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AN ARMENIAN
PRINCESS

A Tale of Anatolian Peasant Life

BY
EDGAR JAMES BANKS

BOSTON: THE GORHAM PRESS
TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED

CHAPTER I
AK HISSAR

NESTLING among the hills of Central Asia Minor is the little village of Ak Hissar, or Aksar, as the natives call it. The name comes from a neighboring old castle, a relic of the early days when the wild Turkish hordes from the distant East swept over and conquered the country. The white ruins of this ancient fortress are now almost hidden by mulberry trees. Its dungeons, once dark and damp, but now lighted by the warm sun, had they the power to speak, could narrate tales of horror to the children who make them their innocent playhouses.

On a little square in the heart of the village stands the great wooden government building, before whose rickety, half-closed door the little8 folk often stop to gaze at the soldiers quartered within. It is here the governor lodges when he comes to the village. Here the passports are issued. Here the tax collector stores his money. Here the prisoners are chained. And it is here the villagers learn the latest news from the outside world, or discuss weighty questions, while lounging and smoking and sipping their coffee.

At one end of the single street of the village may be seen a little, whitewashed mosque. From its slender minaret, towering above a roof of reddish tiles, the muezzin rubs his sleepy eyes at the appearance of the first rays in the east, and sings to the Faithful that prayer is better than sleep. And by the side of the mosque, in a thatched hut with bare openings in its walls for windows, the little Moslems go to school, where they sit from early morning till late in the afternoon, squatted on the dirt floor in a circle about the priest and teacher, and imitating his nasal accent obtain their education by memorizing verses from the Koran.

At the other end of the village stands the9 Armenian church, a small building surmounted by a wooden cross. As in most Protestant churches in Turkey, for the protection of the worshipers, the few windows are grated with iron bars. Nearly opposite the church is the Armenian school, where it is taught that other countries than Turkey exist; that czar and emperor and king are not governors appointed by the Sultan, and that there are other things worth learning besides the Koran.

The rest of the narrow street is lined with buildings peculiar to Anatolia. The low houses with latticed windows to shield the faces of the Osmanli women from the polluting eyes of the stranger are at once distinguished as Turkish homes. Here and there are grouped the shops, their entire fronts open to the street. Year in and year out the grocer sits patiently behind his stock in trade, consisting of a box of coarse salt, a cone of sugar, and a few glass jars filled with spices, candles, and cigarettes. The saddler exposes for sale huge gorgeously decorated packsaddles and long strings of blue glass beads, which, good as they are as ornaments10 for the donkeys, are even more potent to protect the animals from the influence of the evil eye. Half concealed behind his dark-brown loaves of bread, the baker mixes his dough, and with long-handled scoop pushes it far back into the stone oven. On a shelf before the little eating house is displayed a row of bright copper pans, filled with boiled rice, eggplant floating in oil, curdled milk, and other dainties savory to the palate of the Anatolian peasant. In the fruit shop are baskets overflowing with grapes and figs, and huge piles of delicious melons, which provident nature has bestowed so lavishly on the improvident Turk. The little village, remote as it is from the busy world, can boast of its money changer too. Badiark, a young Armenian, sits from morning till night at his little glass case rattling his silver coins to inform the passers-by that he has money to sell. For a coin worth twenty cents he gives nineteen cents in change; the other cent is his profit. To the distressed villager who is able to pawn a family jewel, a house, or a piece of land, he lends his idle capital at what11 in his eyes is a moderate rate of interest, twenty per cent a month. And the village is so small that the young money changer has leisure for another occupation when not collecting interest or making change. Conspicuously arranged with his money is a bunch of reed pens, and some ink; and for the villager who would write to a distant friend, the versatile Badiark, with scholastic air, selects one of a stock of flowery-worded letters which he keeps on hand, adds the date and the name of the sender, with awe-inspiring seal, and collects therefor a goodly fee. Thus the young money changer grows wealthy.

Ak Hissar is not without accommodations for the stranger. The quaint doorway of the dilapidated inn opens into a single large room on the first floor. In the farther corner, under the great stone arch, the innkeeper prepares the coffee, and keeps alive the coals for the nargilehs furnished to his guests. About the sides of the room, and raised slightly from the ground, runs a wide platform, upon which sleep side by side the travelers who cannot afford the luxury of a bed in one of the little12 chambers above. A door in the rear leads to the stairway, and out to the spacious stables. The inn is more than a stopping place for strangers. All day long the idle villager, loitering in its shade, lazily sips his coffee and smokes his pipe, or watches the graceful maidens filling their earthen jars with water at the well. Here, too, during the summer evenings, the simple peasants gather to listen to the tales of a wandering story-teller; or they are held by the weird Oriental strains which the village musicians improvise on the clarionet and pompoms; or proudly they watch a pompous soldier as he flourishes his sword before an imaginary enemy; or, if not wearied by the labor of the day, they join hands, and sway about as they execute the fantastic step of their national dance.

The pride of the village is the shop of the old Armenian merchant Dicran, for it is larger than the others, and, like some of the shops in Stamboul, possesses both door and window. Displayed within are silks from Brusa, print goods from England, bright colored sunshades for Turkish ladies, and boots and slippers13 worthy even of the Moslem priest. Dicran is justly regarded as the chief of the village. When disputes arise among the villagers, does not Dicran settle them to the satisfaction of both parties? Does not Dicran sell goods to people who have no money, and trust them till better times come? When the tax collector is severe, extorting more than the people can pay, does not Dicran intercede for them? If the soldiers are dragging a debtor to prison, does not Dicran pay the debt? When a villager is in trouble with the government, does not Dicran alone dare to take his part? When the mayor is in doubt, is not Dicran consulted? And when work is scarce, is it not to Dicran the poor villager goes? Dicran is old, and his hair has long been gray, but his form is powerful and erect, and few even of the younger men would care to grapple with him. Some call him severe. When his dark, penetrating eyes look from beneath those gray, shaggy brows, as if to search the very soul, and detect fraud or deceit, none could be more severe; but kinder heart than Dicran’s never was.

CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD DAYS

DICRAN’S history was long and mysterious. All that the neighbors knew of his early life was that many years before he had come from an Armenian town in the far east of Turkey, bringing with him his only child, Takouhi, a little blue-eyed girl. Dicran himself seldom spoke of his past, yet it was whispered about that he was descended from a branch of the ancient family of Armenia, supposed to be long extinct. His stately bearing, together with his last name, Lucinian, “son of the moonlight,” a name by which the early Armenian kings are known, may have given rise to the story; however, those who knew him best believed in his royal lineage.

In his native land Dicran had prospered, but the Turkish officials, perhaps suspecting his15 origin, or coveting his wealth, had confiscated his property, and slain his son and his son-in-law while defending it. With his little girl Takouhi, whose mother had died in her infancy, he wandered from home to find peace; and at the age of forty, by some chance, he came to Ak Hissar. He was the first Armenian who settled in the village. But gradually other Armenians came, forced by continued oppression to leave their homes, and soon they equaled the Turks in number. During the twenty years of voluntary exile, Dicran had partly regained his fortune.

The little blue-eyed Takouhi grew up, and married Vartan, a clever Armenian lad whom Dicran had taken into business. Two children were born to them, both girls. Vassinag, the older, who resembled her father, was dark, with large black eyes and thick glossy hair. Her features were of the pure Armenian type. Europeans might think her nose somewhat prominent, and call her swarthy, but beneath her dark skin glowed a ruddy tinge of health,16 and it was not surprising that the Armenian lads of the village cast their glances at her.

Armenouhi, the other child, a decided contrast to her sister, was her grandfather’s favorite, and his constant companion. It seemed as if all his affection for his long-lost wife and daughter centered in her. He never tired of holding her on his knee to tell her stories; and at night he himself put her in her cot near his own bed. Armenouhi was of a type rarely seen in Eastern countries. Her eyes were blue, her hair a rich dark brown, her soft fair skin clear and transparent. In her chin was the suggestion of a dimple, and every word or smile brought others to her cheeks. She was a vivacious, light-hearted little maiden, ever happy, but happiest of all when in Dicran’s presence. The old man would often sit and gaze inquiringly into her innocent eyes. There was a tradition in the family that the great Armenian king, Dicran, or Tigranes, as he is sometimes called, married the beautiful daughter of Mithridates, king of Pontus, and that the fair young wife bequeathed her likeness to her descendants;17 so that if at times her likeness seemed to vanish for several generations, it would at length reappear in all its beauty. Armenouhi, so Dicran was always fond of thinking, was the very image of the daughter of the famous king; she had the same features, the same blue eyes, the same sweet expression; and already, in her early childhood, she gave promise of surpassing beauty. Her blue eyes, the more beautiful because so rare in the East, captivated all who saw them. As the pet of the village, she was at home in every household, and the other children were not jealous, for was she not Armenouhi, granddaughter to the wise and good Dicran?

Death knocked again at Dicran’s door, and Armenouhi’s mother died. Armenouhi was then cared for by Yester, the wife of the thrifty Herant, who lived next door. The people used to say that Herant was more fortunate than some of his neighbors, for in return for his thrift and labor his mulberry trees always yielded a bountiful supply of leaves for the silkworms, and with the profits of his industry he18 bought the cocoons of others to send to the royal silk factories at Hereke. Armenouhi grew up in this good family, loved by Herant and his wife, and having as her playmate their only child, Takvor, a manly lad some four years her senior. He shared with her his playthings. He took her to Dicran’s shop and to the village well, and to the playhouse in the old castle. From the first they were always together, and each was at home in the house of the other. He acted as her safeguard, and looked after her wants. Once he caught her when she was on the point of falling into the well. For her he often had his pockets full of walnuts. To save her little hands, he pulled the burrs from the chestnuts she gathered, or climbed the mulberry trees, and threw the ripe fruit into her checkered apron. To see the two playing in the shade of the plane tree by the well, or listening to the stories in the grandfather’s shop, or romping hand in hand over the hillsides, or riding Dicran’s horse, was a familiar picture.

Badiark, the young money changer, alone envied them their happiness. When he saw19 them together, he sneered at a boy who would play with a girl. Finding them on one occasion in the shade of a tree outside the village, happily pulling grass to feed their horse, he thought to annoy them by driving the animal away. He raised his heavy stick, and struck the horse in the mouth. Then frightened at the blood spurting from the wound which he had so maliciously caused, he hurried away to the village, while the horse, accustomed only to kindness, held down his head and came nearer the children. With tears filling their eyes, they gently stroked his nose with their little hands, and tried to ease the pain with comforting words. They found that one of his lower teeth had been broken.

When Takvor and Armenouhi played with the other village children among the ruins of the old castle, there was one little room which they called their own. Here they kept house together. Some blocks of wood were the chairs and tables. An ancient brasier was the stove. On a shelf stood a row of broken bottles, for Takvor was the hakim, as they called the physician,20 and Armenouhi was the hakim’s wife. Together they cured the pretended diseases, and healed the imaginary wounds of their playmates. The medicine prescribed was from the long black bottle, or from the green or the blue bottle. Whatever the trouble was, however, the cure was always the same cold water from the well. The patients more often clamored for pills or tablets, for they were manufactured from little lumps of sugar broken from the cone in Dicran’s shop. One day when their patients had left them, Takvor took his playmate’s hands in his, and looked into her great blue eyes.

“Armenouhi, some day when I am a man, I shall be a real hakim, and I shall have real patients, and real medicine. Will you then be the hakim’s real wife?”

“Just the hakim’s wife,” she whispered, and her steadfast eyes rested in his.

CHAPTER III
THE PARTING

IT is only in the larger of the Turkish cities, where you hardly know your next-door neighbor, and where people of the same religious faith collect in quarters, that the Moslem and the Christian cannot live in peace together. In the country village, where everybody knows the secret thoughts of his neighbor, the feeling is no less kindly than between the members of the different churches of a Christian country town. The Moslem peasant counts his beads; the Christian, like the Moslem, prostrates himself in prayer. Allah and Elohim were originally the same name of the same God, revealed to the one through the prophet Mohammed, to the other through Christ. The Christian children play with the little Moslems in the courtyard of the mosque, and the little Moslems join their Christian comrades in their games about22 the holy well, and drink the holy water. The Moslem buys his goods of the Christian merchant, and the merchant trusts him when he cannot pay. Moslem and Christian work together in the field, and when their labor is over, sit side by side in the inn to listen to the story-teller. The one never asks the other whether he be Moslem or Christian; and the friendship existing between them is often quite as enduring as if they worshiped together.

All this was true of the people of Ak Hissar, and their unity of purpose and unity of labor brought flourishing days to the little village. Herant had his full share in the general prosperity; for his mulberry trees throve, his business increased, and he became known throughout the country, even as far as Constantinople, as a successful raiser and buyer of cocoons. It was he who produced the silk for the beautiful rugs and hangings for the Sultan’s palace at Yildiz, and for the presents which His Majesty was pleased to bestow upon visiting foreign princes. The Sultan recognized the services which he rendered, honored him with a decoration,23 and invited him to the capital, to become the manager of the various silk factories throughout the Empire.

The prospect of living in Constantinople appealed strongly to Takvor, for he was studious, and had long ago absorbed the teachings of the simple village school. Now at the age of fourteen, it was his one great hope that in some way or other he might fulfill his first and greatest ambition of becoming a physician. His single unhappiness was that of leaving Armenouhi. Perhaps he should never see her again. Although she was but ten years of age, she was far more developed than a Western girl of those years, and already had been asked for in marriage by the young money changer Badiark, who offered a suitable dowry; but, contrary to custom, he was told that when she was older she might answer for herself. The rejected suitor, seeing her the constant companion of another, knew full well what that answer would be.

Armenouhi was greatly depressed by the thought of losing Takvor. Naturally the few remaining days were spent together in their24 favorite haunts. For the day preceding Takvor’s departure, the village priest arranged a farewell picnic, to which all the children were invited. Early in the morning the party climbed the eastern mountain, and upon reaching the summit at noonday the priest’s good wife spread the long white cloth upon the ground and heaped it with food for their hungry mouths. Takvor was given the seat at the head of the table.

“Who shall be the lady of honor to sit with Takvor?” asked the priest.

“Armenouhi!” shouted the children, in concert, as if there could be no other answer.

It was a happy party, and their peals of laughter rang over the hillside. Takvor and Armenouhi alone were sad.

“Come,” he whispered, when dinner was over and the children began to play; and the two wandered away from the others and sat down in the shade of a tree, where the silence of the gentle spring day was broken only by the distant voices of their playmates and the tinkling25 bells of the sheep grazing on the mountain slopes.

The field was dotted with white anemones, and Takvor began to pick them.

“Oh, there is a happy omen for us,” cried Armenouhi, and she pointed to a magpie hopping about in the grass.

“But yonder comes his mate, and the good omen is turned to bad,” replied Takvor; “and there is a third magpie, and that foretells calamity.”

“But what evil can be greater for us than your going on the morrow?”

There was no answer this time, and Armenouhi sat in silence and watched Takvor picking the little white blossoms. As if to help, she occasionally picked a flower and gave it to him.

Takvor made a wreath of the flowers and was placing it on her head, when the red ribbon that held her hair became loose and fell. Both reached for it, and for an instant both held it; they pulled, and the ribbon parted. With her26 piece Armenouhi rearranged her hair; Takvor put the other in his pocket.

That evening at home, when nobody was by to see her, Armenouhi selected the largest and best of the blossoms, bound them together with the ribbon from her hair, and laid them away between the leaves of a book.

CHAPTER IV
THE TAX COLLECTOR

THE railroad came to Ak Hissar, bringing new prosperity and new customs. The priest, fearing that the influence of the West might turn the Faithful from the truth, spent much of his time with the mayor, considering such weighty problems as how near the mosque might pass the new telegraph wire, which every Moslem thought conveyed the voice of Satan. Dicran was no longer consulted in these intricate questions, for he was a Christian; and how could any Christian understand such matters? Sometimes now the Moslem children called their Christian playmates infidels or Christian dogs, evidently repeating the words which the priest had taught them in the mosque. The governor was now more frequently seen in the village, for his cupidity was aroused by its unusual prosperity.28 The tax collector was ordered to double the taxes of the Christians, but, being a man of honor, he hinted that an increase of taxation would be an injustice; for his disobedience he was dismissed, and his office was offered to the highest bidder.

The collector’s pockets are always capacious, and the taxes must yield a sufficient amount to fill them. He is an industrious man and watches carefully the fields of the peasants. As soon as the seed is sown he may fix the value of the future crop to assess the tax. For him no years are bad; no rain or hail or frost destroys. Many a peasant has carefully tilled the soil, and brought his crop to maturity, only to find that its value is less than the tax which he is ordered to pay; if he refuses, his property is confiscated.

The new tax collector at Ak Hissar was known as Hassan, or Hassan Effendi; but he was none other than Badiark, the Armenian money changer, now become a Moslem, and to all appearances a Turk. He fully justified the Oriental proverb that ten Christians are required29 to outwit a Jew, and ten Jews to outwit an Armenian. Like every other Christian of the village, Badiark had suffered from the Turkish oppression, and he shrewdly exercised his active brain to devise a means of escape. He cultivated the friendship of the priest and the mayor; he displayed unusual interest in the teachings of the Koran; he frequented the mosque at the hours when formerly he was seen in the church; and finally forswore the religion of his people by publicly declaring, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” He cringed with fear at the ceremonial which made him one of the Faithful and allowed him to receive a Moslem name, yet he endured it for the sake of future gain. His motives were so transparent that he was openly jeered at by his cast-off Christian friends, whom he now designated as dogs, and the Moslems themselves secretly despised him. With apparent sincerity he performed punctiliously his prostrations in public; and after the example of the fanatical priest, he mingled pious ejaculations with his conversation. During the sacred30 month of Ramazan he pretended to fast, and from daylight till sundown never permitted himself the pleasure of a puff of the forbidden cigarette. In the garb of a dervish he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, kissed the black stone in the Kaaba, and drank of the water of the sacred pool of Zemzem; and when he returned with a great green turban wound about his fez, he was known as the hadji, or pilgrim. No longer doubting his piety, the Moslems thought him one of the most faithful of the Faithful. Had he not kissed the holy stone that fell from paradise? Had not his hand touched the tomb of the Prophet? And all one afternoon he stood in the mosque, holding out that hand for the less fortunate of the Faithful to kiss. Thus Badiark the money changer became Hassan the hadji, and with the funds which he had acquired as money changer, he bought the office of tax collector.

His only thought now was to extort money by every method which he could devise. As banker and private citizen, his ill-gotten gains were many; but as a Moslem and an official,31 supported by the government, and with soldiers to enforce his demands, his greed was boundless.

The tax collector in Turkey expects a welcome wherever he goes, for the peasant who refuses him shelter is punished with increased taxation. Hassan, fond of good food and a soft bed, frequently spent the night with old Dicran, who welcomed the opportunity to influence him for the better regulation of the taxes and to lighten somewhat the burdens of the people. But it was not always the good food or the soft bed that brought the collector. Hassan had never abandoned his purpose to marry Armenouhi, and now, having become an influential official, with his wealth rapidly increasing, he determined to win her. He would coax her to him with sweet lokoum, or with the promise of a story, to which she seldom listened. With his bulging eyes he followed her about her household duties. When she returned from school he was there, and when she went into the street, he followed her. When he asked her to go with him to the spring on32 the hillside, and she refused, he growled an unintelligible threat which caused her much alarm. Dicran’s eyes were at last opened, and he decided that she must be taken immediately beyond his reach to the mission school in Ada Bazaar. Even Hassan, an artificial Turk, when his pride was wounded, was a sensitive being, and believing that her sudden departure was in some way connected with him, he was deeply incensed, and resolved to have revenge.

Two nights later he was lying on the floor of Dicran’s hall, gazing at the rafters which were visible in the roof, as in most Armenian houses.

“Fine rafters you have up there, Dicran. Fourteen of them. Just the number I want.”

“They are fine rafters,” replied the old man; “I cut them with my own hand twenty years ago, and they have seasoned well. But I have others just like them, out behind the stable. They are well seasoned, too, and you may have them if you wish.”

“It is unusually difficult to collect the taxes33 this year,” complained Hassan; “and while I need the rafters, I can’t afford to buy them.”

“Take as many of them as you will, and pay for them at your convenience.”

“Yallah! but it is those in the roof I want.”

“You are a great jester,” laughed Dicran.

Next morning Hassan disappeared early, only to return in a few minutes with soldiers from the guardhouse, armed with axes.

“Why these soldiers?” asked Dicran.

“We have come for the rafters,” said Hassan, and he pointed to the roof.

“I told you I had others to which you were welcome.”

“I want those up there,” growled Hassan, ordering a soldier to climb to the roof.

In vain Dicran sought to reason with him; none but those particular rafters would answer, and already the soldier was tearing up the tiles.

“I will give you their cost if you will but leave them,” cried the alarmed Dicran, taking a gold lira from his pocket.

34Though the gold piece was more than ample, Hassan looked at it with apparent disgust.

“It is too little,” he sneered. “A lira for fourteen, good, straight, seasoned rafters!” and he laughed loud at the absurdity. “One rafter, one lira; fourteen rafters, fourteen liras, and cheap at that,” he added.

In a moment Dicran was bargaining for his own property.

“I will give you five liras.”

“Fourteen,” shouted Hassan, unabashed by the injustice of his exorbitant demand. “You can afford to send your girl to a foreign mission school, and you shall pay for those rafters. Cut them out, soldier,” he cried, turning to the man on the roof.

The soldier began to chop, and Dicran saw that his house would soon be ruined.

“Here! here!” he cried, and began to count out the fourteen gold pieces.

Without rearranging the tiles which he had displaced, the soldier climbed from the roof and joined his companions. Hassan, chuckling35 at his success, ordered his men back to the barracks.

Thus the tax collector began a system of persecution worthy only of himself. The prosperous days of the villagers were over. Taxes in lump sums were demanded of them, and to enforce their payment, the shady trees on the hillside were cut down, the spring was filled, the sheep and cattle were driven away, the mulberry groves were burned, ancient family jewels and rich old embroideries were confiscated, all for taxes, all for the greed of one man who had purchased from the government the right to practice open brigandage.

According to the official report, the people of Ak Hissar had voluntarily paid their taxes in full. The valuable service which Hassan was rendering his government was recognized by the Sultan, and he was rewarded with a decoration. The tax collector was now no longer Hassan, nor Hassan Effendi, but Hassan Bey.

Armenouhi could not yet understand why she36 had been sent away so suddenly to the mission school. Just before the spring vacation she was summoned by one of her teachers. When she entered the room, her bright eyes were sparkling with the hope of going home.

“Your grandfather thinks you should remain here during this vacation,” said the teacher, kindly.

“Why was I sent here? and why may I not go home? Does Dede not want to see me?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears.

