“What are they?”

“Tenekelis?  The word means ‘tin-plate men.’  We call them that because of the tin badges given them to wear in their head-dress.  In no other way do they resemble officers.  They are brigands favored by official recognition, that is all.  Their purpose is to pillage Armenians.  While you slept in this village, and your watchmen slept up above there, that whole rabble of bandits with their tin-plate officers passed within half a mile, following along the track by which you came!  If you had been awake—­and cooking—­or singing—­or making any sort of noise they must have heard you!  Instead, they turned down toward the plain a little short distance too soon—­and my men met them—­and there was a skirmish—­and I rallied my other men, and attacked them suddenly.  We accounted for two of the tin-plate men, and so many of the thing they call a regiment that the others took to flight.  Jannam! (My soul!) But you are paragons of sleepers!”

“Do you never sleep?” I asked him.

“Shall a man keep watch over a nation, and sleep?” he answered.  “Aye—­here a little, there a little, I snatch sleep when I can.  My heart burns in me.  I shall sleep on my horse on the way back to Zeitoon, but the burning within will waken me by fits and starts.”

He got up and stood very politely in front of Gloria Vanderman, removing his cossack kalpak for the first time and holding it with a peculiar suggestion of humility.

“You shall be put to no indignity at the hands of my people,” he said.  “They are not bad people, but they have suffered, and some have been made afraid.  They would have kept you safe.  But now you shall have twenty men if you wish, and they shall deliver you safely into Tarsus.  If you wish it, I will send one of these gentlemen with you to keep you in countenance before my men; they are foreigners to you, and no one could blame you for fearing them.  The gentleman would not wish to go, but I would send him!”

She shook her head, pretty merrily for a girl in her predicament.

“I was curious to meet you, Mr. Kagig, but that’s nothing to the attraction that draws me now.  I must meet the other man—­is it Monty you all call him—­or never know a moment’s peace!”

“You mean you will not go to Tarsus?”

“Of course I won’t!”

“Of course!” laughed Fred.  “Any young woman—­”

“Of course?” Kagig repeated the extravagant gesture of shrugged shoulders and up-turned palms.  “Ah, well.  You are American.  I will not argue.  What would be the use?”

He turned his back on us and strode out with that air that not even the great stage-actors can ever acquire, of becoming suddenly and utterly oblivious of present company in the consciousness of deeds that need attention.  Generals of command, great captains of industry, and a few rare statesmen have it; but the statesmen are most rare, because they are trained to pretend, and therefore unconvincing.  The generals and captains are detested for it by all who have never humbled themselves to the point where they can think, and be unselfishly absorbed.  Kagig stepped out of one zone of thought into the next, and shut the door behind him.