Chambers Robert William
The Dark Star

“Please read, daddy!”

The Reverend Wilbour Carew turned the page and quietly continued:

March 20. In my own quarters at Trebizond again, and rid of Murad for a while.

A canvas cover and rope handles concealed the character of my olive wood chest. I do not believe anybody suspects it to be anything except one of the various boxes containing my own personal effects. I shall open it tonight with a file and chisel, if possible.

March 21. The contents of the chest reveal something of the tragedy. The box is full of letters written in Russian, and full of stones which weigh collectively a hundred pounds at least. There is nothing else in the chest except a broken Ikon and a bronze figure of Erlik, a Yildiz relic, no doubt, of some Kurdish raid into Mongolia, and probably placed beside the dead girl by her murderers in derision. I am translating the letters and arranging them in sequence.

March 25. I have translated the letters. The dead girl’s name was evidently Tatyana, one of several children of some Cossack chief or petty prince, and on the eve of her marriage to a young officer named Mitya the Kurds raided the town. They carried poor Tatyana off along with her wedding chest – the chest fished up with my grapnel.

In brief, the chest and the girl found their way into Abdul’s seraglio. The letters of the dead girl – which were written and entrusted probably to a faithless slave, but which evidently never left the seraglio – throw some light on the tragedy, for they breathe indignation and contempt of Islam, and call on her affianced, on her parents, and on her people to rescue her and avenge her.

And after a while, no doubt Abdul tired of reading fierce, unreconciled little Tatyana’s stolen letters, and simply ended the matter by having her bowstrung and dumped overboard in a sack, together with her marriage chest, her letters, and the Yellow Devil in bronze as a final insult.

She seems to have had a sister, Naïa, thirteen years old, betrothed to a Prince Mistchenka, a cavalry officer in the Terek Cossacks. Her father had been Hetman of the Don Cossacks before the Emperor Nicholas reserved that title for Imperial use. And she ended in a sack off Gallipoli! That is the story of Tatyana and her wedding chest.

March 29. Murad arrived, murderously bland and assiduous in his solicitude for my health and comfort. I am almost positive he knows that I fished up something from Cove No. 37 under the theoretical guns of theoretical Fort Osman, both long plotted out but long delayed.

April 5. My duplicate plans for Gallipoli have been stolen. I have a third set still. Colonel Murad Bey is not to be trusted. My position is awkward and is becoming serious. There is no faith to be placed in Abdul Hamid. My credentials, the secret agreement with my Government, are no longer regarded even with toleration in the Yildiz Kiosque. A hundred insignificant incidents prove it every day. And if Abdul dare not break with Germany it is only because he is not yet ready to defy the Young Turk party. The British Embassy is very active and bothers me a great deal.

April 10. My secret correspondence with Enver Bey has been discovered, and my letters opened. This is a very bad business. I have notified my Government that the Turkish Government does not want me here; that the plan of a Germanised Turkish army is becoming objectionable to the Porte; that the duplicate plans of our engineers for the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula have been stolen.

April 13. A secret interview with Enver Bey, who promises that our ideas shall be carried out when his party comes into power. Evidently he does not know that my duplicates have been stolen.

Troubles threaten in the Vilayet of Trebizond, where is an American Mission. I fear that our emissaries and the emissaries of Enver Bey are deliberately fomenting disorders because Americans are not desired by our Government. Enver denies this; but it is idle to believe anyone in this country.

April 16. Another interview with Enver Bey. His scheme is flatly revolutionary, namely, the deposition of Abdul, a secret alliance, offensive and defensive, with us; the Germanisation of the Turkish army and navy; the fortification of the Gallipoli district according to our plans; a steadily increasing pressure on Serbia; a final reckoning with Russia which is definitely to settle the status of Albania and Serbia and leave the Balkan grouping to be settled between Austria, Germany, and Turkey.

I spoke several times about India and Egypt, but he does not desire to arouse England unless she interferes.

I spoke also of Abdul Hamid’s secret and growing fear of Germany, and his increasing inclination toward England once more.

No trace of my stolen plans. The originals are in the Yildiz Palace. I have a third set secreted, about which nobody knows.

April 21. I have been summoned to the Yildiz Palace. It possibly means my assassination. I have confided my box of data, photographs, and plans, to the Reverend Wilbour Carew, an American missionary in the Trebizond sanjak.