“Hassan is still there,” explained the teacher, wiping the tears away.

Armenouhi was beginning to understand.

CHAPTER V
THE LETTER

HASSAN BEY did not forget the insult which had been offered him in sending Armenouhi beyond his reach. Frequent inquiries for her brought him little satisfaction, but they convinced her people that her return to the village would again expose her to his persistent wooing. Dicran went to see her during the spring vacation. Throwing her arms about the old man’s neck, she smothered him with kisses; and then, sitting on his knee, she gently stroked his rough face. She had a thousand questions to ask concerning her sister Vassinag and her father, and a thousand little things to tell about her teachers and her school, so that he could scarcely say a word. But he gave her a letter bearing the simple inscription “Armenouhi.” She opened it and near the bottom in a large boyish hand read Takvor’s name.

38“I am going to England to study,” the letter concluded, “but I shall always think of you, and when I return my first wish will be to see you. If you ever need me, send for me and I will come.”

“Dede,” she said finally, looking up into the old man’s face, after finishing the letter.

“Yes, child.”

“Why doesn’t Takvor come to Ak Hissar again?”

“He came, but you were not there; and so he sent you the letter.”

Armenouhi’s eyes returned to the paper in her hand, and once more there was silence.

“Dede,” and again she looked into his face.

“Yes, child.”

“Am I going home for the long summer vacation?”

“No, child; not if Hassan is there.”

“Must I stay here in school all summer?”

“Yes, Armenouhi, it would be better.”

Again a silence.

“Dede.”

“Yes, child.”

39“May I spend the summer with Aunt Vartouhi in Stamboul?”

“Perhaps,” replied Dicran, smiling in sympathy with her unspoken thought.

Again Armenouhi threw her arms about his neck, and called him her dear, good Dede.

When Dicran was gone, she read the letter over and over until she could repeat it by heart. It was the first she had ever received, and she put it away between the leaves of her book with the anemones and the red ribbon.

CHAPTER VI
A VISITOR

PERCHED along the steep shore of the Golden Horn, nearly opposite the ancient land walls of Constantinople, rises the village of Hasskeui. When seen from the water, the rickety wooden houses appear to be piled one upon another in the wildest confusion. The winding streets, paved with rough, uneven stone, are so narrow that you can reach across them, and so steep that no beast of burden can climb them. Hasskeui is the home of the descendants of those Jews who were expelled from Spain in the year 1492. It is now a veritable ghetto. The streets and courts abound in filth swept from the houses, and with children whose pale, pinched faces tell tales of hunger and poisonous air. In the market, along the water’s edge, the venders expose for sale heaps of decaying vegetables,41 lemons and oranges white with mold, and meat discarded by the Moslem merchants of the city.

On the hill back of the village is the Ok Meidan, or archery field, dotted here and there with tall marble shafts to mark the places where the arrows of former sultans fell. The pure cold air from the Black Sea sweeps over the hill, and the Jewish families, wrapped in fur-lined coats, spend the sunset hours walking back and forth breathing the pure fresh air.

For one reason or another, prosperous Armenians occupied the upper rows of houses near the summit of the hill; but occasionally poverty drove some of them down among the Jews. When Herant, the silk merchant of Ak Hissar, moved his family to Constantinople, his friends persuaded him to purchase one of the higher houses; and there, among his own people, he made his home.

One afternoon, ten days before Takvor’s departure for England, when he was sitting alone in his room, with his thoughts turned to Ak Hissar and Armenouhi, to the old white castle, and the hillside spring, which he had left three42 years before, he was startled by hearing a familiar voice inquiring for his mother. He rushed down stairs, and seized Armenouhi by the hands, for it was she and her aunt Vartouhi.

“Why, how tall you have grown!” he cried; “and prettier than ever! Oh, how good of you to come and bring her. And mother will be so glad to see you. You must remain till I go away,” and he turned to his mother, who just entered the hall. “Mother, you will have her stay, won’t you?” he pleaded.

Yester was scarcely less delighted to see Armenouhi, for she loved her as her own child, and at once asked that she be allowed to remain with them.

“We will let Armenouhi decide that,” finally said the aunt.

“Will you stay?” he eagerly asked.

“Yes.”

Armenouhi had never been in the city before, and now she should see whatever she cared to, and he would be her guide. That very afternoon he took them to the Sweet Waters43 of Europe. He procured a boat, and as they made their way among the long shapely kajiks which nearly covered the Golden Horn, he told her stories of the passing people. Near the Sultan’s country villa they laughed at the little group of Turkish women squatting on the grassy shore. They landed at the bridge and walked about, gazing at the carriages of the white-veiled ladies from the Sultan’s harem, and at their tall black guards, awkwardly mounted on Arabian horses. He brought them ices and pistachio nuts, and they sat down on the grass to rest among the Turkish women.

At the base of the opposite hill, some festive Greeks were holding hands, and executing in a circle the steps of their national dance to the music of a hurdy-gurdy. In an approaching kaiyik laden with Turks, a young man, standing with hands to his mouth, was straining out long wavy sounds in a minor key, improvising a monotonous Oriental chant, while his companions were clapping their hands in unison, to mark the time. From the opposite shore came the weird strains of a Turkish lute, accompanied44 by the rhythmic beat of the pompoms; and a passing juggler, shaking his tambourine, added to the musical medley a song announcing that he had tricks to perform. A strolling dark-skinned gypsy girl, clad in a long, bright-yellow gown, was passing from group to group selling lavender blossoms, or telling fortunes.

Takvor nodded to her.

The gypsy squatted on the ground before them and poured from a small black bag a collection of beans, beads, buttons, horse-chestnuts, stones, and lobster-claws, with which she told the past and revealed the future.

Armenouhi selected a lobster-claw. The gypsy put it among the other objects belonging to her craft, and began to talk in a jargon of Greek and Turkish.

“You have many friends,” and she spread out her long henna-colored fingers over the white beans and stones about the claw. “That is a very wicked man,” she continued, placing her finger on a large black button that was resting45 against the edge of the claw. “He wishes to marry you, but you do not care for him, and now he is trying to injure you. Beware of him. And that is your lover,” touching a round white stone near the larger end of the lobster-claw. “He is going on a journey, and it will be a long time before he returns.”

“When will he return?” put in Takvor, who was listening to every word of the gypsy’s lingo.

“It will be a long time; perhaps years,” and she counted the beads about the stone.

“What is his name, and what is he like, and where is he going?” asked Armenouhi, pretending ignorance.

“He is a fine, honest boy, but I cannot tell you his name; he is going far away in a ship across the water.”

“Trouble is coming,” continued the gypsy, spreading her fingers over the big horse-chestnuts, which nearly surrounded the beans. She paused, and her black eyes were fixed on the little objects on the ground.

46“Go on,” said Takvor, who had been watching her fingers so intently that he had not observed the change in her manner.

Again she placed her finger on the white stone.

“All your friends will—will be—,” and she gathered up the scattered objects, and returned them to the small black bag.

“Will be what?” asked Takvor.

“Tammam! it is finished,” she replied, and sprang to her feet; and refusing the silver piaster which he offered her, she hurried away.

“How strangely she acts!” said Yester, somewhat troubled by the gypsy’s story.

“The police there have probably frightened her away, mother. Shall we be going?”

CHAPTER VII
THE PADISHAH

HERANT was at home when they returned from the Sweet Waters of Europe. He was delighted to see Armenouhi, and she pleased them all by her recital of the events of the afternoon. Badiark, now Hassan Bey, was mentioned, and as if she saw some reference to him in the story of the gypsy, she spread a handful of pistachio nuts in her lap, and repeated what the fortune teller had said.

“Gypsies often say strange things, Armenouhi,” said Herant, “but they seldom refuse money. How should you like to see the Padishah?” he asked, changing the conversation to dispel from her mind the unpleasant thought of Hassan and the gypsy.

“Oh, may we?”

Like other high officials who wish to retain48 the favor of the Sultan, Herant frequently attended Salamlik on Fridays, when His Majesty leaves Yildiz and goes to the mosque of the Hamidieh, adjoining the palace grounds, to witness the weekly prayer in his behalf. To please Armenouhi, it was decided that on the morrow they should all attend the ceremony.

When Herant and his little party neared the Galata bridge, they found long lines of powerfully built soldiers, headed by wildly screeching buglers and a military band, flying the sacred green flag of Islam, marching toward Yildiz. At Dolma Bachtche the streets were crowded with carriages conveying tourists, closely veiled Turkish ladies, or gorgeously decorated officials, all of whom were ascending the hill to Yildiz.

Herant found a place in the front row of carriages, facing the street that leads from the palace to the mosque. Column after column of cavalry and infantry came marching in from every direction. The crowd of spectators was rapidly increasing, and occasionally a carriage with a picturesque kavass perched on the high49 seat with the driver, approached the stand opposite the mosque to leave an ambassador and his family. Shabbily dressed spies worked their way among the crowded people, peering about to confiscate any opera glasses or cameras; for they are not allowed at the ceremony. The hurrying workmen were sprinkling sand along the street over which the Sultan would drive, and the soldiers were packing themselves more tightly together, to protect His Majesty, as by a solid wall, from those who had gathered there to see him.

When the sun approached the zenith, the spectators stood up in their carriages to obtain a better view. The soldiers cast their eyes to the ground, forbidden as they were to glance at the face of the “Shadow of Allah” as he passed. Takvor and Armenouhi, from the driver’s box, were straining their eyes to see every detail, while Herant and Yester were standing on the seat behind them.

“Here they come,” said Takvor in a whisper, when the great white gate at the end of the street swung open.

50Horsemen appeared, followed by a carriage. Shrinking back as if hiding from the eyes of his subjects, was a small dark figure. Only once did it lean forward to bow as it passed the ambassadors’ stand. It was a slight, hollow-chested, round-shouldered form; the great, round fez was jammed down over the head to the ears; the eyes were deeply sunk; the under lip protruded; the immense hooked nose pointed to Armenian ancestry; the cheeks were hollow, and the skin sallow; and the beard, dyed brown with henna, was long and unkempt.

“Can that shriveled old man be the great Padishah?” thought Armenouhi. “Why should he seem so timid when so many of his soldiers are here to protect him? And I thought he was handsome and brave!”

“Should you not like to be a houri in the Padishah’s paradise?” whispered Herant, as he noticed her expression of surprise.

Armenouhi shuddered.

The Sultan’s carriage passed quickly through the gateway into the yard, stopped before the entrance to the mosque, and the slight, stooping51 figure quickly disappeared within, not to pray, but to sit by a little latticed window, whence unseen he might observe the multitude gathered without, while others prayed for him.

The week following their visit to Salamlik passed all too quickly for Takvor. Late in the afternoon of the day preceding his departure, he was strolling with Armenouhi over the height of the Ok Meidan. Everywhere, as usual, little groups of Jews were gathered on the hilltop. In the distance, two Englishmen, followed by their caddies, were playing golf. The girls from the Scotch mission school were removing their tennis net, preparing to return. Takvor and Armenouhi, wishing to be alone, went to the farthest slope of the hill.

“There is the Wishing Stone,” and Takvor pointed to a marble column enclosed by four other columns. “The Moslems say that if you can kiss the inner column, your wish will be fulfilled. Do you want to try it?”

“Yes, indeed;” and they took their way to the spot.

Armenouhi sought in vain to press her face52 between the outer columns and kiss the one within, and she gave it up in despair. They were about to pass on when Takvor noticed that the outer columns tapered toward the top. He climbed the pedestal and was able to touch the inner column with his lips. Armenouhi’s wish should also come to pass; climbing on his back, she too kissed the stone. Without either asking the other what had been wished, they ascended the height overlooking the Golden Horn. The glorious rays of the setting sun cast their brilliant hue over the beautiful landscape at their feet, and myriads of birds were flying in the valley.

“To-morrow, Armenouhi, I am to leave all this; will you write to me often?”

“As often as you write to me.”

He put his arms about her and drew her to him, and their lips met for the first time. He then took her hand, and they went silently down the hill.

CHAPTER VIII
ARRESTED

TWO years abroad passed quickly, and Takvor was planning to spend his second summer vacation in Constantinople with his people. His father had written that the Turkish police were making it difficult for Armenians to travel in their own country, or to return from foreign lands, and he took his passport to the Turkish consul, to be assured that it was in perfect order.

The steamship from Marseilles was moored to the Galata quay, near the custom house, and Takvor, with traveling bag in hand, started down the gangway. It was in the early morning, and though he was not expecting anybody, he scanned the faces of the crowd below. To avoid delay, he held his passport open for inspection, and the Turkish official, polite as he always is to the well-dressed stranger, examined54 it; and then motioning to a policeman standing near, he gave it to him with the single word “Armenian,” and directed Takvor to follow the officer.

“Is my passport not correct? Is it not properly viséed?”

The official only shrugged his shoulders, and the policeman gave a coarse laugh.

He could therefore do nothing but follow the officer to the little building near the custom house. A guard was standing at the entrance, and at the farther end of the room sat the chief inspector of passports, a fat, surly old Turk, who glanced up as Takvor entered, and without interrupting his work motioned him to be seated. Presently a second policeman led in another Armenian, clad in rags, one of the miserable creatures of his race. He was not told to sit down.

An hour passed.

“I must be going home,” said Takvor; “will you not kindly examine my passport and release me?”

“Presently,” replied the Turk, politely55 enough, but without looking up from his papers.

Before noon two other Armenians were brought in. The official ate his lunch, and resumed his work. Takvor, disgusted, took up his bag and started toward the door; a soldier stepped before him, and he sat down again. It was four o’clock when the official ceased his work and looked about the room.

“What is your name?” he asked, looking first at Takvor and then at the passport.

“Takvor Bedirian.”

“Where have you been?”

“In England.”

“Hm,” said the official, making a wry face. “What were you doing there?”

“I was at a university.”

“At a university, eh? Isn’t our university good enough for you? What were you doing at a university? You went there to learn anarchy, did you?” exclaimed the official, in assumed anger, and he plied question after question so rapidly that Takvor could not answer.

“How did you earn your living?” he continued,56 when his pretended wrath had subsided.

“My father paid my expenses.”

“Your father paid your expenses, did he? Who is your father?”

“Herant Bedirian, the chief superintendent of His Majesty’s silk factories.”

The official hesitated.

“How long have you been away?”

“Two years.”

“Were you supported in England by an Armenian committee?”

“No; I have already said that my father paid my expenses.”

“Does your father give money to any Armenian committee?”

“No.”

“Have you any weapons?”

“No.”

“Search him.”

The soldier to whom the order was directed went through Takvor’s pockets, took out his purse, gazed at it as if he would appropriate the contents, and then, seeing the eyes of his57 chief upon him, slowly returned it. A small pearl-handled penknife excited the official’s suspicion.

“You said you had no weapons,” he roared. “Soldier, make a note of that.”

The traveling bag was opened, and every scrap of paper was examined; but as nothing more seditious than a suit of clothes was found, the examination came to an end, and the Turk, motioning to Takvor to be seated, turned to the next Armenian.

“But is my passport not in order?” insisted Takvor. “Why should I be detained longer?”

“Presently,” was the reply.

The other Armenians were questioned and searched with less civility than had been shown to Takvor, for they wore the dress of the peasant. They were poor harmless fellows from small villages in the interior. One had come to Constantinople to see a sick mother, another to visit a brother. Finally, when they had all been examined, the official approached Takvor, and took up his traveling bag.

58“I will keep it for you.”

“But I am going home, and I shall take it with me.”

“You are going to Stamboul, and I shall keep it until you return.”

“And why to Stamboul?”

“I have no power to release you; you must explain to the authorities why you went away.”

Takvor expostulated in vain. Almost before he realized it, several soldiers were marching him and the other Armenians along the quay to the police boat, which was waiting to take them across the Golden Horn to Stamboul. They disembarked and entered a narrow street. It was then that Takvor realized where he was going; for just ahead were the great, dingy stone walls of the Buyuk Zaptieh, one of the most horrible prisons in the Turkish Empire. They turned in at the gate. Passing through the courtyard, the soldiers pushed Takvor and his companions into a gloomy cell, fastened the door, and went away.

CHAPTER IX
THE TRIAL

THE prisoners remained silently standing in the spot where the soldiers had left them, too troubled to speak, too frightened to move. They were guilty of no other offense than that of being Armenians, yet the tales which they had heard of Turkish prison life made them shudder, and they wondered what their punishment was to be. When their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they looked about them. The cell was absolutely bare, without even a plank for a bed, and the stone floor was damp.

Takvor tried to think. Had his father known when he was coming, he would have been on the quay to meet him, and he would have sought influence to obtain his freedom, but now all communication with the outside world was60 severed, and weeks or months might pass before relief came. Tired and hungry, for he had eaten nothing since the early morning, he was thoroughly discouraged. Reaching out his hand to touch the wall, that he might lean against it, he felt a moving object. He started back and saw a great black scorpion crawling along the slimy bricks. Fearing he should be stung, he groped his way to the other end of the cell, where the wall itself was as damp as the floor. At last, wearied with waiting, he sank down exhausted on the wet stones.

The other prisoners tried to be cheerful, for to them life had ever meant little more than persecution. The sun went down; light no longer entered the cell, and the men crouched on the floor in silence.

Late in the night the harshly grating door of the cell was opened and two soldiers, flashing a light in the prisoners’ faces, ordered them to follow. They filed from the room, up the stairs, and into the office, where a pompous Turk was to examine them again, thinking that61 in their dazed condition they might be brought to confess complicity in some plot for the overthrow of the government. Takvor, whose European dress again secured for him more consideration than was shown to the others, was the first to be searched. He was asked the same questions as in the afternoon. When the examination was finally ended, a soldier seized him by the arm, and led him down stairs, where the jailor, a gigantic Turk, stood grinning with delight at the prospect of another prisoner.

“Here is a good one for you,” the soldier called out.

“I can find room for him.”

He pushed Takvor through a doorway, into a narrow passage, and holding the lantern close to his face, scanned him closely.

“Off with that coat!” he growled; and as Takvor did not obey, he set his lantern down, and stripped it from him; and then, seizing him by the neck, forced him along the passage and into a cell guarded by a heavy grated door.

62“In there, you dog of a Christian!” and he gave him a push.

Takvor stumbled and fell; from the darkness about him arose a din of voices, some of laughter, others of pity.

CHAPTER X
THE BUYUK ZAPTIEH

HOSH geldi, hosh geldi! welcome, welcome!” were the only words which Takvor could distinguish in the medley of voices.

Dazed by the fall, he was still lying on the ground where the jailor had pushed him, when a prisoner ignited a match to examine the new arrival. His fellow prisoners, whose pale, haggard faces in the flickering light seemed like ghosts emerging from the surrounding darkness, gathered about him and began to ply him with questions. Why had he come? What crime had he committed? Had he money, and would he buy them food? The cell in which they were huddled together was scarcely fifteen feet long and half as wide, yet in it were eighteen men. There was not enough room for them all to lie down. A little hole in the wall, which64 served as a window, was far too small for ventilation, and the air was foul. Perceiving from Takvor’s appearance that he was unused to hardship, and hoping perhaps to share his money, they treated him kindly, and gave him a place beneath the window, where the air was not quite so tainted with the stench of the room.

There was no sleep for Takvor that night. He sat in a stupor, while rats ran along the beams of the ceiling or over the bodies of the sleeping prisoners. At last a faint light announced the approach of morning. The prisoners sat up one by one and scrutinized him. Among them was an old man who had been in confinement half his life. He was permitted to sell food to those who had money. To the less fortunate a small loaf of black bread and a rusty tin of water were given daily. The old man asked Takvor whether he was hungry and had money, and then from a dark corner produced a wooden plate of beans cooked in fat, too filthy to be eaten, for which he charged him ten piasters.

In the increasing light, Takvor could see his65 fellow prisoners. They were lean and haggard, with untrimmed beards and matted hair. The filthy rags clinging to their half-naked bodies were swarming with vermin. Huddled in that cell were persecuted Armenians, thieves, brigands, and murderers. A Bulgarian had been in prison there for twenty years; ignorant of the police regulations, he had, upon the night of his arrival, gone into the street without a lighted lantern. With no friend to search for him, he was lost to the world, and forgotten even by the prison authorities.

To Takvor, sick and discouraged, the morning brought little hope. Should he fail to communicate with his father, his fate might be as evil as that of any of his fellow prisoners. His first thought was to find means to smuggle out a message, but he learned that he was in a cell to which visitors were forbidden. He wondered if the big Turk could be bribed to take a message to his father, and if his few remaining liras would suffice. When the jailor again appeared, Takvor was standing by the door, and he held out a gold lira. The Turk seized it66 greedily and promised to obey his instructions. Encouraged by the promise, Takvor patiently sat on the floor to await the coming of his father. Hour after hour passed, and night came, bringing with it only increased despair. The next morning, when the jailor’s face appeared behind the grated window, Takvor inquired if he had sent the message.

“Give me another lira, and I will send it at once,” was the answer.

Takvor gave him not one lira, but several, keeping only a few silver pieces to pay for food. Again he waited in vain. On the third morning he gave the jailor his watch in return for another solemn promise; but this promise was kept no better than the others.

Thus to Takvor the slowly passing days brought nothing but despair. The few clothes which the jailor had left him were covered with filth. His money was gone, and his only food was the insufficient black loaf which the jailor threw to him. He quenched his thirst with the tepid water of the rusty tin from which the others drank. But his hardships were slight67 when compared with the sufferings of the others. The jailor would drag some political prisoner into the passageway to be questioned. If the answers were not sufficient, he received blows or some more terrible punishment.

Unnerved by witnessing the tortures of others, in constant fear for his own safety, poisoned by foul air and filthy water, and starved by the scant prison fare, Takvor grew thin and weak. Four of the prisoners had already died. Another poor fellow, an Armenian lad of his own age, would soon be the fifth. To prolong his life, Takvor shared with him his small prison loaf. One morning, when the jailor was looking through the grated door, the groaning of a prisoner caught his attention. He called his superior, and the pompous official, poking the boy with his foot, was heard to mumble something about throwing him into the street, that he might die elsewhere. Takvor awoke in the night and spoke to the boy, but received no answer. He reached out his hand to touch him, and found that the body was cold. A thought suddenly flashed through his mind.68 Why should not he himself be released in the morning? He sat up and listened to the heavy breathing of the prisoners. Hearing no other sound, he exchanged his clothes for those of the dead boy, and unwinding the cloth from the boy’s head, wrapped it about his own. Then after dragging the body to his own place beneath the window, he lay down where his friend had died.

In the early morning, unrecognized by his fellow prisoners, Takvor lay groaning, when the grating of the door announced the presence of the jailor. The big Turk, followed by half a dozen guards, seized the Armenian prisoners, one by one, and dragged them through the long passageway, to a fate unknown to the others. At last Takvor was seized and dragged to the light, where he was recognized in the dead boy’s clothing.

