Flinging himself to his knees, he bent over the slim body lying so inert. For a few moments he had no courage to look into the face. Beautiful, he lay in death, like a perfect figure of marble,--the whiteness only broken on the left breast, bloody and scarred. Had the miscreants murdered him in their plundering? No, for this thin stream of blood from the wound had dried long ago. Bending forward, the living face looked on the dead, and in that moment of recognition a sharp cry of pain broke on the desert hush. Gathering him up in his arms, he pressed the lifeless body to his breast. "Oh, John effendi! Oh, John effendi!" he sobbed, brushing back the hair from the brow of the dead man. "See, I have our token and thou wast faithful, John effendi! Great brother of my heart, what woe is come upon us! Dost thou not hear me? 'Tis I, Ali, thy friend of boyhood's days. O thou unfortunate one! Unhappy the servant of Allah, that these eyes thus behold thee, most beloved brother of my soul, John effendi! Oh, John effendi!" He bent over the lifeless form, peering into the unclosed eyes of the dead man as if he would read therein some words of recognition, of greeting. He had not changed, this friend of happy days by Yeshil Irmak's singing waters. The face that had faded in distance from the fountain at Amasia was this face of death found in the desert, and the years had scarcely touched it, perhaps only to make it sterner, more handsome. Great was the will of Allah to bring them together again across the ways of the world. Thus had he beheld him on the hill on that last day of parting when the night crept over the gorge at Amasia; night crept on now, night with its stillness and its stars, and he could not go hence again. Brothers in life they were, were they not brothers in death; were not their feet wedded to the same great adventure? With his handkerchief he wiped the sand and blood from the face of the dead man, smoothed the bruised brow. Beautiful he was, in this hour of meeting. "O John effendi," he cried, pressing his mouth to the cold brow. "Our footsteps have gone out upon the dusty way and we are met again. Allah in his greatness willed it so!" The darkness of night gathered about the living and the dead. Above, the brazen dome held the last flush of day. In the cool east a few stars came on the flood of darkness. From hill-top to hill-top the greyness crept and the valleys filled with shadow. The moon, low on the dark horizon, brightened; the timorous stars spangled the heavenly way with bright battalions. The hill ridges, black in the sunset, softened and sank in the encroaching tide of night. Such silence, such peace, such coolness after the noisy, parching day! Foolish man, fretful with his bewildering schemes, his fears and frenzy, his comings and goings over the face of the indifferent earth--all, all engulfed in the enduring silence. And for the end of all--this beneficent peace.