Yet the meeting between the brothers seemed to fan the feeble, flickering spark of Gabriel's life into a flame. It was another tie to earth to feel he had one brother there left him still--"No, _two_ brothers," as he said, looking lovingly at Jack. A little while afterwards, Jack was sent for one day by Miss Celandine. "Franks have come to her from Aintab," said the excited messenger. Delighted to think that Miss Celandine's long loneliness was over, Jack went to her at once. He found her in earnest converse with a grey-haired American missionary, whom, in introducing Jack to him, she called Dr. Sandeman. Then she said to Jack, "I want you very much, Mr. Grayson. Baron Vartonian is in there," glancing at the door of an inner room. "He came with Dr. Sandeman. He has just heard that of all his large family there remains to him now not one. You know more about them than any one else who is living now, save Gabriel. Will you go in and speak to him, and comfort him if you can?" Though his heart fainted within him at the thought of such a sorrow, Jack went into the inner room. There were two persons there. Old Baron Vartonian sat on the divan, his head bowed down upon both his hands, his face hidden. Now and then the sound of low, deep moans--such moans as only come from a strong man's deepest heart--broke the stillness. Beside him stood a young man with a face incredibly pale and worn and wasted, as if with some great agony, though its look was one of past rather than of present suffering. "The look of one that had travailed sore, But whose pangs were ended now." His hand was laid tenderly, and with a caressing touch, on the old man's shoulder; for that was all the human sympathy he was able to bear just yet. He motioned Jack to sit on the divan. "You were their friend, you loved them," he said. "And received from them much kindness," Jack answered in a low voice. After a pause he went on, "She that was dearer to me than my life was as a child in their house. It was they who brought her to the Mission School, where such joy and help were given her." "Why do I live?" the old man broke out suddenly. "It is wrong! It is horrible! It is against nature! No reaper reaps the green and leaves the ripe. No gardener leaves the dry stick in the ground and uproots the flourishing tree. I am alone--alone--alone! I came back, after all those long months of suffering, thinking, 'now I will rest, now I will end my days in my home with my dear ones; my son--my firstborn--shall close my eyes, and my children, and my children's children, shall lay me in the grave.' And I find all gone--sons and sons' sons, with the mothers and the children, and the children's children--even the little babe I had never seen. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" Then letting his hands fall and looking at the two who stood beside him: "But I do not believe it. It is not possible. Surely _one_ at least is left alive. Let us go and see."