The jailor suspected that some attempt had been made to deceive him, and he flew into a passion.

“Sick, are you? I’ll teach you to groan,” and he dealt Takvor a cruel blow.

69To exchange good clothes for a dead man’s rags, could deserve nothing less than extreme punishment. The more the jailor reflected, the greater was his anger, and he continued to administer blows until the groans, now become real, were silenced; Takvor was unconscious. Several hours later, when he came to, a great Kurd lifted him carefully to his feet and conducted him to the outside wall of the prison. Still faint, and half blinded by the light of the day, to which his eyes had so long been unaccustomed, yet amazed at his unexpected freedom, and pondering what evil it foreboded, he paused for a moment, and then, looking about to convince himself that he was really free and alone save for the Kurd who had assisted him, slowly staggered away like a drunken man. The Kurd followed.

CHAPTER XI
THE TURBANED MOLLAH

BARE-HEADED and bare-footed, with elbows and knees protruding through the filthy rags that covered him, his face hidden beneath six weeks’ growth of beard, Takvor passed slowly by the outer guards of the prison and down the street. As usual in the early afternoon, lines of carriages were taking the Turkish officials to their offices in the Sublime Porte. Through fear that some former acquaintance might recognize him, he clung to the inner side of the walk. Occasionally he followed a less frequented street, but always came back to the tramway and the rows of carriages. To his old friend, Hadji Bekier, who was standing in the doorway of his lokoum shop, he seemed but a passing beggar, only more ragged and more filthy than others. When he reached the Galata bridge,71 he noticed the familiar white-gowned toll gatherers busily reaching out their hands for the ten para pieces, or making change with the passing pedestrians. He stopped, for he remembered that he had not even a penny required for toll. Often with other boys he had passed the collectors unnoticed, but to do so now seemed impossible. While he stood trying to think how he might succeed in crossing the bridge, the sound of coins in the little booth of a money changer caught his attention. He saw lying on the ground a narrow board which had apparently been split from a packing box. Remembering that a cripple was free to pass the bridge, he picked up the board, and using it as a crutch, hobbled along. The toll gatherer, merely glancing at him, allowed him to pass. Takvor limped along some distance before glancing back; then, convincing himself that none but the tall Kurd was watching him, he dropped the board and crossed the bridge.

He could reach home by the less frequented street along the Golden Horn, but he disliked to grieve his mother by appearing in such a72 miserable condition. He looked at his hands. They were black with dirt. He looked at his feet. They were still blacker. He stopped before a jeweler’s shop to catch his reflection in the window. The streets seemed unusually crowded that day. Albanians, Kurds, and Lazis in their peculiar costumes, were standing about; groups of soldiers were collected before the guard-house, as if awaiting orders; and the police were peering into the faces of the passing crowds. To avoid these, Takvor made his way through the dingy inn which the Europeans have nicknamed “The Bourse,” and climbed a narrow street near the lower entrance of the tunnel. At a little café half way up the hill to the tramway was seated a group of Albanians, strong muscular fellows like the gladiators of ancient Rome; their dark-brown embroidered costumes, and their wool fezzes, half concealing the long locks of braided hair springing from the crown of their cropped heads, were evidence that they had recently come from the far interior. Farther up the street, at another café, a group of Lazis, bloodthirsty73 savages who valued the life of a man at less than that of a sheep, seemed to have just arrived from the wild coast of the Black Sea. Still farther on, a line of garbage carts and their brute-like drivers stood as if waiting for orders before going about their work. At the head of the street stood a beardless Turkish mollah, whose long, blue, collarless coat and spotless white turban marked him as a student from the theological school of Saint Sophia. To Takvor it seemed that the young priest was nervously glancing down the street at the groups of Lazis and Albanians, and watching another white-turbaned priest at the corner below. They were evidently in communication. Along the main street filed a line of Armenian porters carrying bags of newly coined gold from the mint to the bank, while armed guards were marching beside them, to prevent their disappearing with their precious burdens in some dark passage way. The passing of the porters, though a daily occurrence, seemed to excite the young priest, for he stood staring at the bags of money as if his eyes would penetrate74 to their contents. Again he turned to the waiting groups, and to the other priest below, and raising his hand, pointed upward. The porters and their guards passed into the bank to deliver their burden. Takvor, dismissing the scene from his mind, continued up the street, closely followed by the Kurd who had released him from prison.

He had hardly reached the door of the English store when there came from the direction of the bank the report of an explosion. It was followed by a second and a third. People from the houses and shops crowded into the streets.

“The Armenians are blowing up the bank,” somebody shouted.

From the steps Takvor could see above the heads of the people. At the street corner beyond the bank, the white-turbaned mollah was still standing, with both hands in the air, waving frantically to the people below. Almost instantly, as if by magic, soldiers sprang up from everywhere. They climbed the steps on the opposite hills, and leveled their rifles at75 the bank windows, ready to fire if the head of an Armenian porter appeared. At the entrance to the bank, with his back to the street, stood the old Montenegran doorkeeper, with a revolver in each hand, preventing the porters from leaving the building; already he had laid out half a dozen of them on the stairs before him. Others who had tried to escape to the roofs of the neighboring houses were shot by the Turkish soldiers. The faithful bank coachman, an aged Armenian, glanced from the window to see if his horses had taken to flight, but he never knew, for a bullet passed through his head. An Armenian cobbler, with a last in his hand, was standing in the doorway of his shop; a soldier aimed at the gray head and fired, and the cobbler dropped dead. Scarcely ten minutes had passed since the porters entered the bank, when, from the street where the turbaned priest had stood, hundreds of Albanians, Lazis, and Kurds, all armed with rough wooden clubs, were rushing madly at the crowd. They seemed to spring from the ground, and like savage beasts, selected, as if by instinct, their76 victims for the slaughter. As they worked their way along, their clubs made no mistake by descending on the head of Greek, Jew, Levantine, or even catholic Armenian; a massacre of the protestant Armenians had begun. The white-turbaned priest at the corner below stood for a moment watching the bloody scene, and then with a brutal smile of triumph, as if his part of the work were over, disappeared down the side street.

A stampede for safety began, and although the crowd understood that the massacre was directed against the protestant Armenians, the people of all nationalities fled to the shops or the houses, or to the side streets. Wherever an Armenian appeared, an Albanian or a Kurd stood ready with a club to strike him. Too dazed to move, like dumb animals, the victims waited to die. Takvor now understood why he and others of his race had been released from the Buyuk Zaptieh; the great Kurd who was still following him, had brought him to the street only that he might the more readily perform the task to which he had been appointed.

77When the knowledge of his awful situation flashed upon him, he dashed into the store, which was already filled with his terrified countrymen. The faithful Turkish porter, to barricade the property which he guarded, pulled down the iron shutters of the windows and doors, and the neighboring merchants immediately followed his example. Only those who heard the din of the hundreds of screeching iron shutters, hurriedly hauled down at the same moment, can realize the horror which seized the people. It seemed as if the Turks had put in motion some infernal machine to grind them to pieces. Men and women with strong nerves fainted at the terrifying sound; and even now, when some harmless merchant closes his shop for the night, men shudder and women faint at the recollection of that awful day.

CHAPTER XII
BEFRIENDED

THROUGH a hole in one of the shutters Takvor could see all that was happening without. Scores of the dead were lying in the street. The savage brutes, crazed by the sight of blood, turned this way and that, uncertain what to do next. From around the corner came men with iron bars, to break open the fastenings of the Armenian shops. As soon as the shutters of a shop were pried open, Kurds with clubs in their hands, dragged out the victims and left their bodies in a heap on the sidewalk.

The great Kurd who had shadowed Takvor approached the English store and placed his bar beneath the fastenings of the shutters. The fugitives within, who had believed themselves safe, heard the sound, and rushed behind the counters or to the cellar, to conceal themselves,79 and only a few clerks and the half-conscious Takvor remained visible. The faithful Turkish porter who was still outside, stepped before the Kurd, and declared on oath that only Englishmen were within. It was the word of one Moslem to another, and the store with all in it was spared.

Takvor was still gazing into the street when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder and heard a voice speaking his name. He raised his eyes and stared inquiringly into the face of his old Greek friend and college mate, Taviloudes.

“Here, Takvor, drink this,” and he held a glass to his motionless lips.

When Takvor had swallowed the draught, the Greek took him by the arm and led him through the store and up the stairs to a little room overlooking the Golden Horn. He made him lie down on the bed, and sat silently at his side until finally the vacant stare began to disappear from the boy’s eyes.

“Do you know where you are, Takvor?”

“Yes, I know now,” came the faint reply; but it was some time before he was able to explain80 that he had just escaped from the Buyuk Zaptieh.

Taviloudes bathed his hands and face, and placed before him a steaming cup of chocolate and such food as the circumstances would permit him to prepare. And then the afternoon was spent in removing the traces of prison life.

Darkness came, and the Armenians below were persuaded to leave their hiding places and eat the food which the Turkish porter had made ready. With a substantial meal Takvor’s strength and courage returned. At midnight, when the fiends in the streets had become quiet, the porter slowly raised the iron shutters of the door, and listened. Not a sound was heard, and Takvor stepped out into the black night. The shutters were again drawn down and fastened, and he listened again. The street was as silent as the grave, and he slowly groped his way through the darkness.

CHAPTER XIII
HOME

THE shortest way from the Ottoman bank to Hasskeui is up the Rue Voivoda to the guardhouse at the corner, and then down the hill through the old neglected Turkish cemetery to the pestilential quarter of Kasim Pasha; thence the road, hugging the dingy arsenal wall for nearly half a mile, leads up the hill over the fallen stones of another cemetery, to the lower edge of the Ok Meidan. Even in daytime the way is lonely and often unsafe. In the shadow of the arsenal wall many a pedestrian has been waylaid by the idle soldier, and gruffly ordered to empty his pockets; even if he yields, but has not enough to satisfy his assailant, he may receive the thrust of a knife. The Jew, returning from his day’s labor in Galata or Stamboul, walks home that way to save the boat hire; if sunset82 overtakes him, he stops at a little café in Kasim Pasha, to wait for others belated like himself; when a dozen or more have collected, they continue their way, relying upon their number for safety. The guardhouses, which seem to be more for the protection of government property than for the safety of the people, are arranged within sight and shouting distance of each other. Should you venture there at night, you would be stopped by the guard, and if ignorant of the usual password, would be arrested and thrown into prison.

Takvor almost felt his way up the hill through the darkness. Not a street lamp shed its usual flickering ray on the walk; in not a window was a light visible; only the stars looked faintly down. The watchman, fatigued by the grewsome work of the day, forgot to thump with his resonant wooden club the hours of the night. Once and only once did a sound in the distance break the silence. A garbage gatherer was still at his work. He had stopped his rumbling cart to increase its burden, and again all was silent. Unobserved by the sleepy sentry,83 Takvor slowly felt his way past the first guardhouse, and then down the hill and into the cemetery. Beneath the thick cypress trees the stars were no longer visible, and in the extreme darkness the faint outlines of the marble tombstones, with their great turbaned heads, seemed like white-robed ghosts arrayed along his path. At the foot of the hill he was able to avoid the guardhouse by making a detour. On he went through Kasim Pasha to the arsenal. Here he removed his shoes, hoping to escape the guard’s attention, and silently passed along, hugging the wall.

“Kim der o? Who is that?” gruffly cried the Turkish sentinel, running his words together into a monosyllabic grunt.

“Yavanji deyil! It is not a stranger,” replied Takvor, imitating the gruff voice of the soldier.

The old password that he had learned years before seemed to be still in use, for the sentinel was silent, and he passed on. By the faint light of the olive-oil lamp at the next guardhouse he could see the dim form of the84 sleeping sentinel leaning against a post, and he walked noiselessly by. To avoid the two remaining guards, he followed the valley through the cemetery, picking his way among the fallen stones and bushes to the Ok Meidan, and then in a moment he was on the hill overlooking Hasskeui and the Golden Horn.

He was extremely tired. His nerves, weakened by his confinement in prison, were all unstrung by the experiences of the day. He dropped on a stone to rest,—on the very stone where he had sat with Armenouhi two years before,—and turned his eyes apprehensively in the direction of his home.

At two o’clock in the morning, two hours after leaving the English store, Takvor was still on the hilltop, undecided whether he should awaken his father and mother, or remain where he was until daybreak. The rising moon was dispelling the darkness and revealing the outlines of the towering minarets in Stamboul and the dark waters of the Marmora. He gazed beyond the dull roofs of Hasskeui to the bit of the Golden Horn reflecting the moonlight, and85 seemed to see a dark object moving along the surface of the water. At last he distinguished the form of a large kaiyik. In a moment a second boat glided across the illuminated spot, and was followed by several others so closely that he could not count them. It seemed strange to him, for boats were not permitted at night. The splashing of the oars could now be heard, for the boats were approaching Hasskeui. Perhaps they were bringing Jews and Armenians, who, like himself, had escaped death, and were returning home in the darkness. He listened in vain for the sound of feet.

Five minutes passed, and then, simultaneously, in almost every part of the town, the air was suddenly filled with the crashing of doors and windows, followed by the shrieks of women, and the despairing “Aman! aman!” of men.

He could see the Armenians fleeing from their houses toward the hill, and there was yet time for him to escape across the valley to Shishli; but he must in some way warn his parents, that they might escape with him. When86 he reached the village, he found in the streets the same tall, sinewy Kurds and Lazis going on with their fiendish work.

“O merciful Heaven!” he cried on approaching his home; “have I come too late?”

Two gigantic Kurds were dragging his unconscious father from the house, while his mother begged piteously for his life. One of the savages tried to calm her with promises of safety.

“Take our money, but spare him,” she pleaded; “if you kill him, kill me too.”

The Kurd only laughed.

“No, my beauty; we have a better use for you.”

The Kurd’s club descended on the unconscious man’s head. Yester threw up her arms and dropped dead on the body of her husband.

CHAPTER XIV
THE SILENT APPEAL

TAKVOR was less than five rods away. He rushed behind the Kurd who was poking his mother’s face with his foot, wrenched the club from his hand, and before the savage had time to turn, struck him lifeless to the earth. With incredible quickness he aimed a blow at the other Kurd, but the great fellow, seeing his companion fall, was already on his guard. Their contest was unequal. Takvor’s club was struck from his hands. He sprang back and dashed down the street. The Kurd followed. A long-bearded, pious-looking Jew who had been watching them chuckled as the two figures were disappearing down the street, and then entering a vacant house, hurriedly filled the spacious pockets of his long black coat with whatever money and jewelry and silver he could find, locked the door88 and sealed it, and went away to seek other plunder.

The Kurd and Takvor raced toward the Golden Horn, one for vengeance, the other for life. In and out they went, through the crowds of Jews engaged in moving furniture from the houses of the Armenians. Only a few yards separated them. The Kurd seized a stone from the pavement and hurled it at Takvor’s head, but missed him. Takvor rushed on. Unable to turn the sharp corner at the lower end of the street, he dashed through the narrow passage to the landing. The Kurd had been steadily gaining on him, and now seemed to have him in his grasp; for the water of the Golden Horn cut off escape in that direction. A kaiyik which had brought the savages from Stamboul was just ahead.

If Takvor could but reach its oars, there might yet be a chance to escape. He sprang for them. The boat, struck by his full weight, broke loose from its mooring and darted forward. The Kurd gave a leap. The kaiyik was so far from the shore that he missed it; but89 as he plunged beneath the water, he caught the dragging rope. Takvor seized an oar and brought its blade down on the cropped head of the Kurd the moment he appeared on the surface. A Turkish soldier in his sentry box stood silently watching the fight; he raised his rifle and aimed at Takvor; then slyly glancing about to satisfy himself that there was nobody to inform on him for neglect of duty, he lowered his gun and resumed his beat.

Takvor fastened the oars to the locks and pulled out to the middle of the stream. There were yet two hours before sunrise; until then he was safe in the kaiyik; but what then? His distracted mind refused to act, save to rehearse the scenes he had just gone through. When he became calmer, he realized where he was, and felt the hopelessness of his position; he was now an orphan, and homeless, pursued by the very government which should have protected him. When daylight came, his sorrows might soon be ended forever; but if not, what could he do? or where could he go? Possibly for a time he might hide in the mountains, or in some90 village in the interior. The quiet Ak Hissar and the face of his little Armenouhi arose before him. He instinctively put his hand to his pocket, and found the purse which Taviloudes had left there. Its discovery decided him; he would remain in the kaiyik until daylight, and then row to Haidar Pasha for the early train. He had no passport, but in some way he might manage to elude the officials; if not, he might bribe them. He allowed his boat to drift, seeing ever before him the picture of his parents lying in the street. Could he leave them unburied, to be thrown into a pit, or into the sea? The rattling sound of a cart, borne across the water by the quiet morning air, suggested that already they might have been taken away. Once again an almost irresistible desire to look upon the face of his mother seized him. Then the vision of Armenouhi pleaded with him to go to her. The appeal was so real that he caught up the oars and headed the boat downstream.

Now that he was beyond the reach of voices from Hasskeui, he took one last look at the91 village. In the east, above the hill, the first rays of light were appearing; and there on the horizon, silhouetted against the morning sky, were hundreds of moving figures. It was the Armenians who had fled from their houses, surrounded by their pursuers and falling beneath their blows. To shut out the horrible sight, he fixed his eyes on the bottom of the kaiyik and pulled vigorously at the oars.

Half an hour later he passed beneath the Galata bridge and around Seraglio Point, into the Marmora. At sunrise he left the kaiyik at Haidar Pasha, and started toward the station. Groups of Kurds were sitting idly here and there, and soldiers impatiently walked about the street. His first thought was to return to the kaiyik, and row far out into the Marmora, when a horse and rider dashed round the corner of the street and stopped.

“I will shoot the first person who touches an Armenian,” shouted the horseman, who was Fuad Pasha, the military governor of Haidar Pasha.

By his prompt, bold action, he saved the92 lives of thousands of people who lived on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. Poor Fuad! he paid dearly for thwarting the will of his imperial master. His military rank was taken from him; his property was confiscated; he was arrested as a traitor, exiled, and put to torture. A few years later he died in a military prison in Damascus. The name of Fuad, Turk and Moslem, should be enrolled among the martyrs.

Takvor’s courage revived and he again started for the station.

CHAPTER XV
MARKET DAY

IT was midsummer market day at Ak Hissar. Temporary booths were erected along the street, and awnings of coarse sacking were stretched from roof to roof to protect the people and their wares from the scorching rays of the sun. Peasants from the neighboring villages came trooping in; some carried their marketable possessions in little packs balanced on their heads or their shoulders; others, more thrifty, followed their heavily laden donkeys, and if fortunate enough to own a horse, perched on the high packsaddle between the well-filled baskets. The wealthier peasant pulled his unwieldy buffaloes along by a rope attached to the nose, while the cart wheels, which were merely circular blocks sawed from the trunk of an ancient oak, groaned beneath the weight of luscious melons and plump white-gowned females94 of the harem. The peasants, all turning merchants for the day, spread out their goods, each in the place that his forefathers had occupied from time immemorial. What quantities of melons, onions, garlic, long squashes sold by the cubit, delicious white grapes, the first figs of the season, dried mulberries, eggplants, cherries, shucked walnuts, curded buffalo’s milk, and other delicacies familiar to the Anatolian! The old junk dealer arranged artistically his stock of rusty nails, pewter forks, padlocks, hinges, and old clock wheels. The grocer displayed before his shop a box of dirty rock salt, and a few glass jars half filled with lump sugar, Turkish delight, and cigarette papers. Suspended from the roof of the saddler’s booth were rope halters, strings of blue glass beads for the buffaloes, and bunches of evil eyes, which were good to bind about the necks of children as a preventive of accident or disease. The money changer, the successor of Badiark, had arranged his piles of silver coins to tempt the people to buy or to borrow. And Dicran, removing the95 wooden shutters from his shop, spread out his gaudy English prints.

The peasants had turned out in large numbers. Although the Lazis from the hamlet over on the mountain side had nothing to sell nor money with which to buy, they were there in a body, and the chaoush, or corporal, with his four soldiers of the military patrol had abandoned the long, lonesome beat over the country roads, to join the crowd for a holiday.

By nine o’clock business was at its height. The dispenser of drinks was winding his way through the crowd, shrilly crying, to the accompaniment of his clanking glasses, “Limonata sowuk, chok sowuk, buz gibi! lemonade, cold, very cold, like ice!” although for an hour the sun had been pouring its rays into his unprotected can. The butcher stood before the suspended leg of mutton, and with a horse’s tail mounted on a stick brushed away the clouds of flies. The baker balancing a large wooden tray on his head, and carrying a tall tripod with which to erect a temporary stand, was crying “Semit!” to tempt the hungry to buy his hoop-shaped96 bread. The vender of ices, with buckets of cherry and cream suspended from a pole swung over his shoulder, was drawling out his nasal “Dondurma!” and the little children, begging their closely veiled mammas for ten paras, looked longingly at the cold sweets. The barber had placed his chair in the middle of the street, and was thumping his copper basin to remind the people that their hair was long, or that they needed a shave. A Jew, a stranger to the village, went round chanting in a nasal, singsong tone the virtues of his cheap Manchester prints, which he called “Americani.” At the lower end of the street were the two village musicians, one improvising weird minor strains on a crude clarionet, the other beating time on terra cotta pompoms, while in a circle about them were soldiers, who, with guns raised above their heads, were performing the peculiar Oriental dance that to the European seems a series of contortions without rhyme or reason.

The old Armenian women went from booth to booth, poking their long bony fingers into the fruit, complaining that it was unripe, or97 sour, or too dear, and bought nothing. The swarthy Armenian girls, clad in their bright-colored baggy trousers, or skirts gathered about the ankles, and decked with all the family jewelry, walked back and forth, making eyes at the young men, or stopping for a moment to talk and titter. Everywhere little groups of fat Turkish women were squatting on the ground, peeking out through the openings of their veils, and whispering secrets to each other.

It was the first time since she had been away to school, that Armenouhi was spending her vacation at home; for the unscrupulous Hassan Bey had married a Turkish girl, and from him no more trouble was anticipated. When she and her sister Vassinag wandered about the market, examining the goods which the peasants were offering for sale, the eyes of the marketers followed them, for of all the girls in the village they alone wore European dress. The rough soldiers stopped in the midst of their dance to stare; the Lazis, to whom European clothes were strange, stood transfixed, as if gazing at an apparition from their celestial98 paradise; the girls from the other villages turned and looked with envy; and the gossiping women, nudging each other, whispered that Hassan Bey could not be blamed for trying to win her even by force. The sisters stopped before their grandfather’s shop, and while pretending to admire the lack of skill with which he displayed his heterogeneous stock of axes, silks, and cigarettes, they were listening to one of his stories. Although the recital was intended to excite their laughter, Dicran himself was watching the changing expression on Armenouhi’s face. How like his own mother she was! Suddenly looking up, he met the staring gaze of a strange white-turbaned priest standing before his shop. The priest dropped his eyes in confusion and moved on to the group of dancing soldiers.

