The few of us who had seen the body buried were much affected by the death of the old man, though he was neither of our race nor countries; he was a stranger, and his horrible death in a place where he had lived an unhappy and lonely life, showed at once in a vivid manner the insecurity, and brought home to both Matti and the master of the School the danger in which they lived, and made them compare involuntarily their own positions in the town with that of Mustafa Beg. For though they were nothing like so friendless, they were equally unprotected, and above all they were strangers in the land. The sympathy of the Kurd and the people of Persia and Kurdistan generally for the stranger is a lively one; in these lands, to be away from home means more than in countries where communication is rapid and intercourse between distant points is frequent. The native place is very dear indeed to the Turk, Persian, and Kurd. It is an innocent enthusiasm that prompts the dweller in a pestilential and fever-ridden village with salt water, to extol it as little less than Paradise itself, for the discomforts of life in a strange land, far from his own language or dialect, make the place he left appear far superior, and distance lends an enchantment to his view that leads him to make the most flattering descriptions of his native place. How often had old Mustafa Beg told of the beauties of his Tripoli, its fruits, its busy sea-coast, its climate, the hospitable nature of its inhabitants; and how often had he sighed to go back, and counted the months to the time when he should have sufficient money to return; and all his eulogies had ended with a hope, expressed fervently, that at least he might die among his own people; but here we were burying his remains in a land which he hated, whose people he hated, and of whose language he knew not two words. And as we saw the last shovelfuls of earth placed upon his grave, the watchers on the hill-top cried out to us to get away to town quickly, for over the valley came a small party of horsemen, the Hamavands, shooting at targets as they galloped; and we had to hasten back lest the living should follow the new-buried dead.