Dr. Sandeman smiled. "I think she would say your services have been worth more than your morsel of bread. And as for your journey, we can take you on without expense as far as Aleppo. I am going there." "You are very good; and the cost at least I can repay you afterwards, but the kindness--never. But I shall have to get somehow from Aleppo to Alexandretta, and there to take a passage in the first steamer I can find. How can all that be managed?" "When you come to Aleppo, you shall tell your story to the English Consul. I have little doubt he will provide for your safe conveyance to Alexandretta, and lend you the passage money." "How shall I get him to believe me? I should not mind so much if he were the same I knew when I passed through Aleppo with my father, five years ago. But this is another man." "He will believe you," the missionary said quietly. He would not speak of his own influence for a double reason--it would be boastful, and it might be dangerous. "Your story bears all the impress of truth, and you can prove it in a hundred ways." "Then my course is plain," Jack said. "And the first step," he added with a sigh, "is to say farewell to the dear friends here." He rose to go, but turned back to ask, with a little hesitation, "Dr. Sandeman, have you seen the Cathedral?" "_Yes_" said the missionary with a shudder. "After all this time, it is still the most sickening sight I have ever beheld. Not sight alone; every sense is outraged. Do not go near it, Mr. Grayson." "And yet," Jack answered, "Christ's martyrs went to Him from thence." John Grayson's journey, in the company of Dr. Sandeman, proved as little eventful as any journey at that time and in those regions could possibly be. One sad episode indeed there was. As usual, they halted at Biridjik. They found the town a wreck and the houses in ruins, many of them burned, others plundered and defaced. The streets were almost impassable with rubbish, broken glass, fragments of furniture, and other far more ghastly memorials of the massacre. The remaining inhabitants had been forced to become Moslems to save their lives. They kept themselves shut up in their houses, or moved about--pale, attenuated shadows, with fear and horror stamped upon their countenances. No intercourse was permitted between them and the missionary's party; only a few of them dared to look at the travellers with eyes of piteous appeal and recognition, and to make furtively, with rapid fingers, the sign of the cross. Jack longed to give them Gabriel's word of comfort, "Christ will forgive you; only you have lost a grand opportunity." He said this to Dr. Sandeman, who answered, "_You_ have a right to say that; so had he; but it seems to me that no man who has not been tried thus can estimate the trial, the opportunity, or the loss."