CHAPTER XVI
THE REWARD

THE angry words of a soldier suddenly rang through the market, and the music at the lower end of the street ceased. The people, attracted by the commotion, began to flock in that direction, for a fight was one of the features of market day. At a sign from the priest, the soldier raised his rifle and knocked down the Armenian with whom he was quarreling. The other soldiers immediately sprang to their feet; and the Lazis, taking from beneath their cloaks the long knotty clubs which they had secreted, crowded about as if to join the fray.

“Why are those mountaineers here in such numbers? and why are they armed?” whispered the terror-stricken people.

There was some comfort in the thought that the unusual number of soldiers in the village100 would afford some protection, should there be trouble, yet the alarm spread through the market. The lemonade man no longer clanked his glasses; the butcher forgot to switch the flies from his mutton; the unknown Jew ceased to chant the praises of his cheap “Americani” goods. The noisy bustle of the market suddenly became an intense silence; the blow that felled the Armenian was apparently the beginning of the rumored massacre. The excited Lazis stood for a moment watching the mollah; and at a motion of his hand they rushed at the crowd.

Beneath the floor of Dicran’s shop was a small cellar-like hole, to which a trap door gave access. It was so seldom used that few of the villagers knew of its existence. While the terrified people were trying to escape from the pursuing Lazis, Dicran hurriedly raised the door, lifted Armenouhi and Vassinag down, and then following with Vartan, fastened the door from below; he hoped they might remain concealed until the trouble was over. The101 shrieks and groans of the victims pierced their ears. Crouching in the far corner against the dirt wall, and trembling with fright, the girls threw their arms about each other, while the men stood ready to defy entrance, if they were discovered. They presently heard the heavy tread of soldiers on the boards above.

“And where is Dicran, chief of them all?” the priest demanded of the tax collector, who was close at his heels.

Hassan Bey, half dead with fright, fearing that some Laz would kill him for the Armenian that he was, and hoping to secure his own safety, was encouraging the massacre of his own people. He knew of the place beneath the floor, over which the mollah was at that moment standing, and he believed that Dicran was hiding there. He hesitated, but only for an instant. Had not old Dicran refused him Armenouhi? Was not vengeance sweet? and he pointed to the door beneath the priest’s feet.

“Leave him down there, and we’ll keep him for the last,” cried the priest, finding that the102 door was securely fastened; and to prevent escape, he stationed the chaoush and his four soldiers in the shop.

The mollah’s savage words alarmed the captives beneath. Vassinag fainted in Armenouhi’s arms; Vartan was dazed and silent, but the old man set his teeth with a firm resolve to sell his life as dearly as possible. They heard the sound of retreating steps, and the shuffling of the soldiers’ feet on the boards above their heads.

It would be distressing to describe half the horrors enacted in the village on that market day. Some of the Armenians escaped to the mountains. Others concealed themselves in their houses, and were dragged out and beaten to death before their wives and children. Others sought refuge in the church, hoping that the sanctity of the place might save them. A heavy blow against the door turned their hope to alarm. A second blow burst the door open, and in rushed the frenzied savages. It was but a moment’s work to thrust the old women103 and children into the street, and bid them be off, while the fairest of the young women were seized to become the slaves of the soldiers, a reward for their services. The church door was then closed and barred, imprisoning a score of defenseless men.

“Straw! Straw!” shouted the priest.

A dozen men, among them Hassan Bey, rushed to the neighboring stables, and in a moment returned with great bundles of it. They stuffed it into the openings beneath the building.

“Gaz!” again shouted the mollah, and three men who had anticipated the order came running from the grocer’s shop with large cans of Russian petroleum.

The oil was quickly poured over the combustible materials; the mollah took from his turban a box of matches, ignited one, and threw it into the straw. The flames darted upward and soon enveloped the building. The Moslem waited until he was satisfied that none within could be alive, and then slowly walked along the street to the old well on which the village104 depended for water; if the dead were to be buried, there was a grave already dug; and bidding the Turks collect the bodies, he watched them as they fell splashing into the water.

CHAPTER XVII
CAPTIVES

THE chaoush and his soldiers, still guarding the trap door beneath which Dicran and his family were imprisoned, had watched their companions burn the church, and disappointed at not having a part in it, gave expression to their discontent.

“Bring out the old man,” ordered the mollah, who had now joined them.

The chaoush looked at the soldiers; the soldiers looked at the crowd; the crowd looked at the priest. Nobody moved; for nobody cared to venture into the hole to grapple with Dicran. A grin spread over the faces of the crowd, and the chaoush, feeling himself to be the object of their ridicule, pried open the door, and with a revolver in his hand stepped down the ladder. When halfway to the bottom, a powerful hand suddenly tightened about his arm. He tried106 to shoot; but before he could aim, his revolver was wrenched away. Defenseless, he hurriedly scrambled out, to the amusement of the jeering crowd. Angered by the raillery, he seized his rifle and pointed it into the hole, ordering his soldiers to follow his example. They fired again and again in all directions until it seemed that nothing below could be alive. But Dicran, having foreseen what would happen, had placed the girls in the far corner, and partly protecting them with the empty boxes, he and Vartan stood before them. The chaoush, followed by his soldiers, again climbed into the hole. On the ground lay the bodies of the two men, while in the far corner, almost out of the range of the rifles, was the white dress of a woman. Striking a match to light up the darkness, the chaoush stood gazing at the upturned, beseeching eyes of Armenouhi holding her unconscious sister in her arms. The soldiers seized the wounded men, dragged them to the floor above, and then carried out the girls.

“Leave the old man till the last,” shouted107 the mollah, pushing Dicran into the corner, while the soldiers stretched Vartan on his back on the floor.

Armenouhi buried her face in her hands to shut out the sight, while the old man, bleeding profusely, sat in the corner, apparently unmoved. “Why should they torture a dead man?” he thought. Slowly his eyelids sank and closed; his head dropped to one side; he fell over face downward on the floor, and his arms were stretched out as if lifeless.

“Yallah! the old dog is dead,” cried the mollah, and gave Dicran a kick to verify his remark; not a muscle of the old man’s body moved; the disappointed mollah had uttered the very words of Dicran’s thought, for he left him lying where he was.

The sound of a whistle announced the approaching noon train from Constantinople. Takvor, the only passenger for Ak Hissar, was wondering what would happen when he should attempt to enter the village without a passport. He nodded to the German station agent, who seemed strangely excited, and then approached108 the gate, only to find the guard absent. Congratulating himself on passing so easily, he started for the town.

A thick volume of smoke was rising, and the houses seemed deserted. Turning into the street, he saw the charred timbers of the church. Then he caught sight of the bare-headed Dicran contending with a group of soldiers and felled to the ground. The soldiers were leading away two girls, one dressed in white, the other in black. He recognized them and sprang forward.

“Armenouhi! Armenouhi!” he shouted.

The chaoush lifted his rifle and brought it down on Takvor’s head. One blow was enough; then seizing Armenouhi by the arm, he dragged her on.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE CHAOUSH

THE four soldiers who were leading Armenouhi and Vassinag away were rough peasants from the distant interior. They were unable to see any refinement or delicacy in their captives; for them such things did not exist; and they were acting in obedience to the Prophet. What the great Padishah bade, or what the religion of the Prophet sanctioned, could be no crime. Moreover, woman had no soul; she was made for man; and what mattered it who the man might be? As for those giaours, those Christian women, who were not even worthy of being the slaves of the soulless Moslem wives, what difference did it make what became of them? The Koran and the state were indulgent; they placed no restraint on the passions of their subjects. Such would have been the soldiers’110 thoughts, if they had had any. But why should they think? The foolish Franks might do that; but for a good Moslem to think,—the Padishah forbade it.

The chaoush was of a somewhat better type of man than were his soldiers, for he came from an old family which could trace its history back to the conqueror Mohammed’s time, when Brusa was the Turkish capital. He began his active life in a regiment of the Imperial Guard at Yildiz. There he had an opportunity to see something outside the life of the ordinary Turkish soldier. Fridays, when the Sultan went to Selamlik, he had stolen glances at the distinguished foreigners and the beautiful women who were on the ambassadors’ stand. When on guard, he had often seen the ladies of the royal harem driving about the park; and sometimes, when their veils were thrown aside, he had glanced at their faces. Eight years in Constantinople had taught him to think. He envied the position and wealth of his superiors; he would compare the large houses on the Bosphorus with his own big ruin111 in Brusa; and he often dreamed of doing the Sultan some great favor, that with the baksheesh which he was sure to receive in return he might restore the old house, and, like his forefathers, live the life of an idle country pasha. But when his regiment was disbanded, he was as far from being a pasha as ever, and returned home almost penniless. Two objects militated against his life of ease and idleness,—his mother and his poverty; and forced by them both, he enlisted as a chaoush in command of the military patrol which guarded the country roads about Ak Hissar.

CHAPTER XIX
FOR THE PADISHAH

THE first glance at Armenouhi revealed to the chaoush her remarkable beauty. She was not so plump as most Turks wish their wives to be, yet there was something about her which reminded him of the wealthy Frank ladies and the wives of the Sultan’s harem. She was exceedingly pale; her cheeks were stained with tears; her hair, no longer held together, fell in profusion about her shoulders; and her dress was soiled; yet never had he imagined a dark-eyed houri of paradise half so beautiful. The great, blue eyes, which some called evil eyes, looked into his for just an instant when he lighted the match in the dark cellar; there was no trace of evil in them. Now they seemed to lack that deep expression, and were staring vacantly. What had the young man called her? Was it “Armenouhi?”113 He wondered if that could be her name. He spoke it aloud, and looked into her eyes to read the answer. Her head was drooping, her face half concealed by the flowing hair, and her eyes gave no response. Moved by pity, he brushed the hair from her forehead with his big rough hand, and while doing so, one of his soldiers made as if he would touch her.

“Leave her alone,” growled the chaoush, striking the uplifted hand.

A coarse grin spread over the faces of the soldiers. Then one of them pinched her arm.

“I tell you to leave her alone; she is mine,” roared the chaoush; and pointing to the one who had pinched her, he commanded him to bring a horse. He lifted Armenouhi to the saddle, sprang up behind, and hitting the horse with the butt of his gun, rode rapidly toward the mountain. Vassinag was left with the four brutal soldiers; her eyes closed, her head fell forward, and she slipped through the arms of her captors to the ground.

The chaoush had abandoned his post, but that114 mattered little; for in the general excitement he would hardly be missed. Moreover, his mind was too occupied to think of such a trivial matter, for visions of great wealth and royal favor were fast rising before him; and it seemed to him that at last he could restore the old home, and be a pasha, as his father had been. He would place Armenouhi in his house in Brusa, under the care of his mother, and at Beiram, when the Sultan added a wife to his harem, he would present her to him. The Padishah had great wealth, and for such a wife the reward could not be small. It would be well for the girl too, and at the thought a feeling somewhat akin to kindness possessed him. If she but knew that some day she was to be the wife of the great Padishah, how happy she would be! In his newly found hope he had already forgotten the scene of an hour before, and was unable to understand why his captive should lean so lifelessly upon him. He would not harm her, not even touch her, for she was reserved for the Padishah. He would speak comfortingly115 to her, and then she would be happy and talk to him.

“Armenouhi,” he began, as gently as his guttural voice would allow.

She seemed not to hear.

“Armenouhi,” he repeated, a little louder.

Still there was no response; and thinking that perhaps it was not her name, he again looked into her face.

“The little Armenian!” he mumbled half aloud. “No other name could suit her better,” and that he decided it should be.

“Armenouhi,” he repeated, “you are safe. Nobody shall harm you. You shall be the wife of the great Padishah, and live at Yildiz. You shall have silk dresses and diamonds; and slaves and carriages; and go to Selamlik; and some day perhaps you may be the Valide Sultana. You should be happy now, Armenouhi, for never again shall you live at Ak Hissar with dirty Armenians. I will take you to Yildiz, to the Padishah.”

For just an instant Armenouhi piteously116 raised her eyes to the soldier’s face; her lips moved as if she would speak, but no sound came. The horrors she had witnessed that day had robbed her of her speech. The chaoush could not understand her silence; for what Circassian or Albanian would not leap with joy at such a proposal? Disappointed, yet not discouraged, he redoubled his efforts to win her confidence, and stopping his horse by the wayside, he broke a leafy branch from an overhanging tree that he might protect her head from the scorching rays of the sun.

It was a journey of twenty-two hours from Ak Hissar to Brusa; but with two on the horse the chaoush did not hope to accomplish it in less than three days. It was late in the afternoon before they reached the spring on the summit of the mountain. He dismounted and looked into the valley from which they had ascended. A thin column of smoke was still curling up from the dying embers of the church. Before him, by the lake on the other side of the mountain, lay the little town of Isnik, two hours away. Not wishing to reach the village before117 dark, he led his horse into the shade of a large tree, beneath which was a spring bubbling up through the sand and rocks, and lifted Armenouhi from the saddle. She sank to the ground, burying her face in her hands. He stood for a moment looking at her, and then going to the spring, washed the old gourd which the shepherds used for a drinking cup, filled it with water, and carried it to her.

“Drink, Armenouhi; it will do you good.”

She remained silent and motionless. Again he offered her the gourd, but there was no response.

“Don’t be afraid, child; I would not harm you; and Yallah! if anybody so much as puts a finger on you, he shall take a short road to paradise.”

At this suggestion of kindness Armenouhi slightly raised her head, but immediately hid it as before. Encouraged by the movement, he drew a handkerchief from his belt, moistened it, and in his clumsy way bathed her forehead. Then for the first time he noticed how big and red were the stains on her white dress.118 He refilled the gourd and tried to wash them away. When his efforts only increased their size and ugliness, he ceased, and stood wondering where he could take her for the night. If they remained in the fields, they could probably escape observation, but the brigands who infested the region might steal her from him; besides, she was not a rough soldier like himself, who could sleep in the open. If he should seek protection in Isnik, he feared what the people might say of her helpless condition and of the traces of blood. Pulling off his coat, he wrapped it about her, but it scarcely concealed the half of her skirt. He recalled an old shepherd hut down on the slope of the mountain, where he might find something to cover her. With this new hope he again bathed her forehead, and lifting her to the saddle, started down the mountain.

“My sister has met with an accident,” he mumbled to the old woman he found spinning before the hut, “and I have nothing to protect her; can you not let me have something to wrap about her?”

119She had lived too long among brigands to express any astonishment at Armenouhi’s appearance. At the same time she would have refused his request if he had not been a chaoush. Groaning of her poverty, she hobbled into the hut and presently returned with a long black cloak, which she put about the girl. Without even a word of thanks, the chaoush rode on, leaving her staring after him, indignant at his ingratitude.

It was dark when the chaoush, with Armenouhi on the saddle before him, passed through the ancient, crumbling gateway of Isnik, and stopped before the door of the inn. To the innkeeper he explained that he was carrying a sick girl home to her mother in Brusa; and the one vacant chamber was placed at his disposal. He lifted Armenouhi from the horse, carried her upstairs, and laid her on the bed. He went and prepared hot milk and rice, and took them to her. Before he left her for the night, he removed the long black cloak, and again bathed her face. He then went out and closed the door, spread his coat for a bed in120 front of it, lay down, and was soon fast asleep.

At dawn he stood at the door and listened. No sound came from within. He knocked; but there was no answer. He opened the door and entered. Armenouhi was lying on the bed as he had left her the night before, and the food at her side was untasted. He spoke, but her half-opened eyes betrayed no consciousness of his presence.

“Why doesn’t she speak to me?” he mused, as he removed the untasted food and placed fresh coffee at her side.

Though she seemed unconscious, he urged her to drink, for soon they must continue their journey. Half an hour later, again finding her in the same position, he placed the coffee to her lips; she only raised her sad eyes, and left it untasted. Wrapping the cloak about her, he lifted her and carried her to the horse waiting below.

They passed the second night at an inn at Yeni Shehir; but Armenouhi took no food. It was only toward the evening of the third day, when she was cooling her head with water from121 a spring near Brusa, that she ate two of the grapes he had picked from a vineyard by the roadside. It was the first food she had tasted for sixty hours.

“That is right, Armenouhi,” he said kindly. “Eat more; for we have had a long ride to-day.”

Not yet had the chaoush heard his captive speak. Not one of his many questions had she answered; and only occasionally, when he brought her water or fruit, did she turn her eyes to him. The stories which he told her brought no smile, nor had she shed a tear since they left Ak Hissar.

Again it was dark when they climbed the narrow street in Brusa. Stopping before a large wooden house with latticed windows, he dismounted and knocked. The door was opened by a tall black eunuch, who lifted Armenouhi from the saddle and carried her within; the chaoush followed leading his horse.

CHAPTER XX
AS FROM THE DEAD

NOT for hours after Takvor fell beneath the blow of the chaoush’s gun did he feel returning consciousness. He tried to think where he was, but all was blank. Finally there appeared from the deep obscurity of his mind the childlike face of a little girl. He had seen the face before, but where? It slowly faded away, and in its place came the form of an old gray man. Then followed the sweet face of a little woman seated in a richly furnished room. The picture slowly transformed itself into a dingy prison cell. How familiar it seemed! Haggard faces peered at him from the semidarkness. What was that awful ringing in his ears, like the whirring of wings of myriads of swiftly flying birds? Finally he remembered that he had come to Ak Hissar. But where was he now?123 How his head throbbed and ached! He opened his eyes; save for a single dim star above him, darkness was everywhere. It was a peculiar position to be in, so doubled up, with one arm painfully bent beneath him. He raised the other arm, but it fell helplessly back against the damp stones which rose like a wall above him. He had been thrown into the well with the dead.

Shuddering at the discovery, he again looked up. The faint ray of light from a passing star, which just for an instant had been visible through a crack in the boards covering the well, had disappeared, and the darkness above was as dense as that about him. To extricate himself, he painfully drew his left arm from beneath his back; how numb it was! Then he discovered that his feet were bare; the shoes and the clothes that Taviloudes had given him were gone, and he was naked. He raised his hands and found he could touch the loose boards above him. Cautiously lifting one of them aside, he listened. Though convinced that no watchman was guarding the well, Takvor124 still listened long before placing the boards aside to climb out. No nightingale broke the stillness with its customary song; no cricket chirped; no breath of air rustled the leaves; not a light was visible; only the stench-laden smoke, as from a sacrificial altar of old, was rising from the embers of the church.

Presently he saw emerging from the darkness about Dicran’s house the form of a man. It approached the well, passing almost within arm’s reach. It was Hassan Bey. His first thought was to call to his old acquaintance for assistance. In a moment the tax collector, carrying a large bundle, disappeared in the darkness beyond. Again he listened, and as all was silent, he moved toward Dicran’s house.

Entering the door, he groped his way to the large hall which served as a living room. His bewildered mind seemed to recall that Dicran had fallen beneath the stone hurled by the Turkish soldier, and that the girls had been dragged away, but he thought the old servant might be in the house. At the hall door he paused.

125“Dede,” he said, instinctively using the name by which Armenouhi had always called the old man.

“Here, child,” faintly came a voice from a corner of the room.

Though Dicran was seriously injured, he had managed to creep to his house unobserved, and there he was lying, bleeding and helpless, when he recognized Takvor’s voice.

“Where are they?” asked Takvor, speaking the words which were uppermost in his mind.

“They have been taken away; the soldiers have taken them to the mountain,” groaned the old man. “Go, child; go and find them; go, go,” and frantic with grief and pain, he kept repeating the command.

“Yes, yes, Dede, but I must take care of you first.”

He groped about in the dark for a candle, lighted it, barred the door, and went to the corner where the old man was lying.

“What has happened to you, child? Where are your clothes?” asked Dicran, seeing by the126 dim light of the candle that Takvor was naked.

While relating his experiences of the day, Takvor was tending the old man. From a wound in the arm a little stream of blood was trickling down the dirt floor. He quickly bandaged it. Then bathing his face and hands, and dressing him in such clean clothes as he could find, he assisted him in crawling along the floor to his bed.

“Go now, and take care of yourself, child,” whispered Dicran.

Takvor washed away the stains that nearly covered him, and dressed himself in Dicran’s clothing.

“Take that bottle,” added the old man, turning his eyes to a niche in the wall.

Takvor first placed the bottle to the old man’s lips, and then put it in his pocket.

“Under the stone,” again came Dicran’s feeble voice.

He followed the direction of the old man’s eyes to a stone in the middle of the floor, projecting a little above the others. In the hole beneath he found an iron box, empty save for127 a few tattered papers and a broken padlock, with which it had once been fastened.

“What is it, Dede?” he asked.

“Take the money and go.”

“There is none,” he replied, again searching among the torn papers.

“He has taken that too,” mumbled Dicran to himself; then, after a moment’s reflection, he added, “Look beneath the box.”

Lifting the box from its hiding place, Takvor discovered beneath it another nearly concealed by the dirt. It contained money. He took two of the gold liras, extinguished the candle, and felt his way to the street.

CHAPTER XXI
VASSINAG

IT was now nearly midnight. Tired, faint, suffering, pursued like a criminal, Takvor paused outside the door to listen; then on that dark moonless night, he set out in search of the two girls, who, if not dead, might still be in the village, or already slaves in some inaccessible harem; or they might be miles away on the wild mountain side, in the stronghold of a brigand. His was no easy task. Not knowing which way to turn, he slowly approached the place where he had seen the soldiers leading the girls away; there again he stopped to think, but his memory could guide him no further. Dicran said the soldiers took them to the mountain, and he left the village by the road to Isnik.

He could hardly find the path before him. He was faint, almost too faint to walk, and the129 road was rough and full of holes. He stumbled and fell, but arose and dragged himself forward. Again he fell, and almost too weak to rise, he remained on the ground to rest and ease his aching head. Thinking that in an hour or two the moon would appear, he remained lying where he had fallen.

Suddenly he sat upright, greatly excited.

“What was that? Was it a cry of distress?” and he strained his ears to listen.

Again there came a sound like the moaning of a woman. With heart beating violently, he crept toward a distant cluster of bushes. He hesitated a moment, and then lighted a match; in its flare he saw the unconscious form of Vassinag. Raising her head, he wet her lips with the liquor he had brought. Thinking that Armenouhi must be near, he peered into the darkness for the white dress which he remembered she wore, but he could see nothing. He listened, but could hear nothing.

“Armenouhi! Armenouhi!” he called, but there was no response.