There are rumours that Abdul has become mentally unhinged through dread of assassination. One of his own aides-de-camp, while being granted an audience in the Yildiz, made a sudden and abrupt movement to find his handkerchief; and Abdul Hamid whipped out a pistol and shot him dead. This is authentic.

April 30. Back at Tchardak with my good missionary and his wife. A strange interview with Abdul. There were twenty French clocks in the room, all going and all striking at various intervals. The walls were set with French mirrors.

Abdul’s cordiality was terrifying; the full original set of my Gallipoli plans was brought in. After a while, the Sultan reminded me that the plans were in duplicate, and asked me where were these duplicates. What duplicity! But I said pleasantly that they were to be sent to General Staff Headquarters in Berlin.

He pretended to understand that this was contrary to the agreement, and insisted that the plans should first be sent to him for comparison. I merely referred him to his agreement with my Government. But all the while we were talking I was absolutely convinced that the stolen duplicates were at that moment in the Yildiz Kiosque. Abdul must have known that I believed it. Yet we both merely smiled our confidence in each other.

He seemed to be unusually good-natured and gracious, saying that no doubt I was quite right in sending the plans to Berlin. He spoke of Enver Bey cordially, and said he hoped to be reconciled to him and his friends very soon. When Abdul Hamid becomes reconciled to anybody who disagrees with him, the latter is always dead.

He asked me where I was going. I told him about the plans I was preparing for the Trebizond district. He offered me an escort of Kurdish cavalry, saying that he had been told the district was not very safe. I thanked him and declined his escort of assassins.

I saw it all very plainly. Like a pirate captain, Abdul orders his crew to dig a secret hole for his treasure, and when the hole is dug and the treasure hidden, he murders the men who hid it for him, so that they shall never betray its location. I am one of those men. That is what he means for me, who have given him his Gallipoli plans. No wonder that in England they call him Abdul the Damned!

May 3. In the Bazaar at Tchardak yesterday two men tried to stab me. I got their daggers, but they escaped in the confusion. Murad called to express horror and regret. Yes; regret that I had not been murdered.

May 5. I have written to my Government that my usefulness here seems to be ended; that my life is in hourly danger; that I desire to be more thoroughly informed concerning the relations between Berlin and the Yildiz Palace.

May 6. I am in disgrace. My Government is furious because my correspondence with Enver Bey has been stolen. The Porte has complained about me to Berlin; Berlin disowns me, disclaims all knowledge of my political activities outside of my engineering work.

This is what failure to carry out secret instructions invariably brings – desertion by the Government from which such instructions are received. In diplomacy, failure is a crime never forgiven. Abandoned by my Government I am now little better than an outlaw here. Two courses remain open to me – to go back in disgrace and live obscurely for the remainder of my life, or to risk my life by hanging on desperately here with an almost hopeless possibility before me of accomplishing something to serve my Government and rehabilitate myself.

The matter of the stolen plans is being taken up by our Ambassador at the Sublime Porte. The British Embassy is suspected. What folly! I possess a third set of plans. Our Embassy ought to send to Trebizond for them. I don’t know what to do.

May 12. A letter I wrote May 10 to the German Embassy has been stolen. I am now greatly worried about the third set of plans. It seems safest to include the box containing them among the baggage of the American missionary, the Reverend Wilbour Carew; and, too, for me to seek shelter with him.

As I am now afraid that an enemy may impersonate an official of the German Embassy, I have the missionary’s promise that he will retain and conceal the contents of my box until I instruct him otherwise. I am practically in hiding at his house, and in actual fear of my life.

May 15. The missionary and his wife and baby travel to Gallipoli, where an American school for girls is about to be opened.

Today, in a café, I noticed that the flies, swarming on the edge of my coffee cup, fell into the saucer dead. I did not taste my coffee.

May 16. Last night a shot was fired through my door. I have decided to travel to Gallipoli with the missionary.

 

May 18. My groom stole and ate an orange from my breakfast tray. He is dead.

May 20. The Reverend Mr. Carew and his wife are most kind and sympathetic. They are good people, simple, kindly, brave, faithful, and fearlessly devoted to God’s service in this vile land of treachery and lies.

