"Now, listen! when Karasloff was dying, he said to me, 'I leave you Ivan to send back to my people. He will take his own place among them when I am dead. They do not know where he is. I took him away because he was the only thing I cared for, you must return him to my people when I am dead.' Karasloff has been dead five months," finished Jacques. El Kobir was silent for a moment, then he spoke: "But how are you to know where to send him?" "Oh, _mon Dieu_, how? Karasloff gave me the address of his people just before he died, and I promised to write to them." "That was five months ago," said El Kobir. "Yes, five months ago. I did not want to send the child off, and so I have played false with Karasloff for five months." "Not so," replied El Kobir, "you only delayed in performing a promise, you did not break it." "Oh, as for that," said Jacques, "I said to myself when he was dead that I would keep the child, promise or no promise; then, lately it came to me that a child has no say, he just has to take his marching orders, and I fell to wondering if I was marching him into a ditch; just now when he came in wearing that rig-out, it was as if the uniform hit me in the face. No, he has to go back to his own people." Jacques knew the word "Duty" only as a military term. He could not tell in the least what power it was that compelled him to do this thing he did not want to do. The child had become a companion, an interest, almost a necessity of life, and had you told him that it was the good influence of the child upon him that was now driving the child away from him, he would not have understood you. No. The uniform had hit him in the face, that was enough for him. El Kobir said nothing more. Like Jacques, he did not want to part with the child, yet he was a just man. Had he been an unjust man or a hard-hearted man, he would not have wanted to keep the child. Our good qualities hit us very hard sometimes. "And who are the child's people?" asked El Kobir, as Jacques, rose to go. The latter took a paper from his pocket and handed it to his questioner, who scanned it and handed it back without a word. It was almost a world-known name that he had read, and it remained before his eyes as he sat alone working on the rug. He knew quite well that Jacques was about to write, or get his commanding officer to write to the child's people, yet he had said nothing to urge or deter him from that course. He was an old man, and the child had grown round his heart. However, Fate is Fate. If the thing had to be, it had to be. All the same, a half welcome idea clung to his mind that Jacques might prove weak enough to let the matter stand as it was for the present. A year or two, what did it matter. And suppose the child were taken off to that splendid palace and that glorious future awaiting him, might that prove the happiest fate for him?