He crept about the bushes, feeling through130 the dark places, but he found nothing. Summoning all his strength, he took Vassinag on his back and started for the village, a quarter of a mile away. The limp form would have been a light burden for a well man, but for him, weak as he was, it was beyond his strength. Once he fell; several times he laid her down to rest; at last, thoroughly exhausted, he staggered into the room where Dicran lay, and placed her on the bed beside him. Neither he nor the old man spoke until he brought a candle to the bedside.

“Poor, poor girl!” sighed Dicran.

Takvor bathed her face and hands until she finally opened her eyes. When she came to herself, she began to weep as if her heart would break.

“Oh, why did you not let me die?” she cried. “Why did you find me?”

Dicran sought to divert her by inquiring for Armenouhi, and from her reply, broken by violent sobs, he gathered that the chaoush had ridden with her to the mountains.

CHAPTER XXII
THE ANSWERED PRAYER

TAKVOR left Dicran and Vassinag to care of each other, though both were helpless, and felt his way from the house to continue his search. Again he left the village by the road to Isnik. He passed the group of bushes where he had found Vassinag, and hastened up the mountain path, he hardly knew whither. Again and again he asked himself why the chaoush carried Armenouhi away on a horse, if he did not intend to take her to a distance. Unable to answer, he hurried on as fast as his strength would allow him, constantly calling, “Armenouhi! Armenouhi!” and hearing only the echo of his own voice. Higher up the mountain the moon rose above the horizon, lighting his way. At the summit he stopped at the spring, and throwing himself down beside it, quenched his132 thirst. He lay down a moment to rest. His eyes closed, and he fell fast asleep.

The sun was already high in the sky when he was awakened by the bleating of sheep crowding about the spring. He inquired of the shepherd if a soldier with a girl riding a single horse had passed that way. The rough mountaineer, whose intelligence hardly equaled that of the sheep he was tending, merely shrugged his shoulders, and Takvor started down the southern slope of the mountain. He asked the same question of the shepherd’s wife, whom he saw at the hut, but to no purpose. Although she refused to give him information which might incriminate a soldier, she saw his need and brought him a dish of curdled milk. It was noon when he dragged himself into Isnik. To his inquiry if a mounted soldier had entered the village, the passing people gave a toss of the head and a cluck with the tongue, which was equivalent to a gruff and emphatic “No.” He loitered about the inns, sipping coffee and conversing with the idle Turks, hoping to obtain some clew. He wandered about the narrow133 streets, staring into the courtyards of the houses, but in vain. He crept into the dark recesses of the old walls,—walls built when Isnik was the ancient Nicaea,—for the chaoush might be hiding there. He entered beneath the great arches of the amphitheater, where in early days the wild beasts of the gladiatorial contests were confined, but he met with no success. The ruined church of Saint Sophia was the only spot in the village he had not searched. Entering the dismantled nave, and peering into its darkest corners, he saw nothing but a crippled Moslem beggar lying fast asleep.

In despair he sat down on a fallen marble column to collect himself. Night was approaching. In the solitude of the deepening twilight his thoughts, suggested by the ruins about him, ran over the historic associations of the ancient place. On the very spot where he was sitting, Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and the bishops of the Christian churches met in council and formulated the Nicaean Creed, which since that day has been repeated by millions of people. In that very134 building another council of the early church declared that the Holy Virgin interceded for mankind, and that her image should be worshipped. If the Holy Virgin listened to the petitions of suffering humanity, on what spot could he more fittingly seek for her mediation than in the church where her worship was sanctioned? Raising his eyes, he prayed Heaven to protect Armenouhi, and lead him to her; then he covered his face with his hands, and burst into passionate weeping. At last he returned to the inn and asked for a room; and climbing the rickety stairs, wearily threw himself on the bed.

Bright sunlight was streaming through his window when he awoke, but the despair of the previous night had not vanished with the darkness. He tried to collect his thoughts, and to form some plan for the day, but how hopeless it all seemed! The evidence that Armenouhi had been taken to Isnik was very slight, and after all he might be following the wrong trail. His eyes were suddenly attracted by the light from a small object in the bedclothes, and he135 reached out his hand to take it. How his heart beat! It was an enameled pin similar to one he had given Armenouhi. Leaping to his feet, he hurried down the rickety stairs to the landlord, and asked who had occupied the room the night before.

“What business is that of yours?” growled the surly Turk.

He ran to the stable, and calling the boy, held a large silver coin before his eyes.

“Tell me what I wish to know,” said Takvor, “and it is yours.”

“What do you want?” asked the boy, opening his eyes at the prospect of possessing the money.

“Who slept in my room night before last?”

“A Turkish girl.”

“How was she dressed?”

“In a black firadji.”

“Are you sure she wore a black firadji, and not a white one?”

“She wore a white dress beneath the black one. I saw it when the soldier lifted her from the horse.”

136“Did they come on one horse?”

“Yes.”

“Where did the soldier sleep?”

“At the head of the stairway, in the passage before the door.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I watched him.”

“Where was he going?”

“He said he was on his way to Brusa with his sister.”

“Which way did he take?”

“He went toward Yeni Shehir.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“By the beard of the Prophet, and now give me my money.”

Takvor had learned enough, and tossing him the silver piece, rushed to the innkeeper to order the fastest horse in the village. Encouraged by the hope of finding Armenouhi safe, he ate a hearty breakfast, sprang on the horse, and dashed through the western gate. At noon he was in Yeni Shehir; and to his inquiry if a chaoush and his sister had passed that way, he was told that they had started for Brusa early that137 morning. The moment the horse had finished its grain, he again hurried on to overtake them. He reached Brusa fully two hours after the chaoush had imprisoned Armenouhi in his harem.

CHAPTER XXIII
IN THE HAREM

THE traveler will wander far to find more beautiful scenery, quainter houses, stranger customs, and a more peculiar people than in the little city of Brusa, in the valley at the foot of the snow-capped Bithynian Olympus. He who has seen the spot, no longer wonders that Hannibal, the great Carthaginian, chose it as the place of his exile; or that Prusias made it the capital of his kingdom; or that the younger Pliny, its Roman governor, was inspired to write to his countrymen descriptions of its beauty. Indeed, says the Turk, Brusa has a mosque and a pleasant walk for every day of the year. First Pagan, then Christian, and now Mohammedan, it has had a checkered history. The Phrygians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Seljuks, the Crusaders, the hordes of Tamerlane, the Osmanli Turks,139 all have made it their field of battle; ruthless fires have devoured it; earthquakes have thrown it down and buried it. Yet it lives. The archæologist searches about its ancient Roman walls and citadel for inscriptions. The architect sketches its Byzantine churches. The pious Moslem makes pilgrimage there to pray at the tombs of the early sultans. The sick of all the empire seek health in its far-famed sulphur baths. And the ever-present tax collector haunts the thrifty peasant to extort from him the produce of his fertile fields.

The town stretches from the valley far up the mountain side, where the upper rows of houses, perched in almost inaccessible places, are reached by steps. Two torrents, rising in the heart of Olympus, have rent deep gorges on the mountain side, the wild shrubbery that fringes them half concealing the rushing, foaming water. Long rows of old Turkish houses, huge wooden structures, line the ravines. To the west of the town an underground mountain stream of boiling, sulphurous water breaks out here and there, sending volumes of steam high140 into the air, and emptying itself into the baths of the valley below.

The house which the chaoush called home, and to which he had taken Armenouhi, was halfway up the hillside overlooking the eastern slope of the mountain. It was a rambling affair of the old Turkish type, a huge square box with smaller boxes at its sides for wings. The first floor of the main part consisted of one large hall, with a stairway leading to the rooms above. At its two sides were doors opening into narrow passageways that led to the living rooms in the wings. In the days of its owner’s long-past prosperity, the part toward the mountain was the selamlik for the men; the lower wing was the haremlik. But the house, declining as it were from sympathy with the family’s departing fortunes, had become a ruin. The upper story was now abandoned, for the roof had fallen in. The selamlik would long ago have refused to stand, had it not been supported with great wooden props; the hall had been stripped of its divans; its windows were broken, and its present occupants were a few hens, the goat141 which supplied the family with milk, and the horse that carried the chaoush and Armenouhi. The haremlik, consisting of a few small rooms arranged along the passageway, was the only habitable part of the entire house. Here the family lived; it was now selamlik, haremlik, kitchen, pantry, workshop, all in one.

The occupants of the old house were as near collapse as the building itself. The head of the family was the mother, a corpulent old lady, who had been corpulent even in her earlier days. Her small eyes, half concealed by the greasy folds of skin encasing them, seemed to penetrate whatever came within their vision. What passed for a dress was once of a brilliant red, approximately matching her complexion. For the past few years, since her husband had been fortunate enough to be killed while smuggling tobacco, she had eked out a living for the family by weaving on a crude hand loom Turkish towels. She toiled from morning till night, for it was easier to go on with her labor than to rise from her stool; but while her hours of work were long, the two piasters a day that142 her industry brought her were scarcely sufficient for the barest necessaries of life; and so, to supplement her scanty earnings, she sold piece by piece the old embroideries, the jewels, and other family heirlooms of more prosperous days.

Shareef, the chaoush’s sister, was a round-faced, buxom girl of fifteen, who gave promise of rivaling her mother in the precious virtue of magnitude. Her pleasant, dimpled face reflected only a mind of ordinary intellect, her dark eyes not yet having acquired such penetrating sharpness. Her fresh, clear skin, clarified by a daily bath in the hot spring, betrayed a glow beneath that in time might develop into the brilliant red of her mother’s complexion. Her plump, soft hands were forbidden to be soiled by labor, and she spent her days hopefully waiting for the mothers of marriageable sons to inspect her charms and select her to grace the harem of some fortunate youth. Prospective mothers-in-law came, inspected, and for some inexplicable reason went; and still she was waiting for one whose insight would recognize in her the germ of the desirable qualities143 already developed in the person of her industrious mother.

A third member of the family was an aged female servant who had been connected with the house from time immemorial. Compared with her mistress in point of corpulence, she had gone to the other extreme. Beneath the white firadji that concealed her hairless head, two sharp eyes and an aquiline nose protruded as if keeping strict guard over the tightly closed, toothless mouth below. It was the servant’s duty to milk the goat, bring the water, cook the food over the coals in the brasier, and to attend to such other household duties as could not be left undone.

The remaining member of the family was a tall, slim, black eunuch, a relic of better days. Ali was his name. He had been stolen as a child from his African home among the jungles, and taken to Jedda. His cheeks were branded to designate him as a slave, and he was sent to the market to Stamboul, where, more than seventy years before, he had been purchased by the chaoush’s great grandfather at public auction,144 and brought home to guard his bride. This duty he had performed for four generations; and with his beardless, shiny face, more and more wrinkled and distorted as his age increased, and his high-pitched, squeaky voice, he was the pride of the family, and the envy of the neighbors.

The entrance of the eunuch with a woman in his arms, followed by the chaoush with a horse, occasioned no little excitement in the household. Shareef was the first to reach the scene; behind her hobbled the ancient servant; the mother, having finished the work of the day, and trying to summon sufficient strength to convey her enormous self to bed, laboriously arose and brought up the rear. The eunuch laid Armenouhi down on the ruin of the ancient divan, while the chaoush, leaving the horse to wander about the hall as it would, brought a candle from the harem.

“Look, Ana,” he said to his mother, holding the light to Armenouhi’s face.

“Oh! oh! How beautiful!” cried Shareef, clasping her hands. “Who is she?”

145The entire family bent over the prostrate figure of the girl, whose disarranged hair half concealed her pale, sad face.

“Oh, the sweet face!” again cried Shareef, with admiration; and brushing the hair from her forehead, she bent down and kissed her.

Armenouhi, perceiving kindness in the voice and the caress, opened her eyes.

“Her eyes are blue,” exclaimed Shareef, excitedly.

“She is a Frank girl,” interrupted her mother, fixing her gaze on her son and chiding him for the danger it brought the family. “We shall be arrested, and left to die in prison,” she cried, and begged him to take her immediately from the house.

“She is not a Frank girl, Ana,” replied the chaoush. “She is an Armenian. Her people have been killed, and I have saved her for the Sultan.”

The mother stood critically examining Armenouhi’s face, and the sidewise movement of her head indicated her full approval. The eunuch, who enjoyed an unusual reputation as146 a judge of beauty, felt her arm with an air of an expert, and his old eyes lighted up as he squeaked, “Pek guzel,” to add his approval to that of his mistress. In the meantime Shareef had drawn aside the black cloak, uncovering the stained white dress, and moved to pity, was gently stroking the girl’s forehead.

“Poor child!”

Armenouhi only opened her eyes.

“Why doesn’t she speak?” asked Shareef.

“She has not spoken since her father was killed,” replied the somewhat discouraged chaoush.

“She has been too much frightened,” squeaked the eunuch. “She will soon be all right.”

Shareef wished to take the entire care of her, in her own room. During the seven months before Beiram, she would teach her to forget her sorrows. With kind treatment, her speech would return, and she might even become a Moslem. To Shareef’s delight her brother made no objection, but charged the eunuch to be on the alert, threatening that if harm came147 to her, or if she escaped, his life would be the penalty. Helping her up from the divan, and placing her arm about her waist to support her, Shareef led her to the little front room at the far corner of the hall. The eunuch, elated that once again in his old age he had been entrusted with a fair young girl, bustled about with self-importance, heated for her bath a jug of sulphur water from the spring, and poured it into the large earthen basin. The bath finished, warm milk, grapes, and fresh figs were brought, and Armenouhi, urged to eat, tasted them. Apparently satisfied with his charge, the eunuch arranged the bed on the floor, and after carefully trying the strength of the iron grating at the window, withdrew from the room, and bolted the door. For more than an hour Shareef sat by Armenouhi’s side, stroking her head to induce sleep, and had nearly succeeded, when the clattering of hoofs was heard in the street. Takvor had arrived in Brusa. Armenouhi listened, for it seemed to her that the late rider might be more than a passing traveler.

CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE TRAIL

THOUGH failing to overtake the chaoush and his captive before they reached the city, Takvor lost no time in going from inn to inn to search for them; and it was late at night, when, completely exhausted, he left his horse in charge of the innkeeper, who was to return it to its owner in Isnik, and went to bed. The next morning he was again roaming about the streets, studying the rider of every passing horse, peering into the carriages, and staring rudely at the Turkish women. He was at the station when the daily train left for Mudanieh. He searched the bazaars where women congregated. And again he made the round of the inns. Thinking that possibly Armenouhi would be taken to the hot baths without the city, he spent the afternoon wandering up and down the road. Then in the149 evening he sat in the inns, seeking the acquaintance of every soldier who he thought might be the chaoush of Ak Hissar. The next day, the day after, and the day after that, he continued his search with an ever decreasing hope, yet with no thought of abandoning it. He loitered for hours in the streets before the latticed windows of the houses, thinking that if Armenouhi was behind one of them she might see him. A week passed, and in all the city there was not a street or an inn or a house that he had not examined. In his despair, he began to believe she had been taken farther away, and he would have returned to Ak Hissar to begin his search anew, had he not felt that his one clew would lead him back to Brusa.

Another week passed, and wearied with roaming about the streets, he seated himself in a conspicuous place at a popular café, to see and be seen, for he felt sure that sooner or later, if Armenouhi was in the city, she would pass that way, and if veiled beyond recognition, she would at least be able to recognize him. One morning, just as he was taking his customary seat, he150 saw a soldier leading Dicran’s old horse down the street. At least he thought it was Dicran’s horse. The soldier’s face seemed familiar, too, and he tried to recall when and where he had seen him. Could he be the chaoush who had struck him at Ak Hissar? Waiting until the soldier had passed, he followed him through the bazaars to the little open square that served as a horse market; the soldier had apparently come to seek a purchaser for the horse. The more Takvor looked at the animal, the more he was convinced of its identity; but to make sure, he approached and began to stroke the horse’s head; he then opened his mouth and found the broken tooth.

Without betraying the emotion which the discovery had caused him, he stood critically examining the animal, and then, as if not wishing to purchase, watched the soldier from the café on the opposite side of the square. The chaoush had not long to wait for a purchaser, for the four liras he asked was a small price. Wrapping the gold in his handkerchief, he started away, followed by Takvor, now151 through the bazaars, now up the street along the eastern ravine, to the big old rickety house in which Armenouhi was imprisoned. When the chaoush had disappeared within, Takvor seated himself on the edge of the ravine as if to watch the bounding water below.

CHAPTER XXV
BEHIND THE LATTICE

IT was late on the day after her arrival in Brusa when Armenouhi awoke from the long sleep into which she had fallen. Unable to understand where she was, or how she came there, she stared, bewildered, at Shareef, who was sitting at her side. For some time her eyes wandered about the room, until finally she recalled that she had been carried to Brusa. Her expression of perplexity suddenly turned to intense sorrow. The massacre, the torture of her father, the unexpected appearance of Takvor, and his fall beneath the chaoush’s gun, the three days’ journey over the mountain, the horrible, wrinkled face of the old eunuch, the thought of being a slave kept for the Sultan, that monster whom she had been taught to hate more than any other, all seemed like a horrible nightmare. To convince herself that she was not dreaming, she pressed the nails of her fingers153 into the palms of her clenched hands, and again she looked at the face of Shareef and at the grated window. Thus awaking from her long stupor to the realization of her misfortune, she buried her face in the pillow, and wept for the first time. Shareef tried to comfort her, but for such sorrow as hers there was no comfort. The eunuch, hearing a voice in the room, entered to examine his charge by daylight. His opinion, based on long experience with women, was that crying would do her good, and he left her to obtain whatever benefit she might derive from her tears. Shareef, however, tried to impress her captive companion with the thought that she was safe, bathed her forehead with cold water, stroked her hands, and brought coffee, fruit, and various dishes which the old servant tried to make tempting; but she met with little success. The next morning she placed her white dress before her, from which the stains had been washed, and sitting by her on the divan at the window, sought to bring to her the peace of mind that would restore her strength and voice.

154The time dragged slowly by. From morning till night Armenouhi reclined on the divan by the window, apparently listening to the small talk of the warm-hearted Shareef in a vain effort to drive from her memory the horrors of the past. Down beneath the bushes, in the ravine across the street were the rushing waters; how she longed to lie beneath them! Sometimes, under the observing eye of the eunuch, she was permitted in the hallway, where, on the floor with Shareef, she watched the shuttle of the loom traveling slowly back and forth, or listened to the droll stories of the old servant as she roasted the mutton on the brasier. Continuing speechless, and being an indifferent listener, she was more and more frequently left alone. Relieved by the quiet which the increasing absence of the simple Shareef brought her, she would sit on the divan, dreamily looking through the latticed window at the passing people. Early one morning while alone at the window, she noticed a man sitting by the edge of the ravine thoughtfully looking down into the water.155 Although she could see only his back, his figure seemed familiar, and she watched, hoping to catch sight of his face. Presently she saw the man turn as if to glance at the house. She no longer doubted. Trembling with emotion she pressed her face closer to the lattice.

“Takvor! Takvor!” she cried, unable to restrain herself.

Her speech, taken from her when she saw him fall beneath the soldier’s blow, had returned with his unexpected appearance. He sprang up and ran toward the house, unmindful of the danger to them both.

“Go back, quick!” and she calmly resumed her seat on the divan; the door opened, and the eunuch, who had heard the voice, entered, looked sharply at her, and started across the room to the window.

Armenouhi was trembling with excitement, and her face, which had been pale, was now flushed with mingled joy and fear. She knew that if the eunuch reached the window in time to discover Takvor, her newly found hope would156 be destroyed; and stepping boldly before him, she placed her hand on his arm, and looked smilingly up at the old wrinkled face.

“My voice has returned. Did you not hear me just now? I was trying to see how loud I could speak?”

The eunuch was satisfied with the explanation, and a feeble light of joy came to his old eyes; indeed, his young master was right; the fair young girl could not fail to restore the ruined fortunes of the family. It was evident that the suspicions of the eunuch, if any existed, were removed, for hurriedly leaving the room, he returned followed by Shareef, the old servant, and finally the mother, who had succeeded in rising from her stool at the loom. Shareef ran to Armenouhi, and throwing her arms about her neck, poured out a flood of questions.

“You must tell me just how you happened to find your voice. Could you feel it returning? What did you say first? Is it just the same as it was before? Now you will tell me all your troubles? Why don’t you speak?” Thus157 she went on without waiting for a reply, and at last turned to the eunuch to upbraid him for having deceived them.

“Give her a chance to speak,” squeaked the eunuch, at the first pause in her abuse; “give her a chance, and she will speak.”

Had the chaoush been present at that moment, his hope of a generous reward for presenting Armenouhi at Yildiz would have been prodigiously strengthened. Her face was lighted with joy; her eyes had suddenly become wonderfully bright; and like the brave little woman she was, she endeavored to appear in full sympathy with their wishes, for thus she could best play her part in the rescue.

“Do you know what I should like to say first?” she asked.

“O, she can really speak,” exclaimed Shareef, in her excitement, pouring out another flood of questions. “What is it? What would you say?”

“I was wishing that you would take me to the bath; for then I might become stronger.”

158The openness of her manner concealed her motive, and it carried the conviction that she was in full accord with the chaoush’s plan.

“You dear child, of course you shall go.”

It was immediately arranged that on the next day they should all go to the bath.

CHAPTER XXVI
IN DISGUISE

THE sudden disappearance of the white figure that for an instant had been visible behind the lattice, and the quickly uttered words bidding him go back, were sufficient warning to Takvor. Almost overcome with joy, he hurried down the street, keeping close to the wall. Having gone some distance, from where, unobserved, he might see all who entered or left the house, he stopped and forced himself to sit down and wait. He had discovered Armenouhi, but could scarcely convince himself that he was not dreaming. Still it was true; there stood the big, old house, just the kind in which he should expect to find her, and the sound of her voice was ringing in his ears. Her rescue was now but a matter of time, for sooner or later the means of escape would be found. But his excessive joy was abruptly160 terminated by the torturing questions that began to rack his brain. For more than an hour he sat watching the house; and when nobody appeared, he slowly walked past the window, but heard no sound. The whole afternoon the old house seemed deserted; only once, just at nightfall, was the door opened, and the old servant, hobbling with her stick, crossed the street to the goat which was tethered there. Unable to remain after dark without exciting the suspicion of the watchman, Takvor returned to the inn for the night.

