“And the Turk ought to know that!  I get you, Miss Vanderman!  I see the point exactly!”

“At any rate, I started.  And we slept at night in the houses of Armenians whom my guides knew, so that the journey wasn’t bad at all.  Everything was going splendidly until we reached a sort of crossroads—­if you can call those goat-tracks roads without stretching truth too far—­and there three men came galloping toward us on blown horses from the direction of Marash.  We could hardly get them to stop and tell us what the trouble was, they were in such a hurry, but I set my horse across the path and we held them up.”

“As any young lady would have done!” Fred murmured.

“Never mind.  I did it!  They told us, when they could get their breath and quit looking behind them like men afraid of ghosts, that the Turks in Marash—­which by all accounts is a very fanatical place—­had started to murder Armenians.  They yelled at me to turn and run.

" ‘Run where?’ I asked them.  ‘The Turks won’t murder me!’

“That seemed to make them think, and they and my six men all talked together in Armenian much too fast for me to understand a word of it.  Then they pointed to some smoke on the sky-line that they said was from burning Armenian homes in Marash.

" ‘Why didn’t you take refuge in the mission?’ I asked them.  And they answered that it was because the mission grounds were already full of refugees.

“Well, if that were true—­and mind you, I didn’t believe it—­it was a good reason why I should hurry there and help.  If the mission staff was overworked before that they would be simply overwhelmed now.  So I told them to turn round and come to Marash with me and my six men.”

“And what did they say?” we demanded together.

“They laughed.  They said nothing at all to me.  Perhaps they thought I was mad.  They talked together for five minutes, and then without consulting me they seized my bridle and galloped up a goat-path that led after a most interminable ride to this place.”

“Where they hold you to ransom?”

“Not at all.  They’ve been very kind to me.  I think that at the bottom of their thoughts there may be some idea of exchanging me for some of their own women whom the Turks have made away with.  But a stronger motive than that is the determination to keep me safe and be able to produce me afterward in proof of their bona fides.  They’ve got me here as witness, for another thing.  And then, I’ve started a sort of hospital in this old keep.  There are literally hundreds of men and women hiding in these hills, and the women are beginning to come to me for advice, and to talk with me.  I’m pretty nearly as useful here as I would be at Marash.”

“And you’re—­let’s see—­nineteen-twenty—­one—­two—­not more than twenty-two,” suggested Fred.

“Is intelligence governed by age and sex in England.” she retorted, and Fred smiled in confession of a hit.