But since the battle with the dogs and the gift of the towels, his shyness had returned in full force. So much so that when, with great trouble, he caught in hunting, and brought back to her, one of the pretty little gazelles the Armenians love to keep as pets, it cost him more trouble still to present his offering. But he was rewarded by the light in Shushan's lovely face, and the smile with which she spoke her gentle "Much very thanks, Master John." Yet the passion that began to grow in John Grayson's heart was two-fold. Love and burning indignation were so closely twined together, that he could not have severed them if he tried. As his whole development since his illness had been slow, so it was but slowly and gradually that he grew to understand the conditions under which Shushan and all the rest were living. But when he came to realize them fully, he wished at first to escape and fight his way to the coast, so as anyhow and on any terms to get out of that horrible country. But he wished afterwards to stay, and stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder with these, the desolate and oppressed, whom he so loved. Never, perhaps, has oppression been at once so comprehensive and so minute. The iron entered into their souls; and at the same time their fingers were vexed with innumerable pin pricks. Jack had seen a hundred times, without much notice, the rude wooden ploughs in use in the district--mere hurdles with pieces of iron stuck in the end; but one day it occurred to him, on some provocation, to abuse them roundly, and to ask if there was not a smith in the country who could make a decent ploughshare. "Our smiths could make anything yours could," said Avedis, with whom he was walking. "Then why don't they?" "I thought you knew." He lowered his voice and whispered, "_Daajek_"--the Turk. "You mean they won't allow you?" Avedis nodded. "Wait till we get home," he said. The conversation was resumed, where alone such conversations were safe, though not always even there, within closed doors. "I know," said Jack, "that the Turks hate machinery." "They detest it, and they fear it. They think every machine the work of Shaytan--the Devil." "I can't help thinking," said Jack, "of the Dark Ages, and of what I read of them before I came. Here are men of the twelfth century, with their feet on the necks of men of the nineteenth. It's bad for both. _They_ must be puzzled with you, and afraid of you, as a Norman Baron would have been of his Saxon serfs if they had understood all about steam and electricity, while he thought those things mysterious works of the Devil. But I wonder how long he could have kept them serfs?" "As long as he had arms, and they had none. More especially if he was backed up from outside," Avedis answered sadly. Then he sang softly, as if to himself, two lines of an old Armenian national song-- "If I cannot have a Christian home, I will have a Christian grave."