At Biridjik, in the house of Hohannes Meneshian, and in the very room where John Grayson had caught his first glimpse of Armenian domestic life, two women sat at work. Mariam, looking old and careworn, was behind her wheel as usual; Shushan was bending over her beautiful embroidery. The room looked much barer than in the olden days, most of the curtains and rugs had disappeared, and there was no sign of any cooking in progress. This mattered the less however since grapes were in season now, and a basket of great, luscious clusters lay in the corner, destined to form, with rye bread, the evening meal of the family. The villagers with whom Shushan had been staying had brought her home the day before. She was no longer safe with them. A Kourd, who had shown them a little friendliness, and to whom they had given backsheesh, had called to one of their men over the wall of the vineyard where he was working, "Take care! you have got a lily our sheikh wants to gather." So they acted on the hint. Shushan was once more with her kindred, and in the place of her birth. But little joy had she, or they, in the meeting. Her presence was a danger to her friends. She was hunted from place to place, like a partridge the dogs start from its cover that it may fall by the gun of the sportsman. Happy partridge, that would fall at once, gasp its little life out on the grass, and rest! No such rest for the Moslem's victim! More than once indeed, across the sad texture of Shushan's life, there had shot a gleam of gold. She had been a happy girl in Urfa, when she went with her cousins to the Mission school, and learned beautiful things from the dear foreign ladies there. Afterwards in Biridjik, for a little while, she had been still happier, though with a different kind of happiness. The brave, strong, splendid English youth had come into her life and transfigured it. He had saved her from the savage dogs; he had done a still more wonderful thing than that. He had come to her help in her direst need, choosing her, claiming her for his own. Her heart throbbed yet with the fearful rapture of that day, the wonder-day of her short life--the day of her betrothal. But now Yon Effendi was gone from her. All her joy seemed to have melted from her like the snow on the mountains, like the dreams of the night. It had left instead a yearning, painful in its sweetness, an "aching, unsatisfied longing," for him who was its core and its centre. Yon Effendi was gone; but Mehmed Ibrahim, whom she had never seen, yet regarded with unutterable dread and loathing, seemed by his agents and instruments to be ever present, all around her, pressing her in on every side. She feared death far less than she feared him; but she was not yet quite sixteen, and since she had known Yon Effendi, she would have liked to live.