sure he had seen her somewhere before; she was associated somehow in his mind with a box of sweetmeats, an odd fancy, for which he could find no reason. But his thoughts soon left her, and returned to their own engrossing theme.

"Thomassian Effendi," said one of the children presently, in a wailing voice, "won't you take me up in your lap? I am tired."

Jack looked round in surprise. Could this be indeed the beautiful, luxurious, cherished wife of Muggurditch Thomassian? He spoke his thoughts aloud.

"Madame," he asked, "do I speak to the wife of Baron Thomassian?"

"To his widow," she answered calmly.

So much Jack knew already, and he wondered if the lady knew any more.

"Have you had certain tidings of his——" He paused for an instant, unwilling to voice the word.

"Of his martyrdom?" the widow said proudly. "Yes; he has gone home to God. The way was long and rough, but the end was peace."

"Then you know how nobly he witnessed for his Lord?"

"We know that he was found faithful."

"I was with him almost to the end," Jack said.

Then he told the story of his imprisonment, and of Thomassian's courage and faithfulness. Every word was as balm poured into the bleeding heart of the new-made widow.

"And now, madame," he said at last, "how is it with you in your loneliness?"

"As I suppose you know, we have been robbed of everything. My husband was known to be a rich man, and our house was one which invited plunder. What does it matter? When a scorpion has stung you, you do not feel the prick of a gnat. All I want is a handful of rice to feed these poor little ones."

"Are they—relatives perhaps?" asked Jack. He knew she had no children.

"No; they are poor orphans I found in the street crying for their mothers. It helps me in my desolation to have them to think and work for. That is why I have come to Miss Celandine. I think she may give me something to do, I care not what. Anything to keep these from starving, and me—in another way."

"Perhaps you can help her in caring for the wounded."

"I fear I have no skill for it. I am not like Anna Hanum, whom you may have seen, and who is to Miss Celandine as another hand."

Jack remembered, with a pang, that he himself owed Baron Thomassian money, which he had no means of repaying. Other people dropped in gradually, to wait for Miss Celandine, and began to comment upon her long delay.

"Amaan! Something fresh must have happened," they said. Of course they meant some fresh calamity. What else could happen there?

At last food was brought in, great dishes of pillav and of soup, with bread—meat there was none.

"I would Miss Celandine were here," Madame Thomassian said to Jack. "She will not have tasted food since the early morning. Only that God gives her strength, for our sakes, she would have been dead long ago."

Presently there was a stir amongst them all.

"Here she comes," passed from lip to lip.

She came, but not alone. Her arm was around the waist of a tall, slender girl, who but for its support might have fallen to the ground. Another girl, much younger, clung to her side, and two boys followed, the elder carrying in his arms his little brother, a child of three. Her wasted, sorrow-stricken face was lit up with a glow almost of triumph.

"We have got them all!" she said.

Those in the room rose up and crowded round. Some said, "Park Derocha!" others wept aloud for joy, for all knew the Pastor's children.

"Oh, if the Badvellie could only look down and see them all safe here!" some one cried.

"He does not want that," Madame Thomassian answered quietly, "for he knows the end of the Lord."

The children were soon seated on the divan. Every one wanted to kiss their lips, their hands, their feet even. Their clothing was an odd mixture; Elmas wore a dress of Miss Celandine's, the rest, whatever garments had come first to hand, for the Turks had stripped them of almost everything.

"My zaptiehs have just found them in a mosque, and brought them to me," Miss Celandine explained. "They are starving."

Indeed the lips of little Ozmo were already quite blue; he seemed unable even to cry. Some one ran to get milk for him, and in a short time all were being fed and tended by loving hands.

Then everybody ate, in a primitive, informal way. Jack had his handful of rice and his piece of bread with the rest, and no food he had ever tasted seemed to him more wonderful than this. He was eating with Christians again. There sat Miss Celandine, in her frail womanhood, a tower of strength to them all; there were the dear Pastor's rescued children, pale and changed indeed from the unfathomed depths of suffering they had passed through, but all there, not one lacking from the little flock. There was the sweet face of Elmas, his Shushan's friend. And Shushan was safe too. God had not forgotten to be gracious, nor had He in anger shut up His tender mercies from them. Jack went over to Elmas.

"Dear Oriort Elmas," he said, "do you know me? I am John Grayson. My Shushan loved you well. And you will be glad to know that she is—safe; so are all the rest, although Gabriel only is with us still."

But now Miss Celandine was clearing the room, that the Pastor's children might have the rest and quiet they so sorely needed. There was not another spot in the crowded mission buildings that could be given up to them. With those who needed her she would speak in the passage outside.