May 21. I have confessed to the Reverend Mr. Carew as I would confess to a priest in holy orders. I have told him all under pledge of secrecy. I told him also that the sanctuary he offers might be violated with evil consequences to him; and that I would travel as far as Gallipoli with him and then leave. But the kind, courageous missionary and his wife insist that I remain under the protection which he says the flag of his country affords me. If I could only get my third set of plans out of the country!

May 22. Today my coffee was again poisoned. I don’t know what prevented me from tasting it – some vague premonition. A pariah dog ate the bread I soaked in it, and died before he could yelp.

It looks to me as though my end were inevitable. Today I gave my bronze figure of Erlik, the Yellow Devil, to Mrs. Carew to keep as a dowry for her little daughter, now a baby in arms. If it is hollow, as I feel sure, there are certain to be one or two jewels in it. And the figure itself might bring five hundred marks at an antiquary’s.

May 30. Arrived at the Gallipoli mission. Three Turkish ironclads lying close inshore. A British cruiser, the Cobra, and an American cruiser, the Oneida, appeared about sunset and anchored near the ironclads. The bugles on deck were plainly audible. If a German warship appears I shall carry my box on board. My only chance to rehabilitate myself is to get the third set of plans to Berlin.

June 1. In the middle of the religious exercises with which the new school is being inaugurated, cries of “Allah” come from a great crowd which has gathered. From my window where I am writing I can see how insolent the attitude of this Mohammedan riffraff is becoming. They spit upon the ground – a pebble is tossed at a convert – a sudden shout of “Allah” – pushing and jostling – a lighted torch blazes! I take my whip of rhinoceros hide and go down into the court to put a stop to this insolence–

Her father slowly closed the book.

“Daddy! Is that where poor Herr Wilner died?”

“Yes, dear.”

After a silence his wife said thoughtfully:

“I have always considered it very strange that the German Government did not send for Herr Wilner’s papers.”

“Probably they did, Mary. And very probably Murad Bey told them that the papers had been destroyed.”

“And you never believed it to be your duty to send the papers to the German Government?”

“No. It was an unholy alliance that Germany sought with that monster Abdul. And when Enver Pasha seized the reins of government such an alliance would have been none the less unholy. You know and so do I that if Germany did not actually incite the Armenian massacres she at least was cognisant of preparations made to begin them. Germany is still hostile to all British or American missions, all Anglo-Saxon influence in Turkey.

“No; I did not send Herr Wilner’s papers to Berlin; and the events of the last fifteen years have demonstrated that I was right in withholding them.”

His wife nodded, laid aside her work basket, and rose.

“Come, Ruhannah,” she said with decision; “put everything back into the wonder-box.”

And, stooping, she lifted and laid away in it the scowling, menacing Yellow Devil.

And so, every month or two, the wonder-box was opened for the child to play with, the same story told, extracts from the diary read; but these ceremonies, after a while, began to recur at lengthening intervals as the years passed and the child grew older.

And finally it was left to her to open the box when she desired, and to read for herself the pencilled translation of the diary, which her father had made during some of the idle and trying moments of his isolated and restricted life. And, when she had been going to school for some years, other and more vivid interests replaced her dolls and her wonder-box; but not her beloved case of water-colours and crayon pencils.

CHAPTER II
BROOKHOLLOW

The mother, shading the candle with her work-worn hand, looked down at the child in silence. The subdued light fell on a freckled cheek where dark lashes rested, on a slim neck and thin shoulders framed by a mass of short, curly chestnut hair.

Though it was still dark, the mill whistle was blowing for six o’clock. Like a goblin horn it sounded ominously through Ruhannah’s dream. She stirred in her sleep; her mother stole across the room, closed the window, and went away carrying the candle with her.

At seven the whistle blew again; the child turned over and unclosed her eyes. A brassy light glimmered between leafless apple branches outside her window. Through the frosty radiance of sunrise a blue jay screamed.

Ruhannah cuddled deeper among the blankets and buried the tip of her chilly nose. But the grey eyes remained wide open and, under the faded quilt, her little ears were listening intently.

Presently from the floor below came the expected summons:

“Ruhannah!”

“Oh, please, mother!”

“It’s after seven–”

“I know: I’ll be ready in time!”

“It’s after seven, Rue!”

“I’m so cold, mother dear!”

“I closed your window. You may bathe and dress down here.”

“B-r-r-r! I can see my own breath when I breathe!”

“Come down and dress by the kitchen range,” repeated her mother. “I’ve warm water all ready for you.”