In the doorway was the innkeeper, a good-natured, sympathetic Greek, to whom Takvor had confided his troubles. He noticed Takvor’s hurrying steps, and the changed expression on his face, and he heard with delight the result of the day’s search. Late that night they were awake planning the rescue. They agreed that to use force, or to appeal to the authorities, would surely result in failure; and they decided that the wisest course was to watch the house, cultivate the friendship of its occupants, if possible, and then at some unguarded moment steal161 Armenouhi away. It was the time of the year when the Turkish women, so completely concealed by their veils that even their own husbands often failed to recognize them, delighted to pass their leisure hours, singly or in groups, in some shady spot outdoors. The edge of the ravine, cooled by the rushing water below, was one of their favorite haunts; for there they might sit unobserved from morning to night. It was the innkeeper’s suggestion that Takvor, dressed as a female, should sit before the chaoush’s house, to find some way to communicate with Armenouhi. The innkeeper’s wife provided the necessary clothing, and carefully drilled him in the manners of an old Turkish woman.

The next morning a slightly built female figure, piously veiled, and leaning on a long stick, slowly shuffled up the street, and sat down in a shady nook by the ravine, not ten yards from Armenouhi’s window. The high-pitched voice of a eunuch could be distinctly heard within, interrupted occasionally by lower softer tones that were lost in the sound of the tumbling waters.

162Early in the forenoon the old servant led out the goat to graze along the ravine. A little later the chaoush went down the street, and soon returned, driving a covered carriage. He stopped before the door and called to the eunuch, who soon appeared, followed by three women. The plump Shareef was there, with face but partly covered. The second, a slight, graceful form, but completely concealed beneath a heavy black firadji, seemed to be Armenouhi. The one with head wrapped in a white yashmak was the ancient servant. They climbed into the carriage, and the chaoush drove them slowly over the rough stones down the hill. When they were disappearing round the corner, the bent figure rose and shuffled down the street as fast as an old Turkish lady could travel, yet always keeping the carriage in sight. It soon became evident where they were going, yet the figure followed. Half the afternoon the old woman spent by the roadside near the bath, and then followed the carriage back to the house. At sunset she shuffled down the street and was lost to view.

163Early the next morning, Takvor, for it was he, was again at his post, and again he heard the voices within, one chatting merrily, the other responding cheerfully. Toward noon the voices ceased; evidently Armenouhi was alone, and he watched eagerly for the white form behind the lattice. Presently, when he thought somebody was approaching the window, he turned toward it, and with a pious ejaculation suddenly removed the veil as if to rearrange it. The form within moved still closer to the lattice. Again he lifted the veil, and slowly allowed it to fall back to its place. Almost instantly he heard a low soft voice singing a familiar air.

“Takvor, is it you? Is it you, Takvor?” were the words fitted to the melody.

Again uncovering his face, and leaving it exposed somewhat longer than before, he was bending forward to indicate that he had understood, when the song was interrupted by another voice.

“I was singing,” Armenouhi explained, in answer to the almost unintelligible squeak of164 the eunuch. “Surely you cannot forbid that.”

“No, child, sing all you please.”

Takvor sat looking down through the bushes to the water. Presently he again heard the low singing.

“Be careful, be careful, for I am closely guarded.”

But before he had time to indicate that he had understood, he heard Shareef’s voice. Satisfied with his morning’s work, for the ability to communicate with Armenouhi was another step toward her rescue, he returned to the inn to rest. Later in the day when he was again in his customary place, he heard Armenouhi’s voice singing so softly that the words were hardly audible.

“Is it you, Takvor?”

He swayed forward in reply.

“You must be very careful, and come only in the afternoon, when I am sometimes left alone.”

Thus, as the song continued, Takvor learned the purpose for which the chaoush detained her. She was already trying to persuade her captor165 to permit her to sit by the ravine, and perhaps in time, when she had greater freedom, she could escape. The singing, which had continued for some time, once more apparently aroused the eunuch’s suspicions, for he again entered Armenouhi’s room, this time with his master.

“Let her sing as much as she likes,” said a deep voice, which Takvor recognized as belonging to the chaoush; “it shows that she is happy.”

“She sings in Armenian,” piped the eunuch; “and who can tell what she says?”

“Then let her sing in Turkish.”

“It shall be only in Turkish,” assented Armenouhi; “or if you wish, I will not sing at all.”

Takvor had already learned what he most desired. If Armenouhi was destined for the royal harem, her person was sacred; her care and food were the best the chaoush could afford, and would remain the best until she was taken to Yildiz, or the soldier changed the purpose for which he intended her. The day had brought166 him success, and at the sound of Shareef’s voice in the room, he rose and hobbled down the hill to share his joy with the innkeeper.

Following Armenouhi’s instruction, Takvor did not appear about the house during the morning, but spent the time in making inquiries about the soldier and his family. In the afternoon he was again at the ravine, waiting for a sign of recognition. He waited in vain. The sun set; the old servant led the goat into the house; the little groups of Turkish women were leaving the hill; and Armenouhi had not appeared. At last he thought he saw a form behind the lattice, and presently his ear caught the humming of a Turkish air. It gradually grew louder, until he could distinguish the words of the familiar proverb, “Patience is the key of joy.” He was now assured of her safety, and he returned to the inn.

The following afternoon the continual stream of talk coming from the window informed him that Armenouhi was still there. He made no effort to attract her attention, and was sitting looking into the ravine when the door opened167 and the chaoush, followed by a closely veiled figure and the plump Shareef, crossed the road, and sat down almost at his side. Not a sign of recognition passed between them. “To-morrow,” thought Takvor, “she may be left for a moment unguarded, when I can speak to her; and then very soon may come the opportunity to carry her away.” All that afternoon until sunset he did not move, fearing that his manner might arouse suspicion; and it was only after the chaoush had taken Armenouhi into the house, that he returned to his lodging.

CHAPTER XXVII
FIRE

IN most Turkish towns August is called the month of fires, for it is the time of the eggplant, a dish perhaps more delicious to the Turkish palate than any other. The vegetables, cut into long thin slices, and rolled in flour, are fried in mutton fat over a charcoal brazier. The Turkish cook is often careless; the frying pan tips over, and the mutton fat, falling on the live coals, ignites; in his effort to extinguish the flames, the cook upsets the brazier; the streams of the burning liquid run over the floor, and into the cracks between the boards; and almost before you can realize what has happened, the little room is a mass of flames. Long before the firemen come to the rescue, the dry wooden house has become a heap of ashes.

Soon after dark Takvor bade the innkeeper good night and was mounting the stairs to his169 chamber when he heard the resonant thump of the watchman’s club on the pavement.

“Yangin var-r-r-r-!” the wild, jackal-like howl, or cry of fire, rang out through the night, and soon the report of guns, and the tread of feet hurrying over the paved street, gave promise of unusual excitement.

“Somebody has been frying eggplant,” thought Takvor, looking from the window of his room to discover whether he was near the fire.

From a house at the foot of the eastern ravine the flames were already darting high into the air, lighting up the darkness. A strong north wind, blowing toward the mountain, carried the sparks along the street and scattered them here and there as if to spread their destructive work. The wailing cry of the watchman was taken up by dozens of others throughout the city; and although the shooting of guns increased, the roaring and crackling of the flames deadened all other sounds. In the street before the inn a crowd of half-naked, shouting firemen, with a useless pump on their170 shoulders, were rushing on at a mad pace, to be the first to plunder, rather than to save, the burning house; and following them, crowds of people were hastening toward the ravine. Within fifteen minutes of the first cry of the watchman half a dozen houses had caught; and the fire, rapidly getting beyond control, swept up the hill.

The magnificent spectacle, the ruined homes, the sufferings of the people, the probable loss of life, scarcely moved Takvor, as he stood at the window within sight of the darting flames; his eyes were directed to the darkness beyond. If the fire extended far up the ravine, to the big old house, what would become of his little Armenouhi, who was confined behind barred window and bolted door? Would her keepers in their excitement forget her? Or if the fire did not reach so far, might there not be an opportunity to steal her away? Rushing down the stairs, and taking the friendly innkeeper by the arm, he pulled him into the street, and together they made their way through the crowd to the ravine. About the burning houses171 women and children were screaming hysterically. Vicious-looking men, whose lack of clothing marked them as firemen, were rushing about, not with what they had saved, but with what they had stolen, while others had succeeded in throwing on the flames a stream of water so small that its effect was hardly noticeable. Higher up the hill another group of firemen were tearing down a building to check the progress of the conflagration, but already the flames had leaped over the space which they were making vacant, and had caught the house above. Before the threatened building a third group of firemen stood bargaining with its owner for the price he should pay them for saving his property, and demanding the money in advance. All along the ravine the men were hurriedly stacking their furniture in the street, while the women were guarding it.

Takvor and the innkeeper hurried on through the crowd and up the hill to the chaoush’s big house, whose great bare wall was already reflecting the light of the fire below. In the street before the door were gathered the entire172 family, anxiously watching the sparks that had begun to fall through the broken roof. There was no longer a doubt that the old house must go with the others, and following the example of his neighbors, the chaoush began to bring the scanty belongings of the family and put them in the street. As the fire came nearer, the crowd about the house increased so rapidly that Takvor, unnoticed, approached the latticed window. He could neither see nor hear Armenouhi. He thought of calling to her, but fearing to attract the attention of the watchful eunuch, he remained with his eyes fixed on the lattice. The fire came nearer and nearer, and now the house next below was ablaze. The chaoush, redoubling his efforts to save his few remaining possessions, filled his arms with old furniture and hurried with it to the women; and when suddenly from the fallen roof of the main building a flame shot high into the air, he rushed in for his last load. Now that the house was on fire, everything remaining within became the lawful plunder of the firemen, who ran inside, followed by Takvor and the Greek. Takvor173 and his friend paused a moment in the great hall to locate the part of the house where Armenouhi was confined, and were about to make their way to the door of the harem, when they were met by the chaoush, leading the closely veiled figure of a woman.

Unobserved in the crowd and semidarkness, they turned and followed the soldier and his companion to the street. To their surprise, instead of taking Armenouhi to the other women of the household, the chaoush led her up the hill to the first cross street, and there turning to the right, left the burning district. Still unobserved, they followed him through the less frequented and darker streets to the western side of the city. Here the chaoush turned with his captive into a narrow dark lane, apparently nearing the end of his journey, when Takvor, quickening his pace, stepped silently behind him, raised his heavy walking stick, and felled him with a single blow.

“Armenouhi!” he cried.

Frightened almost to death, but restored by the sound of Takvor’s voice, she sprang to him174 and threw herself into his arms. Releasing himself, but keeping his arm about her, he led her down the less frequented streets to the inn, while his friend remained at the street corner to make sure that the fallen chaoush did not regain consciousness until they were well on their way.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE DERVISHES

SAFE within the inn, Takvor led Armenouhi to his own room, and placed her on the divan by the window. Without a word he lighted a candle, and holding it close to her face, looked anxiously into it to read the effects of her captivity. She was pale, and her cheeks were thinner than when he last saw her, more than two years before; her eyes lacked their usual luster, but never were they so mild and so deep; her lips bore an expression which he had never seen on them before, the expression of sweetness and sorrow that comes from deep grief silently and patiently borne. But now she smiled, and tears came to Takvor’s eyes.

“My poor, poor, little Armenouhi!” and he gently stroked her face. He drew her to him, and her arms found their way about his neck.

176Half an hour later the innkeeper knocked at the door, to announce, he said, that if Takvor would bring the young lady below, his wife would prepare her some tea and give her a room next to her own, where she would be comfortable.

There was little sleep for Takvor. Happy because Armenouhi had been unexpectedly rescued, yet overwhelmed by the difficulties that still lay in his path, he tossed all night long. Of the two liras from Dicran’s iron box, only one remained, and it would hardly suffice to pay what he owed at the inn. He had come to Brusa without a passport, a thing quite impossible except at a time of unusual excitement, when a solitary traveler would not attract the attention of the officials. The country was again at rest, and should he even apply for a pass, he would be imprisoned. Forbidden by law to go by rail or by carriage, or even afoot, threatened at every moment with arrest or death, to save the innocent girl whom he loved, he must travel with her more than sixty miles through a country swarming with soldiers and177 legalized brigands. All this would drive sleep from more tired eyes than his. Great as his difficulties were, they were much magnified by the long, dark hours of the night; and when for a moment he drove them from him and fell into a doze, they towered above him like some monster, and forced themselves upon him. At the first approach of dawn he dressed and went below to lighten his troubles by imparting them to his Greek friend.

He was discussing with the innkeeper and his wife how the journey to Ak Hissar might best be made, when Armenouhi appeared and sat down at his side on the divan. While she was drinking her coffee, and listening eagerly to the conversation of which she was the principal subject, there suddenly came from the street a loud, nasal drawl, begging alms in the name of Allah. Staring through the windows was a wandering dervish. His dark face was nearly concealed by a heavy, black, shiny beard, and his matted hair reached below his shoulders. His clothes were patches roughly stitched together, while his shoes were but rags wound178 about his feet. A bag was strung to his shoulder. In his hand he carried an axe. And about his neck was suspended a long string of beads representing the nine and ninety names of Allah.

“Can’t we be dervishes?” suggested Armenouhi.

“Does a dervish have big blue eyes, and a fair soft skin?” smiled the innkeeper’s wife.

“Blue eyes can be closed, and fair skin can be colored,” came the quiet but assuring answer.

The two men looked inquiringly at each other, and the innkeeper nodded his head in approval, taking a silver piaster from his pocket to throw to the beggar.

“We will be dervishes, Armenouhi,” said Takvor; “it will be safest for both of us.”

Of all the peculiar peoples of the Mohammedan world, the loathsome, fanatical, and oftentimes hypocritical and vicious dervish enjoys the greatest freedom. To whatever order he belongs, he may wander at will. His real or pretended piety, his implements of torture,179 his beads, his long prayers in public, his pious ejaculations, his blessings for those who give him alms, and curses for those who refuse,—these are his passport, and he requires no other. Hair filled with vermin, filthy skin, rags scarcely sufficient to cover him, exposure to heat and cold, self-torture for Allah’s sake, long wanderings across burning deserts and through dangerous mountain passes,—why, or whence, or whither, nobody knows,—these are his virtues. Among robbers and brigands he is safe, for he has nothing worth stealing, not even himself, since nobody would pay the ransom. No soldier will arrest or harm this favorite of Allah, suffering as he does for the world, and in return the world owes him a living.

Takvor and Armenouhi were to return to Ak Hissar as dervishes, as two homeless wandering men, for no dervish ever traveled with a woman. The innkeeper went busily searching for the proper dress. Takvor squeezed the juice from green walnut shucks and painted Armenouhi’s face and hands; and then she painted his, imparting to them the dark tan180 which is evidence of long exposure to the scorching sun.

Armenouhi chose for herself an Arab costume. Her long, greenish, dirt-colored tunic reached to the ground and entirely concealed her form. Through the ragged openings of her outer dress could be seen the equally ragged trousers clinging tightly to her ankles and extending into her worn-out shoes, which were far too large for her little feet. Her hair, fastened securely on the top of her head, was concealed by a large white cloth that fell about her shoulders and gave her half-hidden face the appearance of a fine-featured Arab boy. Only her eyes betrayed her; but to show what a perfect dervish she could be, she closed them, and taking Takvor’s hand, blindly followed him about the room.

Takvor’s costume resembled hers, save for the yards and yards of faded green cloth wound about his head, the evidence of frequent pilgrimages to Mecca, or of lineal descent from the Prophet; and these suggestions of extreme piety were emphasized by a string of enormous181 beads and a long staff reaching above his head.

The innkeeper and his wife pronounced their disguise perfect, for everything in their appearance seemed to indicate that they had descended from an ancient dervish family.

CHAPTER XXIX
THE WANDERERS

DAYBREAK saw our pretended dervishes ready for their difficult journey. The bag suspended from Takvor’s shoulder was well filled with provisions,—pious offerings to Allah’s children, so the innkeeper’s wife said. Takvor offered his friend his one remaining lira.

“Keep it until we are in trouble,” was the hearty reply. “You may need it on the way.”

The innkeeper’s wife kissed Armenouhi on her dark-stained cheeks, while Takvor extended his hand to her husband.

“Not yet,” said the Greek, with a smile; “I am going too;” and leading them to the window, he pointed to a carriage waiting in the street.

When it was once decided that the young people should travel as dervishes, he had gone183 and obtained a passport, as any Greek might do, to visit Ak Hissar on business. Thus he planned to carry them the entire distance, excepting past the guardhouses and through the villages where the passport might be demanded; there they would be obliged to walk. They were to start afoot, and he would follow, overtaking them when they had passed the last guardhouse of the city. Again saying goodby to the innkeeper’s wife, Takvor took the hand of the blind Armenouhi and led her through the doorway to the street.

Of the few people who were astir in the early morning none seemed to bestow on them other attention than the look of pity. The soldier on duty at the first guardhouse merely glanced at them. A porter leaning against the wall eating his breakfast of stale bread, moved by their wretched appearance, or attracted by the great green turban, broke his loaf in two, and gave them the larger part.

“Here, pilgrim, here is half my breakfast for you.”

Takvor mumbled an Arabic blessing that he184 had learned from his Moslem playmates of earlier days, and taking the bread, put it into his bag. When they were leaving the town, the rattling of wheels caught their attention, and they glanced back to see if the innkeeper was coming. A carriage was visible in the distance; but far in advance of it was a man in soldier’s uniform, now rapidly nearing them. Armenouhi’s hand began to tremble, and on her dark-stained face was an expression of fear. Again looking back to learn the cause of her agitation Takvor recognized the approaching soldier as the chaoush. They hesitated a moment, undecided whether to stand their ground, or to attempt to escape by flight. Even were a hiding place at hand, he had already seen them, and could trace them to it. To stand and fight meant an unequal struggle, for a weaponless boy was no match for an armed soldier. Takvor held Armenouhi’s hand still tighter, and slowly led her on.

“Be blind,” he whispered; “and be deaf and dumb if he speaks.”

Trembling violently she hung back, and185 closed her eyes as if to shut from her vision all that she feared might follow. Takvor grasped his long stick in preparation for an attack, and led her to the roadside, where beggars were wont to stand when their superiors passed. Without a word, without even glancing at the ragged creatures who were paying him homage, the scowling chaoush hurriedly strode on. Still trembling with fear, they remained on the roadside and watched the soldier’s rapidly disappearing form, until the cracking of a whip and the rattling wheels of a carriage announced the approach of the innkeeper.

“Hey, dervishes,” cried the good-natured Greek, stopping his horse; “let me help you on your way.”

The two frightened wanderers climbed into the carriage.

Six times that day the dervishes alighted to walk past a guardhouse, and six times was their friend required to present his passport, while they went by unnoticed. One guard, perhaps because he was stationed in a lonely place, rather than because he was moved by charity, invited186 them to share the rice which he was preparing. Takvor muttered a blessing, adding that such food was not for poor dervishes like them, and led Armenouhi on. When they neared Yeni Shehir, the sun had already set, and again alighting for the last time that day, they slowly entered the village.

Following the instructions of the Greek, who had gone ahead, they walked along the street until they came to the inn where their friend was standing in the doorway. Without a sign of recognition they passed within to beg a night’s lodging. A buxom Greek woman, to whom the innkeeper had explained their coming, received them kindly, and led them to an inner apartment. When Armenouhi removed her headdress, she presented a most incongruous picture. The rich hair, knotted on the top of her head, the gentle blue eyes, and the delicate features contrasting with the dark-stained skin and ragged costume, caused the hostess to burst into laughter. The day had been so successful, and their reception had inspired such a feeling of security, that the laugh became contagious.187 And while the little party was gathered about the dish of steaming rice, they listened to Armenouhi’s rehearsal of the experiences of the last few days.

The second day on the road was nearly a repetition of the first. The stableboy at Isnik was surprised when the dervishes offered to pay for a bed. He led them to the same room they had each occupied.

“What became of your pin, Armenouhi?” Takvor asked, when they were alone.

“It was in a ribbon about my neck when the chaoush took me away; but in Brusa it was missing. The loss of it made me sad, for I thought you were—gone,” she added, hesitating to speak the word of her thought.

“It told me where to find you;” and he produced it from beneath his ragged coat.

Like the chaoush before him, Takvor securely locked the door from without, and laid himself down on the floor before it. Late at night, when the stableboy mounted the stairs and stumbled over him, he was heard to mumble something about the crazy dervish for whom188 a bed was too good. “But perhaps he is doing penance,” he muttered, feeling his way along to his bed of straw.

The third day’s journey from Isnik to Ak Hissar was short, the guardhouse on the mountain side presenting the only danger. Starting early, they soon reached the spring on the mountain top, and there, within sight of home, they waited in the shade till twilight. When the first stars were appearing, they made their way down the familiar road, and with beating hearts, eager, yet dreading to learn the fate of their people, they silently entered the village. Many of the windows from which lights should have been shining were dark. Many of the houses were abandoned; and the streets were deserted, save for a few Turks idling at the inn. The two dervishes, unobserved in the dark, passed on toward the lighted window in Dicran’s house. They approached the door. It was closed, but not locked. Armenouhi, trembling with excitement, pulled the latchstring, and leading the way across the dark hall to the door of Dicran’s room, opened it and entered.

CHAPTER XXX
MINGLED JOY AND SORROW

OLD Dicran lay on the bed where Takvor had left him, when on that moonless night nearly three weeks before he went out to search for Armenouhi. Vassinag was sitting on the divan by the window. Startled at the unexpected appearance of the dervishes, the old man raised himself and stared wildly at them.

“Don’t you know us, Dede? We have come home,” cried Armenouhi, starting toward him.

At the sound of her voice, he bounded from the bed, like one restored to life. He pulled the cloth from her head and gazed inquiringly into her face. The little, dark, ragged dervish was surely Armenouhi; and with his arm about her, he had her sit down by him, and tenderly caressed her, while Vassinag with a faint smile of recognition on her pale face, remained motionless on the divan.

190Touched by her sister’s sadness, Armenouhi went to her, stooped to kiss her forehead, and returned to her grandfather, to whom she now related how she had been carried away.

“Dervishes who have come so far must be tired and hungry,” suggested the grandfather after he had gazed at her to his satisfaction, and he called to the servant to bring food.

“No, Dede, we are not tired,” declared Armenouhi. “We have driven most of the way.”

“Do dervishes drive?” he asked, smiling.

The sound of approaching wheels announced the arrival of the innkeeper, and Takvor explained how a friend had driven them from Brusa. The innkeeper’s horse was put in the stable. The good-natured Greek, who now joined them, brought much cheer; with Takvor he assisted the servant in preparing the food, and while eating, amusingly related the adventures of the way. The meal was over, and Armenouhi, again at her grandfather’s side, went on describing her experiences. She pictured the old house, the talkative Shareef, and the fat191 mother; and she grotesquely described the ancient eunuch Ali, and Takvor disguised as an old Turkish lady, seated by the ravine. Her story, frequently supplemented by the humorous remarks of the innkeeper and Takvor, excited mingled laughter and tears.

“Dede, do you know what it was that helped Takvor find me?”