Jack waited patiently for his turn, and it came at last. It may have been a relief to the lonely woman to use the tongue of her native land again, for she took time to tell him how the Pastor's children had been saved. "The captain of my zaptiehs saw my anguish during the awful days," she said. "He was moved, and asked me was there anything he could do for me. I said, 'Stop these horrors.' He answered that he could not. 'It is the will of Allah,' he said, as they all say. Then I answered, 'Find those children for me, and bring them here. They are mine; they belong to the Mission.' And I described them all to him. I believe he sought them diligently; and now here they are at last, after nights and days of cold and hunger and of agonizing fear. Yet God has kept them. Now, as for you, Mr. Grayson, will you come with me? I have something to give you."

He followed her to another room filled with people, where washing and cooking were going on. Motioning him to stay at the door, she made her way over beds, mats, babies and cooking utensils, to a press, which she opened, took something out, and came back with it. They went to the court together without speaking, and there, under the leafless branches of a fig-tree, John Grayson got back his father's Bible, the Book of his betrothal. "Shushan said to me one day that if her end of the cross was the first lifted off, I was to give this to you. See, there is a bit of silk put in, to mark the place she was reading when she was sent for to receive her father's blessing."

Jack opened the Book, and these were the words his eyes fell upon: "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

He pointed them out to Miss Celandine, who only said, "'Of the Lord's hand,'—it is that that makes it possible to live. But, Mr. Grayson, what will you do now?"

"Anything you tell me."

"For the present, you will stay here with us, until the way opens for your safe return home."

"Miss Celandine, you did not go home."

"The passport, which I asked for more than two months ago, was only sent to me on Saturday, one hour before the massacre began. Then the Pasha was most anxious to get me away; he advised, he even urged me to go. So I knew that evil was determined against this people; and, of course, I stayed."

"If you had gone, I suppose that not one of them would now be left alive," Jack said.

"Certainly not one of the three hundred that were in our premises then," Miss Celandine answered quietly. "Mr. Grayson, it is but poor hospitality I have to offer you. Not a room even, only a place to lie down in somewhere, and day by day a morsel of bread."

"And safety, and peace," Jack said. "If you permit me, Miss Celandine, I might spread a mat in the church, and give a little help, especially at night, to the wounded who are lying there. Then I could be near Gabriel, the only living thing left to me—of my own."

"So you can. Here you must work, or you will die. But here also, if you serve Christ in His brethren, you will find Him. Another thing you can do for us: your strength is sorely needed to bring to us our out-door patients, and to help them back again to their homes, or rather to the desolated ruins that were once their homes."

All this John Grayson did faithfully. In body he was never alone, by day and by night he lived in a crowd—a crowd of suffering men. But in spirit he "sat alone, and kept silence," because he bore "upon him the yoke," or rather, the Cross of Christ. He "put his mouth in the dust, if so there might be hope." And there was hope for him, though the light was kindled at no earthly shrine.

It was his greatest comfort to wait upon Gabriel; but Gabriel did not think it well that time and trouble should be spent on him. "It is waste," he said to Jack; "there are so many wanting your help who have hands to work with; better go to them, for what should I do, if I live?"

"God will see to that, brother."

"I know; only, if you drop a handful of piastres in the street, you try to pick up the good ones first."

Elmas Stepanian loved well to steal a few moments from the care of her young brothers, to sit by Gabriel and minister to his wants. His eyes used to brighten wonderfully when he saw her.

"You are so good and sweet," he used to say. Once he added, "And, Oriort Elmas, our Kevork loved you so."

Elmas did not blush or turn her face away; she only said quietly, "My dear father liked your brother well." For indeed—

Contrary to every one's expectation, the little babe John Grayson saved took hold of its life with a will. Two or three times it was very near dying, but it always rallied. In spite of tainted air, imperfect nourishment, and other disadvantages, it gave promise of growing into a bright, healthy child. Anna Hanum, Miss Celandine's helper, who had taken it first from John Grayson's arms, brought it one day to show to him with pride and pleasure. But, as she held it up, he was far more struck with her own face than with that of the babe in her arms. It was full of peace, profound and utter, such peace as one may see in the faces of the happy dead, only this was a living face, glowing with some inner light of love and blessedness. When she was gone, he turned to Madame Thomassian, who chanced to be at hand, waiting for some work.

"It does me good to look at that face of Anna Hanum's," he said. "She comes among these suffering, broken-hearted people like a light in the darkness; ever ready to soothe the sorrows of others, because, alone of all here, she seems to have none of her own."

"None of her own! Oh, Mr. Grayson, how little you know! Have you ever heard her story?"

"I have not."

