Hohannes looked up. "There is not much to tell," he said. "Feeling himself, no doubt, very ill, the English Effendi sent for me, and I came. He asked me to take care of you, and if you should recover to try and send you back to your friends in England. And he gave me, to use for you as I thought best, the things I have kept hidden here. He spoke somewhat also of certain papers, but before he could finish what he wanted to say, the fever increased upon him, and his mind began to wander. As to the papers, we never got them. They were stolen away, with his other baggage, by the two Syrian servants, who were brothers, and precious rascals. But these I have." He stooped and took out of the hole something wrapped in a skin and tied with cords. These he carefully unfastened, took off the skin, and revealed two books and a belt of chamois leather. The books he gave to Jack, who recognised, with a thrill of joy and a pang of sorrow, the pocket Bible his father always carried with him, and the note-book in which he used to see him write. "Keep these thyself," said Hohannes. "This," holding up the belt, "I must keep still. There is gold in it." Instinctively his voice dropped lower, though there was none to hear the dangerous word. "I am very glad of it," Jack said frankly, as, for the first time, it occurred to him that these people, upon whom he had no claim, had been providing for all his wants. "Father Hohannes, you and yours have fed and tended me all this time like a child of your own. It ought to be all yours!" "You have a generous heart, Yon Effendi. And, in fact, I have used it for you as far as was necessary and just. There were medicines and other things when you were ill, and there was the tax to pay for you." "The tax for me?" Jack repeated. "What tax?" "Know you not we have to pay, year by year, every man and boy among us, for breathing the air? Even for the new-born babe the Turk exacts it. So your tax had to be found along with our own, and will be next year also. Moreover I own, a piece or two went to the Kourds as backsheesh, that they might let our cattle alone." "Indeed, father," Jack said again, "I wish you would take it all; it is yours by right." Hohannes shook his head. "And what, then, if you should want to go home?" he said; "or if any way for your doing it should open? Moreover we dare not, for our lives, let any one know we have so much gold in the house. The Kourds would come down from the mountains and rob us, or the Turks would take it from us on pretence of arrears of taxes. It is best for me to keep it here for you. You see where I put it?" "Yes, Father Hohannes; it is all right," said Jack.