“What was it, Armenouhi?”

“It was this, Dede;” and she took from her dress the little enameled pin. “And, Dede,” she continued, “you should be very glad that I came back, for I might have been the Padishah’s wife, and lived in the great palace.”

Again in her joy she shook her grandfather by the shoulders, and kissed him. “But I liked you best, Dede.”

Her story was ended. For a moment she sat in silence, while her gaze wandered about the room, first to Vassinag, then to Takvor, then to the innkeeper, and then back to her Dede. Suddenly her eyes became moist; the happy expression on her face turned to sadness, and her bosom heaved.

192“Poor papa!” she murmured, and breaking into unrestrained sobbing, threw her arms about the old man’s neck, burying her face in his breast.

CHAPTER XXXI
DRIVEN ON

THE next morning, while Takvor and the innkeeper were sitting in the room with Dicran discussing the probable outcome of the “question,” as the massacre was called, the girls were standing in the doorway, looking toward the village square, where they saw the mollah with a few of the Faithful peering into the well. The labor of bringing water from a distant spring had at last driven the Turks to remove the dead. The girls shuddered, for the group of men vividly recalled the horrible scene which they sought to efface from their minds. Suddenly the heavy tread of the approaching patrol caught their attention. Armenouhi turned and saw the chaoush, rifle in hand, rapidly approaching. With a scream she darted into the house.

“The chaoush! the chaoush!” she gasped. “Don’t let him take me away.”

194The men within, hearing the cry, rushed to the hall, while the chaoush, who had already entered, sulkily stopped at the appearance of the unexpected encounter.

“I’ll have you yet,” he muttered, as he slowly returned to his soldiers.

It had occurred neither to Takvor nor to Armenouhi that there could still be danger in Ak Hissar. It seemed to them that when once they had reached home, everything would continue about as it had before the massacre; the Armenians might still be closely watched, or their freedom be somewhat restricted, yet life, they thought, would be safe. The chaoush had made little effort to recapture Armenouhi in Brusa; he reasoned rightly that she would return to her people and that if he were ever to retake her, it would be at Ak Hissar. Moreover, should he not find her, the post which he had deserted, if still vacant, would afford him a livelihood; and leaving his family to shift for themselves, he set out on foot, passed the two dervishes, and reached Ak Hissar a day before them. His absence had not yet been reported;195 his soldiers were still awaiting his return; and he continued his work as if it had not been interrupted.

The three men in Dicran’s house watched the chaoush until he joined the group of men at the well, and then returned to the room where Armenouhi, trembling with fear, was sitting on the divan. From the window they could see her enemy loitering as if to witness the raising of the bodies from the well, but the frequent glances he cast in their direction disclosed his real intention of watching for the girl. There was little to prevent his seizing her. Even to the government no appeal could be made. Indeed, the very person who should have aided her was he from whom she sought to be protected. Should the chaoush succeed in his attempt, there would be no redress; no court or judge would condemn a Turkish soldier in a case against a Christian. If Armenouhi would be saved, she must be taken away, and at once. While the three men stood at the window silently watching the chaoush, each was trying to think of some plan for her escape. The196 priest’s work at the well was progressing, and by noonday the last load of the dead was driven away to the final resting place outside the village; but the chaoush remained sitting in the shade of the plane tree, with his eyes fixed on Dicran’s house.

“My child,” began the old man, after having spent half the day in trying to come to a decision, “you must again disguise yourself as a dervish and go to Constantinople. You will be safer with Aunt Vartouhi than here.”

The plan commended itself better than any other, and the remainder of the day was spent in restoring to the faces and hands of Takvor and Armenouhi the stain they had been trying so hard to remove. By dark they were again in their dervish costumes, ready for their journey, while the chaoush was still sitting before the inn. Whether it was his purpose to attack the house during the hours of darkness, or merely to see that Armenouhi did not again escape him, was uncertain. Though the lights in Dicran’s house were extinguished as if all within had retired for the night, the soldier remained197 at his post. It was midnight when the watchers at the window saw him enter the inn. The time for the dervishes to start on their journey had come. It was a sad parting. The old man embraced Armenouhi, and fondly kissed her as if he were never to see her again.

“Take this for her, and if you need it, for yourself,” he whispered to Takvor, handing him a small bag of gold liras. “It is nearly all that Hassan has left me. I need not ask you to protect her,” he continued, “nor bid you care for her when I am gone; she has always been yours more than mine.”

As if to express her full approval of her grandfather’s words, Armenouhi placed her hand within Takvor’s and together they silently passed through the open door into the darkness without. Only the stars lighted their way as they noiselessly left the village by the road to Ismid.

At daybreak the next morning, when the innkeeper went to the stable to hitch his horse to the carriage, the chaoush, satisfied that Armenouhi could not escape him, was already at198 his post, patiently watching the house. He seemed to regard the innkeeper as one of Armenouhi’s protectors; for he watched all his movements and was rejoiced to see him leave the village by the road that led to Brusa. Had he continued his watching, he could have seen him cross the fields to the west of the village, and hasten on toward Ismid. If at midday, his vision, instead of being confined to the house before him, could have reached fifteen miles or more westward, he would have seen two tired, hungry dervishes, sitting by the roadside waiting for an approaching carriage. Could his ears have caught sounds so remote, he would have heard the Greek’s hearty laugh, and two deep sighs of relief as the dervishes hastily climbed into the carriage to increase the distance that separated them from Ak Hissar.

After a difficult journey of two days, the innkeeper and his two dervish passengers reached Haidar Pasha in time to catch the last boat across the Bosphorus. Mingling with the crowds on the Galata bridge, they passed unnoticed.199 At Stamboul the innkeeper motioned to a Greek driver, and hurrying the dervishes into the closed carriage, climbed to the seat beside him. A few minutes later they stopped before Vartouhi’s house in Kum Kapu. The house seemed deserted. The shades were closely drawn, and no light was visible. The innkeeper alighted, and struck the iron knocker. No answer but the resounding echo. Again he struck, louder than before, and waited. Presently the corner of a window shade moved slightly as if somebody were stealthily peeking out. Once more he struck, and a woman’s voice faintly inquired who was there.

“Aunt Vartouhi!” called Armenouhi, from the carriage; “Takvor and I have come.”

The key turned, the bolt slid back, and the door slowly opened. Takvor and Armenouhi entered, followed by the innkeeper. Aunt Vartouhi, refastening the door, led the way through the dark hall to a dimly lighted room in the rear of the basement. Here for the first time she noticed the strange appearance of her unexpected guests.

200“Mashallah! What is the meaning of all this?” was her anxious inquiry.

“Don’t be alarmed, auntie. We have had so much trouble, and poor father is gone, but we are here safe and sound,” and Armenouhi went on to relate the awful experiences that had befallen them.

The aunt was deeply affected by hearing of the death of her brother Vartan, and in reply to Armenouhi’s inquiry concerning uncle Varhan, Vartouhi’s husband, she gave way to tears. For three long weeks he had been absent, ever since the morning of the massacre, and though she sometimes feared he too had been lost, she was still waiting and hoping to hear his familiar knock at the door. As the long weary days passed, she grew more timid and lonely, and now she seldom ventured from the little basement room. She was glad to have Armenouhi with her, to help wear away the dreary hours while waiting for the husband who was never to return.

In the morning the innkeeper took his leave of his friends to return to Brusa.

201Sometimes in the lowest walks of life, among people who are strangers to culture and humanizing influences, a great, kind soul is found. Such was this Greek. Rough and uncultured, his neighbors called him unchristian, and the parish priest had often told him that his soul, never purified by prayers and by offerings to the church, was in constant danger. This was the man who neglected his business, spent his money, and ran the risk of arrest, imprisonment, and death, to assist a helpless girl of another race. It was in vain that Takvor tried to recompense him for his kindness.

“Some other time,” was his only reply.

Takvor pressed the hand of his great-hearted friend, and watched him till he was out of sight, tears of gratitude filling his eyes.

CHAPTER XXXII
HOPE

ON the evening following the departure of the innkeeper, Takvor made a welcome announcement to Armenouhi.

“I have been to Scutari, to see Miss Ireland, principal of the American school for girls, and she will receive you at once.”

“Oh, how thoughtful, how good of you, Takvor!” and she threw her arms about his neck; “but how can I leave you and Aunt Vartouhi?”

“I know of no safer place for you now,” he continued; “and the holidays you can spend here. And I shall not feel alarmed about you when I am gone; for I must finish my studies if I am to become a physician. You would have me go, would you not, even if we are lonely for a time?”

203“Yes, dear, yes. I will try to be brave until you come back—and then—and then you will not leave me any more, will you, Takvor?”

“No, Armenouhi, never any more,” and he held her close and kissed her good night.

Having thus arranged for Armenouhi’s future, his thoughts, for the first time since his parents’ death, turned to himself and his own ruined prospects. Until long after midnight he lay awake, asking himself questions which he could not answer. Was his father’s property waiting for him to claim it, or had it been plundered and confiscated by the police? Should he find that he was penniless? Should he have the means to return to his studies? If not, what then? Never would he use a single one of the liras that Dicran had entrusted to him; they were Armenouhi’s. What mattered it if he had nothing but a few piasters remaining to him? Others had succeeded, and why not he?

Early the next morning he crossed the Golden Horn to Hasskeui, and with beating heart climbed the hill to the spot which was once his204 home. Every trace of the massacre had been removed. The dirty Jewish urchins were playing their games in the streets, and the venders were hawking their decaying fruits and vegetables, while squalid women were chatting on the doorsteps as happily as ever. From a rickety house half way up the hill came the rich tones of a piano. Surprised at this sign of wealth amid such squalor, he glanced in at the open door. At the sight of the piano he stopped amazed, for it had been his mother’s.

“What do you want?” asked the child, in words that were half Jewish, half Spanish.

“I was listening to the piano,” he replied absently. “It is a good one. Where did you get it?”

“Padre bought it of a soldier.”

“How much did he pay for it?”

“Five piasters; it was too heavy for them to carry away.”

Takvor looked into the child’s face to see if he was telling the truth. There was little doubt of it. Enraged at the idea that his mother’s205 piano had been stolen and sold to a Jew for twenty cents, and that there was no redress, he hastily climbed up the street. Finding the shades of his own home drawn and the door fastened, he knocked and listened; then he knocked again. A soldier who was watching him from across the street approached while he was knocking the third time. Convinced that entrance by the front door was impossible, he made his way to the narrow lane leading to the garden. The garden gate was locked. He scaled the high wall, only to discover that the rear door was also fastened. He tried the windows. They would not yield, but through one of them he was able to look into the large hall. Furniture, carpets, draperies, books, everything was gone; the house was as empty as if its occupants had moved away.

“What are you doing here?” thundered a rough voice behind him.

He looked round. The garden gate, which a moment before had been locked, was now open, and before it stood the soldier whom he had seen in front of the house.

206“It is my father’s house; I have just come home.”

“Get out of here,” roared the soldier, starting toward him, gun in hand.

“But it is my own home,” Takvor insisted.

“Get out of here,” again shouted the soldier, raising his gun in a threatening manner.

There was nothing to do but to obey. His worst fears were realized; for evidently the house and its contents had been confiscated, and his father’s valuable papers were lost. Closely followed by the scowling soldier, he left the garden, and turned down the narrow lane toward the Golden Horn.

“Nice furniture, very cheap,” cried a Jew, from the doorway of a shop down by the water.

Takvor looked in. Stuffed chairs, plate glass mirrors and marble-topped tables were heaped in confusion about the room. A glance sufficed to convince him that they were stolen from the houses of the missing Armenians. He entered, not to purchase, for he had but ten piasters, but to see if he could recognize any objects207 from his own home. Half hidden in the corner was his father’s writing desk. Its price was one mejidieh, one twenty-fifth of its original cost. In a box along with various knickknacks his eye fell on the bright gold frame of his mother’s miniature. Thinking from his silence that he was admiring it, the Jew urged him to buy.

“The gold frame is worth four liras,” continued the merchant, “but you may have it for one.”

“It is a pretty face, but a useless thing,” observed Takvor, and threw it back into the box as if he did not care to purchase.

“What will you give?” pursued the Jew, not at all discouraged by his customer’s indifference.

“Ten piasters,” answered Takvor, naming the entire amount of money he possessed.

“You may have it for sixty,” and the merchant held the picture temptingly before him.

“Ten,” repeated Takvor, moving toward the door.

208“Thirty,” cried the Jew.

“Ten,” and Takvor had reached the doorway.

“Twenty,” wheedled the Jew, approaching and patting him on the shoulder, as if the concession were a mark of special favor.

“Keep it,” rejoined Takvor, stepping into the street.

“Fifteen,” cried the Jew, pretending to be exasperated at his obstinacy.

Takvor was leaving the premises.

“Give me eleven, and it is yours,” shouted the Jew, following him.

“Ten!” called back Takvor, as he turned the corner.

“Come back then, and give me the ten,” mumbled the Jew.

Takvor slowly returned, and indifferently taking the ten piasters from his pocket, exchanged them for the miniature for which his father had paid twenty liras. Happy that he possessed as a souvenir of his mother the very thing which he valued more than all else, he209 hurried from the shop lest by some chance it might be taken from him.

His money was gone. He had not even the ten paras required for toll to cross the Galata bridge. Though he could return to Kum Kapu afoot by way of the Sweet Waters of Europe, his next duty was to show his gratitude to his friend Taviloudes, of the English store, and he made his way along the arsenal walls to Galata. The Greek had long given him up for dead, and was greatly surprised when he saw him enter. He ran to meet him, and took him up to his little room, where, uninterrupted, he might learn from him all that had happened. The long story was concluded by Takvor’s gently taking his mother’s miniature from his pocket, and remarking that he had purchased it with his last ten piasters.

“It is not quite so bad as that,” Taviloudes assured him. “Your father was a shareholder in this store, and we recently deposited a check to his account.”

To verify the statement, they went below to210 the manager of the store and then to the bank.

“Your father has an account of twelve hundred liras with us,” explained the director, who appeared to be acquainted with the circumstances. “The rest of the property is lost beyond recovery; according to a recent law, Armenian houses remaining unoccupied for three months are confiscated by the government, and soldiers are stationed to see that they shall not be occupied before the expiration of that time. The furniture and papers of your father have been stolen.”

Twelve hundred liras from a fortune of as many thousands seemed little, yet Takvor was not penniless; with the five thousand dollars he could at least complete his education.

Three days later, when he had finished all the preparations for his departure save the passport which he could not obtain, he went to Scutari to bid Armenouhi farewell.

“Armenouhi, do you remember our playhouse in the old white castle at Ak Hissar? I was the hakim, and you were the hakim’s wife.”

“Yes. Could I ever forget?”

211“When I come back, I shall be a real hakim. Will you be the hakim’s real wife?”

Her eyes were gazing tenderly into his.

“When we played together in the castle,” she whispered, “and you were the hakim, I was always your wife. I am still yours. And when you come back a real hakim, I can be only yours.”

Takvor seized her in his arms and covered her face with kisses; then he released her and hurried from the garden to the street. Only once did he look back. She was standing motionless where he had left her.

Late that night, dressed as an English sailor, he was smuggled into a vessel bound for Athens; he was on his way to England.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE PASHA’S PROPOSAL

FIVE years have passed away,—for Takvor five years of hard, serious work, yet successful, happy years, every week of which was shortened by a letter from Armenouhi, the strongest tie that bound him to his native land. Armenouhi had been favored too. She was taller now than when he left her, taller than most Armenian women. Her face, if not so round as in her childhood days, bore that tender, sympathetic expression which has often been described as the type of most perfect beauty. She had the same great innocent eyes, yet deeper and bluer. Her voice was low and gentle, and when she spoke English, though with grammatical correctness, it was with a slight Oriental accent, which, especially when accompanied with smiling dimples and beautiful teeth, added an irresistible charm213 to her conversation. Five years of study had developed her gifted mind. She was the favorite of the school. The students from the college on the opposite side of the Bosphorus agreed in designating her as “the angel,” and religiously attended every concert and reception at the girls’ school. They had sighed, and pleaded, and hoped, but the weekly letter went regularly to Takvor.

Armenouhi had spent the greater part of her vacations at Kum Kapu, with her aunt Vartouhi, who was still hopefully awaiting her husband’s return. The houses in the neighborhood, once owned by Armenians, were gradually being occupied by Turkish families. A great rambling mansion on the opposite side of the street was at last being thoroughly overhauled. The new lattices of the windows indicated that its future occupant possessed an extensive harem, and a large Arabic motto from the Koran, framed in conspicuous gilt and suspended beneath the eaves, gave evidence of the owner’s piety.

It was in the early spring of Armenouhi’s last214 year at Scutari that the family, consisting of a corpulent, thrifty young pasha, his two wives, two children, two gorgeously dressed eunuchs, and a small retinue of servants, took possession of the great structure. Aunt Vartouhi, whose idle hours were occupied chiefly with watching her neighbors, found a new pastime in studying the young pasha, and she seldom failed to see him when he drove to his business in the morning and returned in the early afternoon. She was lonely during Armenouhi’s absence, and the Turkish wives across the street, like most Turkish wives, were also lonely. Smiles were exchanged. The smiles gave way to salutations, the salutations to conversation; and hardly a week passed that Vartouhi was not a visitor at the young pasha’s. The whispered reports of his wealth and piety seemed true, for numerous costly rugs and hangings decorated the harem, brilliant jewelry adorned its fair occupants, and picturesque scrolls containing extracts from the Koran covered the walls. Vartouhi was so pleased with her new acquaintances that when215 Armenouhi came for the Easter vacation she at once introduced her to them.

It was rather late in the afternoon of Armenouhi’s first visit to the harem, that the pasha returned from town in his carriage. He kicked off his outer shoes in the hallway, threw his coat to a servant, and at once entered by the door which a eunuch held open for him. The ladies arose to show proper respect to their husband and master, and to present the visitors. When he approached Armenouhi, an expression of recognition appeared in his eyes, and she in turn searched his face, for it recalled the days of her childhood. He directed his entire attention to her. While seeming to listen, she was trying to recall where she had seen him. The face lacked the refinement which was to be expected in a person of his rank, and his pronunciation of Turkish resembled that of an Armenian. She repeated his name, recalling all the Hassans she had ever known, the most prominent in her memory being the converted Armenian, the former money changer and tax216 collector of Ak Hissar. It was indeed he, and she wondered she had not recognized him before, although he was so changed that he was little like his former self. His once smooth, thin face, now full and round, was half concealed beneath a thick well-kept beard; his long, crooked nose had increased in width; his eyes bulged still farther from their flabby sockets; and the lean body of earlier years had assumed large proportions. Now that Hassan had become a man of wealth and position, the master of wives and children with whom he appeared to be contented, it seemed to Armenouhi that she no longer had cause to fear him, yet she betrayed no sign of recognition.

The sudden rise of Hassan Pasha resembled that of many another Turkish official. As tax collector, he had been unusually successful. But when he had drained the district to which he had been assigned, and found it impossible to draw milk from a stone, he sought a more lucrative field of labor. Constantinople alone offered an opening of sufficient promise, and thither he went. With the five thousand liras which he217 had wrung from the people in taxes, he bought the office of building commissioner. To this office was attached a monthly salary of four liras, which was never paid, a matter of little importance to the farseeing Hassan. He was no architect; but it was his duty to examine the plans of all buildings to be erected in the great city of Constantinople, or of repairs to be made; he should decide whether the buildings or the repairs would increase the general welfare of the public, or be a menace to the government, and his decision was final. If the builder’s application was accompanied with a satisfactory fee, Hassan’s approval was obtained; if the fee was lacking, the application was rejected. The amount of the fee depended on various conditions,—the size and location of the building, the nationality and wealth of the builder, and other considerations, which only Hassan himself was able to comprehend. Permission to replace the tiles on a roof perhaps cost a lira. To cut a door or a window through a wall might be worth several liras. His approval of the plans of a new house could be purchased at a cost of218 hundreds of liras, or by a mortgage of half its value. There was no fixed law. Hassan himself was the law. The five thousand liras which he had paid for his office quickly returned, and with them came interest at a hundred per cent, compounded in a manner defying computation. The jealousy of his subordinates and fellow officials was easily quieted, and the favor of the Sultan was purchased with a substantial check to the secretaries of the palace. Badiark, who had been successively known as Hassan, Hassan Effendi, and Hassan Bey, finally became Hassan Pasha, a trusted official of His Imperial Majesty. With his rapid rise to fortune and royal favor, he appropriated the large house at Kum Kapu, adorned his harem with a second wife, and added to his dignity by the purchase of eunuchs and of all other things necessary to a well-appointed household. The few years of prosperity and the lack of physical exercise had imparted gigantic proportions to his overfed body, while his conscience, also for want of exercise, had grown insignificantly small; but through his associations at the Porte219 and the palace he had acquired a veneer of culture that concealed the iniquity within.

Armenouhi and her aunt were again at the pasha’s house on the following afternoon. Hassan, assuming all the suavity of manner he possessed, entertained them with his wit. When they were leaving, he suggested that on the next Friday, they should drive with him to the Sweet Waters of Europe. For every afternoon of the first week of Armenouhi’s vacation he arranged some entertainment to bring her into his presence, that the time might pass more pleasantly for his dear wives, as he expressed it. His kindness was such that she began to believe prosperity had softened the hard traits of his character.

One day he entered the harem with two gold brooches, one for his youngest wife, and the other for her, because they were such good friends. Unwilling to displease her aunt, Armenouhi accepted the gift. On another occasion, while she was passing through the hall to the harem, the pasha asked her to be seated a moment, and then taking from his pocket a220 small plush case, opened it and placed in her hand a necklace of magnificent pearls. She examined it, remarked its unusual beauty, and returned it to him.

“It is yours. Keep it.”

“It is too valuable; I cannot accept it;” and she laid it on the divan at his side.

For just an instant the pasha lost control of his assumed mildness. His jaws set, and upon his face appeared the hard, determined expression that vividly recalled the Badiark she once knew. Alarmed by the sudden change in his manner, she arose to leave him. His smile immediately returned, and again motioning her to a seat, he beamed upon her.

“Armenouhi,” he said abruptly, “you shall marry me.”

“Marry you?” she laughed. “You already have two wives; what could you do with a third?”

“Yes, Armenouhi, you shall marry me,” he continued, irritated that his proposal had been received so lightly.

With the same suavity with which he obtained221 large fees from prospective builders, he pleaded that after seeing her he could no longer love another; and had not the Prophet declared that every good Moslem might have four wives? As he spoke, he reached to take her hand. She withdrew it with disgust. Again his mild expression turned to extreme hardness. Rising from his seat while still pleading, he moved slowly backward toward the door.