"Her husband was a long time ill—paralysed. The years went on, and she had a weary life of it, waiting on him night and day, and earning bread for both of them. Nor, they say, did he make her toil light by loving gratitude. She never complained, but the neighbours knew that sickness had soured his temper, and things went not easily with her. But she had one great joy, God's good gift to her."

The childless woman who told the tale repressed a little sigh, as she went on,—

"Her bright, beautiful, gifted boy was the pride of all the neighbourhood. She loved him with more than a mother's love; and she toiled, and slaved, and almost starved herself to give him the learning she set such store by, and he thirsted for so ardently himself. He was the best pupil in the school here, and then he went on to Aintab and to Marash, where every one had the highest hopes of him. You may guess his mother's pride when he came back with all his honours to see her, before beginning active life. He was just in time to receive his father's blessing, and to close his eyes. But he stayed on a little while with her; and it was God's will that he should still be here when the storm broke upon us. Mr. Grayson, they killed him slowly, with cruel torture, before his mother's eyes. She stood by, strengthening him to the last, and bidding him hold fast to his faith and his God."

"And she has come through that!" Jack said, much moved.

"She has come through that, and she has come forth on the other side. God has satisfied her with Himself. Now, her own burden gone, she goes about helping and comforting all the rest, with Heaven in her face, and Heaven in her heart."

"'For I have satisfied the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul,'" John Grayson repeated to himself. "Yes, He can do it. These are the miracles He works now, instead of dividing seas and scattering hostile hosts."

Meanwhile Madame Thomassian gathered up the needlework she had come to fetch—coarse garments for some of the many who needed them—and Jack could not help remembering the soft, luxurious life, surrounded by every indulgence wealth could procure, which had once been hers. Now she toiled on from day to day, content with the pittance which was all Miss Celandine had to give to the poor women who were thus employed, and contriving out of that pittance to feed the little waifs she had taken from the street.

Even as she turned and went her way, he heard her softly singing to herself that favourite hymn of the persecuted Armenians:—

Chapter XXII GIVEN BACK FROM THE DEAD

One day Jack roused himself to go to the desolated house of the Vartonians. Very few of the surviving Armenians dared to be seen walking in their own Quarter; and, it was said by an eye-witness, no man was ever seen to walk upright there. They crept furtively about with bowed heads, slipping from shadow to shadow, afraid of the face of day and the eyes of their fellow men.

Jack's object in going was to find, if possible, his father's note-book, which he had entrusted to Kevork to give Shushan in case of his own death. It was to him a very precious relic, and he thought it might probably be amongst the things that had escaped the plunderers, as there was nothing in its plain appearance and binding to attract them.

It was agony to enter that blood-stained court, knowing all that had happened there, and to pass through those desolate rooms, associated in his mind with all the pleasant trifles of domestic life, thinking that every voice which he had heard there, save Gabriel's, was now hushed in death: every foot that trod those floors was dust. Even that dust had no quiet resting-place in the shadow of a Christian church. Those horrible trenches outside the gate, those hotbeds of fever and pestilence, told that, if the living were dumb, a cry that "shivered to the tingling stars" was going up from the desecrated dead.

Jack passed sadly through the rooms he knew, yet did not know as they looked now, but failed in any of them to find what he sought. At last he came to a chamber upstairs, where he was startled to see a human figure lying at full length on the floor. If it were a dead man, the death must have been very recent. But when he came near he saw at once that this was not death, but quiet, natural sleep. The man's dress was à la Frank, good and new; and his side face, which was all Jack could see, had the look of life, almost of health.

It had a look besides which made Jack cry aloud in amazement, "Kevork!—my brother!"

The voice aroused the sleeper. He sat up and looked about him. "Who is it?" he asked. Then, after a moment's astonished gaze, "If Yon Effendi's father were not dead, I would think he had come to look for his son in this charnel house!"

"Brother, I am Yon Effendi. How have you come back to us from the dead?"

"What does it matter? Are they not dead, all of them? You too, they told me you perished in the burning church."

"And they told us your throat was cut."

Kevork put his hand to his throat, where a red mark still remained. "The work was done, but not well enough," he said. "Would it had been! Why spare this blood, of which no drop flows any more in the veins of any living man?"

"That is not true, Kevork. Gabriel lives."

"Gabriel? How did he escape? Not—not—do not say he denied the faith!—not Gabriel."

"No; he was heroically faithful. He was left for dead, but he lives still. How he will rejoice to see you again, my brother!"

