He passed her the chocolates and helped himself to a cigar from one of his own boxes. The room was long and narrow, the walls wainscoted in oak and painted a dirty pink above. An ikon hung in a corner, for "Pop" was of the Greek Orthodox Church, and very devout--when he was not drunk. The latter appeared now to be his condition, and when they rose from the table, he insisted upon taking them out into the village that they might hear him harangue the people. Night had come down at this time, but no one thought of sleep in that oasis of the bleak mountains. Far up on the desolate hills were the sentries who would tell Ranovica of the Turks' approach. In the street itself moved a heterogeneous company of old and young men, and women and laughing girls, everyone carrying a revolver in the girdle and some armed to the very teeth. A babble of excited talk fell upon the night air as a hum of insects. What was in store for the people of this new citadel? Would the Turk come or pass them by? God and the morrow must answer. III It was a far cry to the great arsenals at Charleston, but Faber's mind crossed the seas when he walked alone that night in the street before the priest's house. What particular freak of a latent insanity had sent him to this place? Was it curiosity or the girl? Just the passing fancy for the wildest little woman he had ever met or the desire to see his fellow men butchered? One or the other it must be, and he was too honest to deny it. Either Maryska or the Turkish butcher, scimitar in hand. If it were the girl, his vain folly had met with a swift rebuke. Looking up to her bedroom window, he remembered her "good-night," and the manner of it. She had told him that he was an "old, old man," and the words struck him as a thunderclap. An "old, old man!" Good God! had so much of his life already run? No one had ever spoken such words before and his vanity bristled. Had the girl been serious, or did she speak in jest? An "old, old man"--and he was not forty. In America, it is true, they have little use for forty unless forty can command allegiance. He, John Faber, had ruled a city in Charleston. His works employed more than five thousand men; he was the high priest of the temples of labour his own brain had built up. No one remembered his age there. They spoke of him as "the new Krupp," the young genius in steel who could make or mar the fortunes of empires. The women pursued him relentlessly, remembering his eleven millions. He could have led the life of an Oriental debauchee and no one criticise him. To read the papers--many of which he owned--you might have set him down for twenty-five. This chit of a wild girl had burst the bubble with a little pin prick of her candour. An old, old man! The words raked his self-assurance, he could have boxed her ears for them. If not Maryska, what, then, had brought him to Ranovica?