The brassy light behind the trees was becoming golden; slim bluish shadows already stretched from the base of every tree across frozen fields dusted with snow.

As usual, the lank black cat came walking into the room, its mysterious crystal-green eyes brilliant in the glowing light.

Listening, the child heard her father moving heavily about in the adjoining room.

Then, from below again:

“Ruhannah!”

“I’m going to get up, mother!”

“Rue! Obey me!”

“I’m up! I’m on my way!” She sprang out amid a tempest of bedclothes, hopped gingerly across the chilly carpet, seized her garments in one hand, comb and toothbrush in the other, ran into the hallway and pattered downstairs.

The cat followed leisurely, twitching a coal-black tail.

“Mother, could I have my breakfast first? I’m so hungry–”

Her mother turned from the range and kissed her as she huddled close to it. The sheet of zinc underneath warmed her bare feet delightfully. She sighed with satisfaction, looked wistfully at the coffeepot simmering, sniffed at the biscuits and sizzling ham.

“Could I have one little taste before I–”

“Come, dear. There’s the basin. Bathe quickly, now.”

Ruhannah frowned and cast a tragic glance upon the tin washtub on the kitchen floor. Presently she stole over, tested the water with her finger-tip, found it not unreasonably cold, dropped the night-dress from her frail shoulders, and stepped into the tub with a perfunctory shiver – a thin, overgrown child of fifteen, with pipestem limbs and every rib anatomically apparent.

Her hair, which had been cropped to shoulder length, seemed to turn from chestnut to bronze fire, gleaming and crackling under the comb which she hastily passed through it before twisting it up.

“Quickly but thoroughly,” said her mother. “Hasten, Rue.”

Ruhannah seized soap and sponge, gasped, shut her grey eyes tightly, and fell to scrubbing with the fury of despair.

“Don’t splash, dear–”

“Did you warm my towel, mother?” – blindly stretching out one thin and dripping arm.

Her mother wrapped her in a big crash towel from head to foot.

Later, pulling on stockings and shoes by the range, she managed to achieve a buttered biscuit at the same time, and was already betraying further designs upon another one when her mother sent her to set the table in the sitting-room.

Thither sauntered Ruhannah, partly dressed, still dressing.

By the nickel-trimmed stove she completed her toilet, then hastily laid the breakfast cloth and arranged the china and plated tableware, and filled the water pitcher.

Her father came in on his crutches; she hurried from the table, syrup jug in one hand, cruet in the other, and lifted her face to be kissed; then she brought hot plates, coffeepot, and platters, and seated herself at the table where her father and mother were waiting in silence.

When she was seated her father folded his large, pallid, bony hands; her mother clasped hers on the edge of the table, bowing her head; and Ruhannah imitated them. Between her fingers she could see the cat under the table, and she watched it arch its back and gently rub against her chair.

“For what we are about to receive, make us grateful, Eternal Father. This day we should go hungry except for Thy bounty. Without presuming to importune Thee, may we ask Thee to remember all who awake hungry on this winter day… Amen.”

Ruhannah instantly became very busy with her breakfast. The cat beside her chair purred loudly and rose at intervals on its hind legs to twitch her dress; and Ruhannah occasionally bestowed alms and conversation upon it.

“Rue,” said her mother, “you should try to do better with your algebra this week.”

“Yes, I do really mean to.”

“Have you had any more bad-conduct marks?”

“Yes, mother.”

Her father lifted his mild, dreamy eyes of an invalid. Her mother asked:

“What for?”

“For wasting my time in study hour,” said the girl truthfully.

“Were you drawing?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Rue! Again! Why do you persist in drawing pictures in your copy books when you have an hour’s lesson in drawing every week? Besides, you may draw pictures at home whenever you wish.”

“I don’t exactly know why,” replied the girl slowly. “It just happens before I notice what I am doing… Of course,” she explained, “I do recollect that I oughtn’t to be drawing in study hour. But that’s after I’ve begun, and then it seems a pity not to finish.”

Her mother looked across the table at her husband:

“Speak to her seriously, Wilbour.”

The Reverend Mr. Carew looked solemnly at his long-legged and rapidly growing daughter, whose grey eyes gazed back into her father’s sallow visage.

