Then everybody ate, in a primitive, informal way. Jack had his handful of rice and his piece of bread with the rest, and no food he had ever tasted seemed to him more wonderful than this. He was eating with Christians again. There sat Miss Celandine, in her frail womanhood, a tower of strength to them all; there were the dear Pastor's rescued children, pale and changed indeed from the unfathomed depths of suffering they had passed through, but all there, not one lacking from the little flock. There was the sweet face of Elmas, his Shushan's friend. And Shushan was safe too. God had _not_ forgotten to be gracious, nor had He in anger shut up His tender mercies from them. Jack went over to Elmas. "Dear Oriort Elmas," he said, "do you know me? I am John Grayson. My Shushan loved you well. And you will be glad to know that she is--_safe_; so are all the rest, although Gabriel only is with us still." But now Miss Celandine was clearing the room, that the Pastor's children might have the rest and quiet they so sorely needed. There was not another spot in the crowded mission buildings that could be given up to them. With those who needed her she would speak in the passage outside. Jack waited patiently for his turn, and it came at last. It may have been a relief to the lonely woman to use the tongue of her native land again, for she took time to tell him how the Pastor's children had been saved. "The captain of my zaptiehs saw my anguish during the awful days," she said. "He was moved, and asked me was there anything he could do for me. I said, 'Stop these horrors.' He answered that he could not. 'It is the will of Allah,' he said, as they all say. Then I answered, 'Find those children for me, and bring them here. They are mine; they belong to the Mission.' And I described them all to him. I believe he sought them diligently; and now here they are at last, after nights and days of cold and hunger and of agonizing fear. Yet God has kept them. Now, as for you, Mr. Grayson, will you come with me? I have something to give you." He followed her to another room filled with people, where washing and cooking were going on. Motioning him to stay at the door, she made her way over beds, mats, babies and cooking utensils, to a press, which she opened, took something out, and came back with it. They went to the court together without speaking, and there, under the leafless branches of a fig-tree, John Grayson got back his father's Bible, the Book of his betrothal. "Shushan said to me one day that if her end of the cross was the first lifted off, I was to give this to you. See, there is a bit of silk put in, to mark the place she was reading when she was sent for to receive her father's blessing." Jack opened the Book, and these were the words his eyes fell upon: "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."