Suspecting his intention, Armenouhi sprang past him, and trembling with excitement, hurried from the house, and across the street to her aunt’s.

CHAPTER XXXIV
REJECTED

THINKING it best not to worry her aunt by informing her of the sudden turn of affairs at the pasha’s, Armenouhi made no allusion to her adventure with Hassan; in two days she was to return to Scutari, and then her aunt’s relationship with her neighbors across the way might continue as if nothing had happened.

Toward evening of the following day, there was a knock at the door. Armenouhi went to answer it, and found the pasha standing there. He was dressed in his most gorgeous uniform; the long sword suspended at his side was trailing on the ground; and numerous gaudy decorations nearly covered his breast. Unbidden, he stepped into the hall, entered the library, and seated himself on the divan. When Vartouhi appeared, he arose and bowed with profound respect, explaining that he had honored himself223 by calling to present his compliments. Coffee was served. To Armenouhi’s relief, the conversation seemed to indicate that the topic of the day before had been entirely forgotten. The pasha, however, thinking that he had ingratiated himself into the aunt’s good will, abruptly remarked that the object of his visit was to ask for the hand of her niece, and to request her aid in winning Armenouhi’s affections, which, he added, would soon come after marriage.

Aunt Vartouhi’s love for Moslems was never conspicuously deep, and when suddenly there flashed upon her somewhat inactive mind the motive of the pasha’s pretended kindness, she flew into a rage and heaped upon his head the wrath that had been pent up in her bosom since her husband’s disappearance. Never, she declared, would she consent to Armenouhi’s marriage with a Moslem. Never to a man who already had two wives. Never to one of that race of murderers who had killed her people and taken away her husband. She would see her in her grave first.

224In spite of Armenhoui’s efforts to calm her, her anger increased. Had her language, which was far plainer than Hassan was accustomed to hear, come from a man, he would have felt that he was outmatched; but coming as it did from a woman, it was not to be endured. The assumed smile left his face; his great body trembled with rage; and his eyes projected farther than ever from the flabby folds about them.

“If she does not marry me, you will see her in her grave,” he hissed, as he brought down his big fist for emphasis, and then glared at the two women to watch the effect of his words. “If she does not marry me,” he slowly repeated, apparently enjoying the terror which overspread their faces, “if she does not marry me within four months, you will see her in her grave; and if you oppose me, you shall be the first to go;” and with a haughty grunt he left the room and crossed the street to his own house.

The two dazed women, remaining as Hassan had left them, stared vacantly at each other. Too well did they know that his threats were225 not mere idle words, for many a Moslem of far less power had forced a Christian girl to a repulsive marriage. The only course possible for Armenouhi was to return immediately to the school, where she would be beyond his reach.

The next morning, as she stepped into the carriage which was to take her to the boat, she saw a man on the opposite side of the street watching her. He seemed to be one of those hard-faced, shameless creatures who swarm the streets of Constantinople to dog the steps of every stranger, now peering into a closed carriage, now listening to a whispered conversation, transporting themselves hither and thither with marvelous rapidity, and appearing in all places and at all times when least expected.

The Turkish spy is unmistakable. His clothes, usually of a European pattern, are shabby; his fez sits jauntily on one side of his head; his nose is flat, as if it had too often poked into the business of others; his eyes bulge, as if to search deep for secrets; and about his mouth is a suggestion of a revengeful smile. Though haunting every frequented place, he226 seldom speaks, for few will speak with him; he wears no disguise, and makes no effort to conceal his purpose, for he lacks all sense of shame. Of all the peculiar specimens of humanity which Constantinople has ever produced, he is one of the most abominable.

Armenouhi at once recognized the agent of the pasha; but apparently ignoring him, she climbed into the carriage, and drove away. At the bridge she glanced back; the spy was following, not ten yards behind. She bought her ticket for the boat and took a seat on deck; he was sitting opposite, staring into her face. At Scutari she told the driver to hurry; yet when she alighted at the school, the spy appeared round the corner. She ran up the garden walk to ring the bell, and he was approaching the gate. The powerful porter saw him on the point of entering, and recognizing what he was, sprang before him.

“Keep out of here,” he called out; “this is American property.”

The spy stood complacently outside the gate and watched Armenouhi until she disappeared227 within the building. He then returned to make his report. Hassan Pasha was not one to abandon his purpose; failure only sharpened his wits and strengthened his determination. Armenouhi might be out of his reach for the moment, but he would wait patiently until the close of the school, and when she was no longer under its protection, he would force her to yield. To keep himself informed of the plans of the aunt, he adopted the Turkish method by which he was rapidly increasing his own fortune, that of bribery, and set his spy to dog the steps of the Armenian orphan boy whom the charitable Vartouhi had taken into her home. One day the spy followed the boy to the market, and with a few well-put words and a big silver mejidieh loosed his tongue. The kindnesses which the lad had been daily receiving were forgotten, and he became the pasha’s active agent, repeating all the thoughts and plans which the confiding aunt whispered in his ear.

CHAPTER XXXV
THE CHARM

ARMENOUHI finished her studies in June. Although the rumor of Hassan’s wooing had spread among the students, it did nothing more than arouse the pity of her friends. Nobody could do aught for her. The school could no longer shelter her; no foreign government could prevent one Turkish subject from marrying another; and her own government would not protect her. Singly and alone she might resist the pasha for a time, but at last she would be forced to yield.

Hoping that the pasha had forgotten his fancy, Armenouhi returned to her aunt Vartouhi. While standing in the doorway, as the driver lifted her box from the carriage, she saw the spy watching her from the opposite side of the street. Her heart sank, and hurrying229 within, she closed and bolted the door, as if to shut out her fears.

Not again that day did the spy appear; nor did Hassan make himself conspicuous by staring across from his window; and the aunt expressed the opinion that his affection had probably reverted to his wives. Armenouhi’s peace of mind, however, was of brief duration; for on the next day, the pasha, unannounced, was ushered by the Armenian servant into the room where she and her aunt were sitting. As on his former visit, he was dressed as if to attend a ceremony of state, and bowing politely, moved to a seat. Whatever coldness appeared in the conversation of the two women was removed by his extreme affability. With diplomatic skill he worked his way to the subject foremost in his mind, until it seemed to the aunt that he had come to dispell the harsh impressions which his previous visit had occasioned, when he suddenly asked if she had reconsidered his proposal. The question, though occasioning no great surprise, was put so unexpectedly that Vartouhi hesitated. Her face reddened, and her nervous230 fingers dug their nails into the palms of her clenched hands. When she finally spoke, she repeated what she had said before. Hassan listened politely, and smiled.

“You are in my way, are you?” he asked, as he arose; and bowing courteously, he left the room.

The Oriental mind is prolific when devising methods to remove an obstacle that interferes with the accomplishment of a purpose. Principle, conscience, and justice are not to be considered; deceit, theft, and even murder, are regarded legitimate means. The pasha found Aunt Vartouhi an obstacle in his way. Why should he not remove that obstacle, and at once? A little powdered glass in a cup of coffee, or, better still, the old aristocratic way, a pulverized diamond, would accomplish the end. Such methods, though sure, were too slow; a few drops of a tasteless drug were far more speedy.

Following the Armenian servant to the market, the pasha’s spy placed a big mejidieh and a small vial in his hand. The boy looked at231 them, grinned at the mejidieh, bound it in the corner of his girdle, and then looked inquiringly at the vial.

“It is a charm for your old mistress,” said the spy.

“A charm?” asked the credulous boy.

“It will make her kind to you and to me, and she will treat us better after she has drunk it.”

The boy hesitated.

“If you don’t wish to give her the charm, let me have the mejidieh,” and he held out his hand for the money.

“I will give it to her,” came the quick reply, for the lad feared he should lose the silver piece.

“It is only for the old woman,” whispered the spy; “not for the girl; if you give it to her, the charm will be broken. Pour it all into the old woman’s coffee, but the girl must not touch it. Here is another mejidieh.”

He bound the second coin with the first, and purchasing a few vegetables for the evening meal, returned home to work the charm which232 would transform the occasional impatient words of his mistress into words of perpetual kindness and love.

“Oh, what pain, what pain!” groaned the aunt, when Armenouhi entered her room the next morning.

Hot poultices and massage were applied, but her distress steadily increased. The servant boy was sent to a neighboring house for a physician. A quarter of an hour passed, then half an hour, and an hour, yet neither the boy nor the physician appeared, and the poor aunt was no longer able to speak. There was one more agonizing groan, one last spasm, and the contracted muscles of her distorted face relaxed. The charm had worked; Aunt Vartouhi was dead. Horrified at the suspicion that she had been poisoned, Armenouhi was leaning silently over the body when the boy entered.

“We could not find a doctor.”

“Where have you been?”

“Everywhere. The pasha’s servant knows all the doctors, but he could not find any of them at home.”

233He walked over to the motionless form on the bed.

“She is dead,” said Armenouhi. “She must have been poisoned.”

With terror stamped on his ashen face, the boy staggered to the door, and left the room and the house to lose himself in the great city; he had learned the meaning of the charm.

The funeral took place that very day, for in Turkey the dead may not remain unburied after sundown.

“Shall you return to that house to-night?” asked the priest, when the brief service was ended.

“I must,” replied Armenouhi, “for I have nowhere else to go.”

“Then you shall come with me,” and he led her to his waiting carriage.

CHAPTER XXXVI
TOO LATE?

TAKVOR had graduated and was busily packing his books and other belongings, preparing to go to the city for a year of hospital practice, when his landlady entered with a letter. It ran as follows:

Constantinople, 15 June, 189—

Dear Takvor,

To-day Aunt Vartouhi was buried. Last night when she retired, she seemed perfectly well, but early this morning she awoke with severe pains, and before medical aid could be called, she died during a violent spasm. My conscience is troubling me, for I feel that I may have been in a manner responsible for her death. Not long ago our neighbor, Hassan Pasha, whom you knew in Ak Hissar as Badiark, called to renew his proposal for my hand. Aunt Vartouhi very indignantly rejected it, and the angry pasha threatened us. I may be doing him a great injustice by leading you to infer that he poisoned her; but Papasian, the priest who attended the funeral, shared my suspicions, and235 believing that I could not safely remain alone in Kum Kapu, insisted on my going to his home. In a day or two I shall go to Ak Hissar, and again be with dear old Dede and Vassinag, whom I have not seen since we left, five years ago. The spy whom the pasha set to watch me was at the funeral to-day, and now he is in the street before the house. My greatest fear is that I may not be able to escape him when I go home. But do not worry, for Dede will protect me until you come.

As ever, I am yours,

Armenouhi.

Takvor read the letter, reread it, and then stood lost in meditation. Armenouhi’s letters from the school had been filled with such happiness that a thought of danger to her had never entered his mind. He looked at the date. The letter was written a week before. He was dazed trying to think of all the things that might have happened to her since she wrote. If she continued to resist the pasha, perhaps already she had suffered the fate of her aunt, or more likely she was an unwilling wife in a Turkish harem, forever beyond his reach. He took out his watch. It was nine o’clock. To his landlady’s surprise, he left his boxes half packed, hurried236 a few articles into his suit case, announced that he must make the boat for Calais, and ran to catch the train. How slowly that express traveled! Several times in his impatience he prepared a cablegram to Dicran; but convinced that it would not get beyond the hands of the police, he destroyed it. That night the Oriental Express was flying with him across Europe to Constantinople.

CHAPTER XXXVII
DARKNESS

PAPASIAN, the priest, found little difficulty in procuring a passport for Armenouhi to return to Ak Hissar; it is only when an Armenian would travel from the interior to the capital that the government raises its inexplicable objections. Early the second morning after Vartouhi’s funeral, when for a moment the pasha’s spy seemed to be absent from his place of duty, Armenouhi left the priest’s house and started for her old home. Frequently she glanced about to see if she was being followed. Observing nothing to arouse her suspicion, she thought she had at last made her escape from Hassan. But to leave no clew by which he might trace her to her destination, she purchased a ticket to Eski Shehir, a junction far beyond Ak Hissar, where travelers to the distant interior pass the night.

238It was shortly after noon when the train stopped at Ak Hissar, and she alighted and passed through the gate to the village. Even here five years had wrought changes. Adobe houses for the railroad employees had sprung up near the station, and the ruins of the old white castle, long used as a quarry, had entirely disappeared. The well still provided the village with water, but the big plane tree which formerly shaded it was no more. On the sacred spot where the little church once stood was a larger building, its lofty minaret towering above the roof with an air of mocking triumph. Only the old narrow street was familiar, though the faces were strange. Stranger still seemed her grandfather’s shop; for it was closed and securely fastened with iron bars. She approached the old home that had filled her thoughts and dreams during all the years of her absence, and it too had a strange appearance of dilapidation. With beating heart, she entered the half open doorway and was asked by an aged female servant, a stranger to her, what she wished.

239“Is Dicran here?” she asked almost in a whisper.

The old servant merely pointed to a door.

The silence was oppressive. Armenouhi hesitated and then slowly pushed the door open. There on the bed, just where she had left him five years before, lay her grandfather, but how changed! His great strong body had wasted away until only its frame remained; his long white beard was unkempt and scraggy; his once rugged cheeks were hollow; and his glassy eyes stared vacantly toward her.

“Don’t you know me, Dede?” and her voice choked as she bent over him.

Slightly raising himself that he might see better, a sign of recognition came to his eyes.

“Armenouhi!” he said in a husky, almost inaudible voice.

She bent down and tenderly kissed his forehead, and sitting by the bedside, caressed his hand. He was too weak to talk much, but a strange new light of joy, shining in his eyes, gave expression to his thoughts.

“Why did you come?”

240“Just to see you, Dede,” was her answer, for she was unwilling to grieve him with the truth. “Where is Vassinag?” she asked, hoping to turn his thoughts from the questions she feared he might ask.

Closing his eyes as if unable to answer, the old man remained silent. Armenouhi rested her hand on his forehead. Presently his eyes opened.

“She has gone. She is with her mother.”

Armenouhi understood; poor Vassinag was dead.

Little life remained in the old man, too, and that little was rapidly ebbing away. Armenouhi watched over him day and night to make his last moments comfortable. How glad she was that she had come in time to see him once more! and in her great love for him she forgot her own troubles. Now and then the simple village physician came, but Dicran was already beyond the aid even of the most skillful. He grew rapidly weaker, and ten days after Armenouhi’s arrival his body was laid to rest in the little cemetery behind the village.

241Armenouhi stood at the open grave weeping as if her heart would break. Her Dede was gone, and she was comfortless. The priest was performing the last rites, annointing the body with oil, and sprinkling earth upon it, to consign it to the dust from which it came. Unable longer to look at the silent form, Armenouhi raised her tear-filled eyes. Directly before her, on the opposite side of the grave, and steadily watching her with a mocking look of triumph, stood the spy. Her heart seemed to stop beating. She took one long last look at the half covered body of the dead, and then seizing the arm of the old servant, hastened home. From the doorway of the now vacant house she looked back. The spy was following. With her last strength, she hurriedly closed the door and fastened it with the heavy iron bolt, and then half threw herself, half fell, on her grandfather’s empty bed.

How dark and dreary the world seemed! Dede, her protector, was no more; her aunt was dead; Vassinag was dead; Takvor was beyond her reach; the spy from whom she had escaped242 had again found her, and now, alone and unprotected, she would soon be dragged away. Why could she not die and end it all? Nobody would mourn her, except Takvor; and after these five long years perhaps he would no longer miss her. Darkness came; and still longing for the end, she remained motionless on the bed; at midnight relief seemed no nearer, and she was still awake and thinking. Must she not attempt to escape by flight before the morrow, when the spy would come with soldiers to carry her away? Yet where could she go? Even had she a place of shelter, or a friend to protect her, she would soon be found and forced into Hassan’s harem. She was glad that Dicran was dead, for now he could never know her sorrow. How her heart ached! If the long line of proud Armenian kings of whom Dede had often spoken could but now behold her, their last descendant! but they could not; they were dead; their country was dead; their people were dying; and if only she too might die! When it was nearly daylight, sleep came mercifully to her.

243At midday she awoke with a start, and bewildered, sat staring vacantly about her. Suddenly the agonizing thoughts of the night returned, and in despair she again fell back on the pillow. Courage usually comes with rest and food, and so it was with Armenouhi. After drinking the coffee which the servant had brought her, she arose with the determination of forming some plan of action. Presently her eyes fell on the stone in the middle of the floor, beneath which Dicran used to conceal his papers and money. She pried it up and opened the iron box. It was empty. Lifting the box from the hole, she opened the one beneath. It contained a few worthless papers and three gold liras wrapped in a faded cloth, all that remained of a fortune acquired in a lifetime of strenuous work and careful saving. Three liras stood between her and starvation, and she shuddered to think what would become of her when they were gone. But such thoughts were useless, for long before that she would be in the pasha’s harem.

The whistle of the approaching train from Constantinople startled her, for the pasha himself244 might be coming. While timidly crouching in a corner of the room, she heard a rapid step approaching the house, and a hurried knock at the door. A thrill of terror shook her weakened body. She heard the ancient servant slowly shuffle across the hall and open the door, and then caught the words, “She is in that room.” Now the steps were in the hall by her door. How she trembled! She covered her face with her hands, giving no answer to the repeated knocking. The latch was raised, and the door was pushed open.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE REAL HAKIM

ARMENOUHI,” called a deep, rich voice.

On the threshold, with uncovered head, stood a tall, straight young man, in fashionable European dress. A beard concealed his chin, but his face, perhaps a trifle more mature, was the face that had lived in her thoughts for the last five years.

“Oh, Takvor!” and she sprang to his arms. The dream of her life was realized; the real hakim had come.

Aware that any delay in taking Armenouhi to a place of safety might be disastrous, Takvor urged her to gather at once whatever souvenirs she cared to retain of the home of her childhood, while he went to the government building to have his passport viséed for Constantinople.

“I can not visé this passport,” said the official,246 curtly, after scanning the document as if searching for hidden instructions.

“Why not?”

“I have orders from Constantinople not to do so.”

“I am a British citizen, and I demand that you visé it.”

“Olmas! impossible!” exclaimed the official, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together to express that money would cancel all superior orders.

Takvor took a lira from his pocket. The official clucked with his tongue, and threw up his head in disgust at the smallness of the bribe. Takvor took out a second, a third, and then a fourth lira. The official seemed to be yielding.

“It is a great deal of money,” remarked Takvor, adding a fifth gold piece to the others.

“Let me see the passport again,” said the Turk, hesitating.

He examined it closely, and then with a knife carefully scratched away a seemingly insignificant mark beneath the initial letter of Takvor’s name. To satisfy himself that the erasure247 could not be detected, he held the paper to the light, and then, as Takvor directed, added the words, “and wife,” to the name already on the passport.

All difficulties in the way of leaving Ak Hissar being thus removed, and Armenouhi’s few valueless mementos hurriedly packed together, they took the next day’s train for Constantinople. Alighting at the Pera Palace, they saw the pasha’s spy waiting as if to welcome them.

“His game will soon be up,” muttered Takvor, sharply returning the spy’s bold stare.

Leaving Armenouhi secure in an upper parlor, Takvor hurried away in search of the priest Papasian and the British consul. Soon he returned with them, and there, in the consul’s presence, as the law required, he and Armenouhi were married. If at that moment Hassan could have seen the radiantly beautiful bride, clinging to the arm of her husband, his evil heart might have been persuaded to pursue her no farther. And Hassan did see her; for the door suddenly opened, and the big, pompous pasha, entered unannounced, with his spy and a policeman.

248“There is the girl,” he began, pointing to Armenouhi.

“What do you want with her?” asked Takvor, stepping before him.

“Out of the way, boy! She is mine.”

“Effendim, you are mistaken; she is my wife, and a British subject. And this gentleman is the British consul.”

For the briefest instant Hassan paused in amazement; his eyes bulged, but he was not baffled, and again he moved toward Armenouhi.

“I am too old to believe such tales,” he sneered. “She is an Armenian girl, and a Turkish subject. Out of the way, you fool!”

Takvor seized him by the throat and pushed him backwards through the doorway, crowding the astonished spy and policeman out before him, and then sent him sprawling. The ponderous pasha’s fall fairly shook the building, while audible amid his grunts and the rattling of his sword was the titter of the pompous hotel porter, who for the moment had forgotten himself. Well aware that laughing at a pasha’s discomfort might prove expensive, he helped249 him to rise, and sympathetically escorted him to his carriage.

It was Armenouhi’s wish that before leaving the country she might take some of her belongings from the home of her aunt in Kum Kapu. On the afternoon of the day of their marriage they drove to the house, only to be received by a Turkish policeman, with Hassan at his heels.

“What do you want here?” demanded the pasha, in a tone that indicated he had not forgotten his recent lesson.

“This house is mine; it was left me by my aunt.”

“It is no longer yours,” the policeman assured her; “it has been confiscated by the government.”

Hassan was still pursuing Armenouhi. As a boy he had marred the innocent games of her childhood, and later drove her from home. He ruined her village by extortionary taxation, murdered her father by torture, and caused the death of her sister. He robbed her grandfather of wealth accumulated by years of industry, and brought to his last days almost abject poverty.250 He poisoned her aunt, and set on the girl’s track a spy to pursue her as hounds would slaves, to bring her against her will into his harem. And now, since his purpose was thwarted, he robbed her of her home and all that was in it.

“Yes,” added Hassan, with a sneer, peering over the policeman’s shoulder; “it is the law that no foreign subject may inherit property in Turkey.”

“It is true,” murmured Armenouhi, staring vacantly before her. “It is all gone.”

She turned her eyes to Takvor. He took her hand and drew her toward the carriage.

CHAPTER XXXIX
FORWARD

TWO days later, on the deck of an outward-bound steamer, sat Takvor and Armenouhi. The Turkish shore was fast receding from sight. Far in the distant east, past the mound of ancient Troy and beyond Mount Ida, thick, black clouds were rapidly gathering. Thicker and blacker they rolled up from the horizon, enveloping the land, as if to exclude the face of heaven, while occasionally, darting through and intensifying their blackness, came a flash of lightning, like a mighty sword of vengeance.

Before them on the western horizon, a few fleecy clouds, gilded by the last rays of the setting sun, formed, as it were, a beautiful mirage. There were rivers and lakes, and golden islands of fantastic shapes. Grassy fields and shady trees, suggestive of peace and rest, seemed to beckon them thither to dwell forever.

252Armenouhi turned and looked back. The dark, threatening clouds, darker and more threatening than ever, had completely hidden the land. From their intense blackness burst forth a great ball of fire, illuminating them, and seeming to transform them into a vast sea of blood.

She shuddered; Takvor drew her close to him.

“Not backward again, Armenouhi. It is over forever. See the bright lakes, and the islands, and the cool shady trees, and the green fields before us.”

She nestled closer to him and looked forward.