“Rue,” he said in his colourless voice, “try to get all you can out of your school. I haven’t sufficient means to educate you in drawing and in similar accomplishments. So get all you can out of your school. Because, some day, you will have to help yourself, and perhaps help us a little.”

He bent his head with a detached air and sat gazing mildly at vacancy – already, perhaps, forgetting what the conversation was about.

“Mother?”

“What, Rue?”

“What am I going to do to earn my living?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you mean I must go into the mill like everybody else?”

“There are other things. Girls work at many things in these days.”

“What kind of things?”

“They may learn to keep accounts, help in shops–”

“If father could afford it, couldn’t I learn to do something more interesting? What do girls work at whose fathers can afford to let them learn how to work?”

“They may become teachers, learn stenography and typewriting; they can, of course, become dressmakers; they can nurse–”

“Mother!”

“Yes?”

“Could I choose the business of drawing pictures? I know how!”

“Dear, I don’t believe it is practical to–”

“Couldn’t I draw pictures for books and magazines? Everybody says I draw very nicely. You say so, too. Couldn’t I earn enough money to live on and to take care of you and father?”

Wilbour Carew looked up from his reverie:

“To learn to draw correctly and with taste,” he said in his gentle, pedantic voice, “requires a special training which we cannot afford to give you, Ruhannah.”

“Must I wait till I’m twenty-five before I can have my money?” she asked for the hundredth time. “I do so need it to educate myself. Why did grandma do such a thing, mother?”

“Your grandmother never supposed you would need the money until you were a grown woman, dear. Your father and I were young, vigorous, full of energy; your father’s income was ample for us then.”

“Have I got to marry a man before I can get enough money to take lessons in drawing with?”

Her mother’s drawn smile was not very genuine. When a child asks such questions no mother finds it easy to smile.

“If you marry, dear, it is not likely you’ll marry in order to take lessons in drawing. Twenty-five is not old. If you still desire to study art you will be able to do so.”

“Twenty-five!” repeated Rue, aghast. “I’ll be an old woman.”

“Many begin their life’s work at an older age–”

“Mother! I’d rather marry somebody and begin to study art. Oh, don’t you think that even now I could support myself by making pictures for magazines? Don’t you, mother dear?”

“Rue, as your father explained, a special course of instruction is necessary before one can become an artist–”

“But I do draw very nicely!” She slipped from her chair, ran to the old secretary where the accumulated masterpieces of her brief career were treasured, and brought them for her parents’ inspection, as she had brought them many times before.

Her father looked at them listlessly; he did not understand such things. Her mother took them one by one from Ruhannah’s eager hands and examined these grimy Records of her daughter’s childhood.

There were drawings of every description in pencil, in crayon, in mussy water-colours, done on scraps of paper of every shape and size. The mother knew them all by heart, every single one, but she examined each with a devotion and an interest forever new.

There were many pictures of the cat; many of her parents, too – odd, shaky, smeared portraits all out of proportion, but usually recognisable.

A few landscapes varied the collection – a view or two of the stone bridge opposite, a careful drawing of the ruined paper mill. But the majority of the subjects were purely imaginary; pictures of demons and angels, of damsels and fairy princes – paragons of beauty – with castles on adjacent crags and swans adorning convenient ponds.

Her mother rose after a few moments, laid aside the pile of drawings, went to the kitchen and returned with her daughter’s schoolbooks and lunch basket.

“Rue, you’ll be late again. Get on your rubbers immediately.”

The child’s shabby winter coat was already too short in skirt and sleeve, and could be lengthened no further. She pulled the blue toboggan cap over her head, took a hasty osculatory leave of her father, seized books and lunch basket, and followed her mother to the door.

Below the house the Brookhollow road ran south across an old stone bridge and around a hill to Gayfield, half a mile away.

Rue, drawing on her woollen gloves, looked up at her mother. Her lip trembled very slightly. She said:

“I shouldn’t know what to do if I couldn’t draw pictures… When I draw a princess I mean her for myself… It is pleasant – to pretend to live with swans.”

She opened the door, paused on the step; the frosty breath drifted from her lips. Then she looked back over her shoulder; her mother kissed her, held her tightly for a moment.

“If I’m to be forbidden to draw pictures,” repeated the girl, “I don’t know what will become of me. Because I really live there – in the pictures I make.”

“We’ll talk it over this evening, darling. Don’t draw in study hour any more, will you?”

