Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/133

 hundreds of gold and silver bells were festooned about it.

My room was filled with the members of my family, and a few of the most intimate and pious of our friends. Candles were lighted, and mass was solemnly sung. Afterwards everybody went away, and I was left to the care of St George of the Bells.

Owing to the distance, the icon and the monk could not return to the monastery the same day, and were to spend the night at our house. I was then twelve years old, and as I have said, beginning to be sceptical of the religious superstitions about me. Yet the ceremony had impressed me deeply; and in the solemn hours of the night, with only the light of the kandilla burning before the icon, a certain mysticism took possession of me. I was shaken out of my apathy, and believed that St George could save me, if he wanted to, and if I prayed to him—and pray I did, too, most fervently, though I should have been ashamed to confess it after the daylight brought back to me my juvenile pride in being a sceptic.

In the morning, when the pallikaria came to fetch the icon, one of the powerfully built creatures, a man whose hair was already growing white about the temples, approached my bedside and said with great solemnity:

"Kyria, mou, he means to cure you. I have not carried him for twenty years without learning