Is honor out of fashion and the men she named
Fit only to be buried and defamed
Who dared hold service was true nobleness
And graced their service in a fitting dress? 
Are manners out of date because the scullions scoff
At whosoever shuns the common trough
Liking dry bread better than the garbled stew
Nor praising greed because the style is new? 
Let go the ancient orders if so be their ways
Are trespassing on decency these days. 
So I go, rather than accept the trampled spoil
Or gamble for what great men earned by toil. 
For rather than trade honor for a mob’s foul praise
I’ll keep full fealty to the ancient ways
And, hoistinq my forebear’s banner in the face of hell,
Will die beneath it, knowing I die well!

Fifteen minutes after Gloria Vanderman left us I saw a banner go jerkily mounting up the newly placed flag-pole on the keep.  A man blew a bugle hoarsely by way of a salute.  I raised my hat.  Monty raised his.  In a moment we were all standing bare-headed, and the great square piece of cloth caught the wind that whistled between two crags of Beirut Dagh.

Fred, our arch-iconoclast, stood uncovered longest.

“Who the devil made it for you?” he inquired.

Stitched on the banner in colored cloth were the two wheat-sheaves and two ships of the Montdidiers, and a scroll stretched its length across the bottom, with the motto doubtless, although in the wind one could not read it.

“The women.  Good of ’em, what?  Miss Vanderman drew it on paper.  They cut it out, and sat up last night sewing it.”

“I suppose you know that’s filibustering, to fly your private banner on foreign soil?”

“They may call it what they please,” said Monty.  “I can’t well fly the flag of England, and Armenia has none yet.  Let’s go below, Fred, and see if there’s any news.”

“Yes, there is news,” said Kagig, leading the way down.  “I did not say it before the lady.  It is not good news.”

“That’s the only kind that won’t keep.  Spit it out!” said Will.

Kagig faced us on the stable roof, and his finger-joints cracked again.

“It is the worst!  They have sent Mahmoud Bey, against us.  I would rather any six other Turks.  Mahmoud Bey is not a fool.  He is a young successful man, who looks to this campaign to bolster his ambition.  He is a ruthless brute!”

“Which Turk isn’t?” asked Will.

“This one is most ruthless.  This Mahmoud is the one who in the massacres of five years ago caused Armenian prisoners to have horse-shoes nailed to their naked feet, in order, he said, that they might march without hurt.  He will waste no time about preliminaries!”

Kagig was entirely right.  Mahmoud Bey began the overture that very instant with artillery fire directed at the hidden defenses flanking the clay ramp.  Next we caught the stuttering chorus of his machine guns, and the intermittent answer of Kagig’s riflemen.