“The Turk hath done his evil work in Damascus,” he said. “All the Christians are dead--save one; he hath turned Muslim, and is safe.” His voice had a note of scorn. “It fell sudden and swift like a storm in summer. There were no paths to safety. Soldiers and those who led them shared in the slaying. As he and I who had travelled far together these many years sojourned there in the way of business, I felt the air grow colder, I saw the cloud gathering. I entreated, but he would not go. If trouble must come, then he would be with the Christians in their peril. At last he saw with me the truth. He had a plan of escape. There was a Christian weaver with his wife in a far quarter--against my entreaty he went to warn them. The storm broke. He was the first to fall, smitten in ‘that street called Straight.’ I found him soon after. Thus did he speak to me--even in these words: ‘The blood of women and children shed here to-day shall cry from the ground. Unprovoked the host has turned wickedly upon his guest. The storm has been sown, and the whirlwind must be reaped. Out of this evil good shall come. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ These were his last words to me then. As his life ebbed out, he wrote a letter which I have brought hither to one”--he turned to David--“whom he loved. At the last he took off his hat, and lay with it in his hands, and died.... I am a Muslim, but the God of pity, of justice, and of right is my God; and in His name be it said that was a crime of Sheitan the accursed.” In a low voice the chairman put the resolution. The Earl of Eglington voted in its favour. Walking the hills homeward with Ebn Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and John Fairley, David kept saying over to himself the words of Benn Claridge: “I have called thee so often of late. Good morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow! Can you not hear me call?” CHAPTER V. THE WIDER WAY Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo from Faith Claridge in Hamley: David, I write thee from the village and the land of the people which thou didst once love so well. Does thee love them still? They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didst grind the flour for the baking. Thee didst frighten all who knew thee with thy doings that mad midsummer time. The tavern, the theatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit--was ever such a day! Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing. But first, a moment. Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house on that day? What think thee has happened? He followed to London the lass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him. This she refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if in three years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard- working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider. Her head was high. She has become maid to a lady of degree, who has well befriended her.