"_Nothing_, Mr. Grayson. Foolish people, who run about talking of things they do not understand, only get themselves and other men into trouble. Here is what happens many a time--there is some wild talk going of help from England, or some such nonsense, and on the strength of it some hot-headed fellow kills a Kourd, or resists a zaptieh, and then all hell is let loose upon us." "But if the zaptieh is torturing his father for not paying a tax he does not owe, or giving up a rifle he has not got? Or, if the Kourd is taking--well, you know what I mean; the word chokes me," said Jack, thinking of Shushan. "Let be! let be! 'Speech is silver, silence is golden.' 'The heart of the fool is in his tongue, the tongue of the wise man is in his heart.'--Mr. Grayson, I thank you for honouring me with a visit. I beg of you to salute my cousins in my name. I hope old Father Hagop's cough is not so troublesome now? And how is the little one? Does he begin to walk yet? I hope to have the pleasure of visiting them very shortly, but business is pressing just now." With such talk as this he led Jack once more to the outer door; and he, as he took his final leave, remembered an English word which he had hardly thought of since he left the shores of his native land. He confessed himself decidedly "bored." As soon as he got home, he opened the box of sweetmeats and looked anxiously for what the giver might mean by the "first." Each of the dainty morsels was wrapped up separately in thin paper; but one of them looked, on close inspection, as if the paper had been removed, and then carefully replaced. He took it off, and found--traced upon it in very fine, faint handwriting--the following words: "MR. JOHN GRAYSON.--Shushan is in danger. The chief wife of Mehmed Ibrahim is my friend. She does not wish Shushan to be found. She tells me Mehmed has discovered the name of the village where she is, and will set on the Kourds to attack it, and to make her a prisoner. There is no safe place for her, except the house of the American missionaries here--if only you can bring her to it secretly, in some disguise--for the Turks do not dare to enter it. I may not write to the Mission ladies myself, as my husband forbids me to have any communication with them, therefore I write to you. You will know what to do. God bless you.--YEVNEGA THOMASSIAN." Chapter X AN ARMENIAN WEDDING "'Till death us part'--oh, words to be Our best for love the deathless." --_E. B. Browning._