“What’s the straw for?” Fred demanded.

“Ask him!” said Kagig.  “He understands!  If there should be treachery the straw will be set alight, and he shall know how pigs feel when they are roasted alive!  Never fear—­there will be no treachery!”

We followed him back to his own house, he urging us to make good note of the prisoners’ condition, and to bear witness before the world to it afterward.

“The world does not know the difference between Armenians and Turks!” he complained again and again.

Once again we arranged ourselves about his open chimney-place, this time with Kagig on a foot-stool in the midst of us.  Heat, weariness, and process of digestion were combining to make us drowsily comfortable, and I, for one, would have fallen asleep where I sat.  But at last the long-awaited happened, and in came Monty striding like a Norman, dripping with dew, and clean from washing in the icy water of some mountain torrent.

“Oh, hello, Didums!” Fred remarked, as if they had parted about an hour ago.  “You long-legged rascal, you look as if you’d been having the time of your life!”

“I have!” said Monty.  And after a short swift stare at him Fred looked glum.  Those two men understood each other as the clapper understands the bell.

Chapter Sixteen “What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?”

“IT WAS VERY GOOD” (Genesis 1:31)

I saw these shambles in my youth, and said
There is no God!  No Pitiful presides
Over such obsequies as these.  The end
Alike is darkness whether foe or friend,
Beast, man or flower the event abides. 
There is no heaven for the hopeful dead—­
No better haven than forgetful sod
That smothers limbs and mouth and ears and eyes,
And with those, love and permanence and strife
And vanity and laughter that they thought was life,
Making mere compost of the one who dies. 
To whose advantage?  Nay, there is no God! 
But He, whose other name is Pitiful, was pleased
By melting gentleness whose measures broke
The ramps of ignorance and keeps of lust,
Tumbling alike folly and the fool to dust,
To teach me womanhood until there spoke
Still voices inspiration had released,
And I heard truly.  All the voices said: 
Out of departed yesterday is grown to-day;
Out of to-day to-morrow surely breaks;
Out of corruption the inspired awakes;
Out of existence earth-clouds roll away
And leave all living, for there are no dead!

After we had made room for Monty before the fire and some one had hung his wet jacket up to dry, we volleyed questions at him faster than he could answer.  He sat still and let us finish, with fingers locked together over his crossed knee and, underneath the inevitable good humor, a rather puzzled air of wishing above all things to understand our point of view.  Over and over again I have noticed that trait, although he always tried to cover it under an air of polite indifference and easy tolerance that was as opaque to a careful observer as Fred’s attempts at cynicism.