A deeper shade passed over the face of Kevork, and he stretched out his hand to Jack. "My brother," he repeated, pausing on the word. At last he went on in a low voice, "I know all—the worst;—your anguish and mine are the same. Our Shushan and Oriort Elmas——"

"Are saved—SAVED!" Jack cried, pressing his hand in a mighty grasp, and looking in his sorrowful face, his own radiant with thankfulness. "My treasure is safe in heaven, yours still on earth—in the Mission House with Miss Celandine. All the Pastor's children have been rescued, and are there, thank God!"

Kevork Meneshian bowed his head, and did what John Grayson himself had done in the hour of his blessed relief from an anguish too great for tears. Jack let him weep for a while, then he said gently, "Come, brother, let me bring you to our friends, who will rejoice over you as over one given back to them from the dead."

On the way Kevork told his story. "That morning," he said, "when we knew what was coming, I went to fetch our grandfather, that we might all die together. There was no more danger, and no less, in the street than at home; but I was soon caught by the Turks."

"Yes," said Jack; "that we heard; and your throat was cut."

"There is the mark. But there were a hundred of us, so the sheikh's hand grew weary ere he finished. I was near the end of the long line, and I only got a hasty gash. I did not even lose consciousness; but I was afraid to stir, so I lay there in my pain, thinking I should bleed to death. By-and-by some soldiers came along, and looked at the bodies. They saw I was not dead, and were going to finish me, when a Turk interposed, and bade them let me alone. He had hard work to protect me from them, nor did he succeed without striking one of them pretty sharply with the butt end of his gun. Then I saw his face, and recognised that Osman we met once or twice—a friend of the Pastor's."

"Osman! He told me he rescued an Armenian, an acquaintance. I wonder he did not name you."

"Where did you meet him?"

"We were together in the prison."

"I suppose he suspected some spy within hearing. Well, he took me to his house, bound up my wound, and hid me in an inner chamber. There he left me, promising soon to return; but for three days and nights I saw him not again, nor any one. You may guess what I suffered shut up there, thinking of all our friends."

"And you must have been nearly starved."

"No; he left me some food, though I was too miserable to care for it. At last he came, and told me he had been imprisoned for assaulting the soldier who wanted to kill me; his relatives, as he suspected, having contrived the thing to keep him out of harm's way, since he knew they thought him lacking in a proper zeal for Islam. But, on my account, and still more on that of the Badvellie's children, whom he wanted to save, he had been very eager to get out, and managed it at last, with large backsheesh. He told me all the terrible news—of those who were dead, and of those who, less happy, were living still."

After a sad pause he went on. "For myself, I am grateful to him. He supplied all my wants, and kept me concealed there many days. At last, yesterday, he came to me and said, 'I can hide you no longer. People are beginning to suspect something. If they find you, they will kill you, and kill me also for giving you shelter.' I said, 'For myself I care not, for what have I left to live for?' but added that I could not bear he should suffer on my account. So he said the best he could do for me was to give me a Frank dress, arranged as Mussulmans wear it, and money enough to keep me for the present. Which he did, and may God reward him, and number him—if it so may be with any Turk—amongst His redeemed!"

"Amen!" Jack said. He did not like to tell Kevork, what Osman evidently had not told him, that the father of Oriort Elmas had fallen by his hand. There was no need for more, for now they were at the gate of the Mission House. "It is best," Jack said, "that I should bring you first to Miss Celandine; she will know what to do. For we must not tell Gabriel too suddenly; he is ill and weak. You must be prepared, Kevork, to see him greatly changed."

Yet the meeting between the brothers seemed to fan the feeble, flickering spark of Gabriel's life into a flame. It was another tie to earth to feel he had one brother there left him still—"No, two brothers," as he said, looking lovingly at Jack.

A little while afterwards, Jack was sent for one day by Miss Celandine. "Franks have come to her from Aintab," said the excited messenger.

Delighted to think that Miss Celandine's long loneliness was over, Jack went to her at once. He found her in earnest converse with a grey-haired American missionary, whom, in introducing Jack to him, she called Dr. Sandeman. Then she said to Jack, "I want you very much, Mr. Grayson. Baron Vartonian is in there," glancing at the door of an inner room. "He came with Dr. Sandeman. He has just heard that of all his large family there remains to him now not one. You know more about them than any one else who is living now, save Gabriel. Will you go in and speak to him, and comfort him if you can?"

Though his heart fainted within him at the thought of such a sorrow, Jack went into the inner room. There were two persons there. Old Baron Vartonian sat on the divan, his head bowed down upon both his hands, his face hidden. Now and then the sound of low, deep moans—such moans as only come from a strong man's deepest heart—broke the stillness.

Beside him stood a young man with a face incredibly pale and worn and wasted, as if with some great agony, though its look was one of past rather than of present suffering.