From all over the Turkish Empire prisoners were sent to Konia. There was great confusion in dealing with them, so the people of Konia asked Miss Cushman to look after them; they even wrote to the Turkish Government at Constantinople to tell them to write to her to invite her to do this work. There was a regular hue and cry that she should be appointed, because everyone knew her strong will, her power of organising, her just treatment, her good judgment, and her loving heart. So at last she accepted the invitation. Prisoners of eleven different nationalities she helped--including British, French, Italian, Russian, Indians and Arabs. She arranged for the nursing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the freeing of some from prison. She went on right through the war to the end and beyond the end, caring for her orphans, looking after the sick in hospital, sending food and clothes to all parts of the country, helping the prisoners. Without caring whether they were British or Turkish, Armenian or Indian, she gave her help to those who needed it. And because of her splendid courage thousands of boys and girls and men and women are alive and well, who--without her--would have starved and frozen to death. To-day, in and around Konia (an Army officer who has been there tells us), the people do not say, "If Allah wills," but "If Miss Cushman wills!" It is that officer's way of letting us see how, through her brave daring, her love, and her hard work, that served everybody, British, Armenian, Turk, Indian, and Arab, she has become the uncrowned Queen of Konia, whose bidding all the people do because she only cares to serve them, not counting her own life dear to her. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 64: In reading this part of the story to younger children discretion should be exercised. Some of the details on this page are horrible; but it is right that older children should realize the evil and how Miss Cushman's courage faced it.] CHAPTER XXVII ON THE DESERT CAMEL TRAIL _Archibald Forder_ (Time of Incident 1900-1901) _The Boy Who Listened_ An eight-year-old schoolboy sat one evening in a crowded meeting in Salisbury, his eyes wide open with wonder as he heard a bronzed and bearded man on the platform telling of his adventures in Africa. The man was Robert Moffat. It was a hot summer night in August (1874). The walls of the building where the meeting was held seemed to have disappeared and the boy Archibald Forder could in imagination see "the plain of a thousand villages," that Livingstone had seen when this same Robert Moffat had called him to Africa many years before. As the boy Archibald heard Moffat he too wished to go out into the foreign field. Many things happened as he grew up; but he never forgot that evening.