“I’ll try to remember, mother.”

When the spindle-limbed, boyish figure had sped away beyond sight, Mrs. Carew shut the door, drew her wool shawl closer, and returned slowly to the sitting-room. Her husband, deep in a padded rocking-chair by the window, was already absorbed in the volume which lay open on his knees – the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson – one of the world’s good men. Ruhannah had named her cat after him.

His wife seated herself. She had dishes to do, two bedrooms, preparations for noonday dinner – the usual and unchangeable routine. She turned and looked out of the window across brown fields thinly powdered with snow. Along a brawling, wintry-dark stream, fringed with grey alders, ran the Brookhollow road. Clumps of pines and elms bordered it. There was nothing else to see except a distant crow in a ten-acre lot, walking solemnly about all by himself.

… Like the vultures that wandered through the compound that dreadful day in May … she thought involuntarily.

But it was a far cry from Trebizond to Brookhollow. And her husband had been obliged to give up after the last massacre, when every convert had been dragged out and killed in the floating shadow of the Stars and Stripes, languidly brilliant overhead.

For the Sublime Porte and the Kurds had had their usual way at last; there was nothing left of the Mission; school and converts were gone; her wounded husband, her baby, and herself refugees in a foreign consulate; and the Turkish Government making apologies with its fat tongue in its greasy cheek.

The Koran says: “Woe to those who pray, and in their prayers are careless.”

The Koran also says: “In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful: What thinkest thou of him who treateth our religion as a lie?”

Mrs. Carew and her crippled husband knew, now, what the Sublime Porte thought about it, and what was the opinion of the Kurdish cavalry concerning missionaries and converts who treated the Moslem religion as a lie.

She looked at her pallid and crippled husband; he was still reading; his crutches lay beside him on the floor. She turned her eyes to the window. Out there the solitary crow was still walking busily about in the frozen pasture. And again she remembered the vultures that hulked and waddled amid the débris of the burned Mission.

Only that had been in May; and above the sunny silence in that place of death had sounded the unbroken and awful humming of a million million flies…

And so, her husband being now hopelessly broken and useless, they had come back with their child, Ruhannah, to their home in Brookhollow.

Here they had lived ever since; here her grey life was passing; here her daughter was already emerging into womanhood amid the stark, unlovely environments of a country crossroads, arid in summer, iron naked in winter, with no horizon except the Gayfield hills, no outlook save the Brookhollow road. And that led to the mill.

She had done what she could – was still doing it. But there was nothing to save. Her child’s destiny seemed to be fixed.

Her husband corresponded with the Board of Missions, wrote now and then for the Christian Pioneer, and lived on the scanty pension allowed to those who, like himself, had become incapacitated in line of duty. There was no other income.

There was, however, the six thousand dollars left to Ruhannah by her grandmother, slowly accumulating interest in the Mohawk Bank at Orangeville, the county seat, and not to be withdrawn, under the terms of the will, until the day Ruhannah married or attained, unmarried, her twenty-fifth year.

Neither principal nor interest of this legacy was available at present. Life in the Carew family at Brookhollow was hard sledding, and bid fair to continue so indefinitely.

The life of Ruhannah’s father was passed in reading or in gazing silently from the window – a tall, sallow, bearded man with the eyes of a dreaming martyr and the hands of an invalid – who still saw in the winter sky, across brown, snow-powdered fields, the minarets of Trebizond.

In reading, in reflection, in dreaming, in spiritual acquiescence, life was passing in sombre shadows for this middle-aged man who had been hopelessly crushed in Christ’s service; and who had never regretted that service, never complained, never doubted the wisdom and the mercy of his Leader’s inscrutable manœuvres with the soldiers who enlist to follow Him. As far as that is concerned, the Reverend Wilbour Carew had been born with a believing mind; doubt of divine goodness in Deity was impossible for him; doubt of human goodness almost as difficult.

Such men have little chance in a brisk, busy, and jaunty world; but they prefer it should be that way with them. And of these few believers in the goodness of God and man are our fools and gentlemen composed.

On that dreadful day, the Kurd who had mangled him so frightfully that he recovered only to limp through life on crutches bent over him and shouted in his face:

“Now, you Christian dog, before I cut your throat show me how this Christ of yours can be a god!”

“Is it necessary,” replied the missionary faintly, “to light a candle in order to show a man the midday sun?”