“Is that true?” she demanded.

I nodded.  “The best of our three men was to start on his way the minute he heard the second shot.”

Then I was sure she was Boadicea reincarnate, whether the old-time British queen did or did not have blue eyes and brown hair.

“I will not have brave men brought back here on my account!  Kagig must be a patriot!  He needs all his men!  I don’t blame him for making a hostage of Lord Montdidier!  I would do the same myself!”

Will had evidently given her a pretty complete synopsis of our adventure while I was outside talking with Arabaiji.  It is always a mystery to the British that Americans should hold themselves a race apart and rally to each other as if the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race were foreigners, but those two had obeyed the racial rule.  They understood each other—­swiftly—­a bar and a half ahead of the tune.

“This old castle is no good!” she went on, not raising her voice very high, but making it ring with the wholesomeness of youth, and youth’s intolerance of limits.  “The Turks could come to this place and burn it within a day if they chose!”

“The Turks won’t trouble.  They’ll send their friends the Kurds instead,” Fred assured her.

“Ah-h-h-gh !” growled the Armenians, but she waved them back to silence.

“How much food have you?  Almost none!  How much ammunition?”

“Ah-h-h-h!” they chorused in a very different tone of voice.

“D’you mean you’ve got cartridges here?” Fred demanded.

“Fifty cases of cartridges for government Mauser rifles!” bragged the man who was nearest to Will.

“Gee!  Kagig ’ud give his eyes for them!” (Will devoted his eyes to the more poetic purpose of exchanging flashed encouragement with Gloria.)

“Men, women and children—­how many of you are there?”

“Who knows?  Who has counted?  They keep coming.”

“No, they don’t.  You’ve set a guard to keep any more away for fear the food won’t last—­I know you have!  Well—­what does it matter how many you are?  I say let us all go to Zeitoon and help Kagig!”

“Oh, bravo!” shouted Fred, but it was Will’s praise that proved acceptable and made her smile.

“Second the motion!”

I added a word or two by way of make-weight, that did more as a matter of fact than her young ardor to convince those very skeptical men and women.  No doubt she broke up their determination to sit still, but it was my words that set them on a course.

“Kagig will be angry when he comes.  He’s a ruthless man,” said I, and the Armenians, men as well as women, sought one another’s eyes and nodded.

“Kagig must be more of a ruthless bird than we guessed!” Will whispered.

Counting women, there was less than a score of refugees in the room, and if we had only had them to convince, our work was pretty nearly done.  There was the guard among the trees down-hill that we knew about still to be converted, or perhaps coerced.  But just at the moment when we felt we held the winning hand, there came a ladder thrust down through the hole in the corner of the roof, and a man whom they all greeted as Ephraim began to climb down backward.  He was so loaded with every imaginable kind of weapon that he made more noise than a tinker’s cart.