Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/136

 hands, and a girlish mouth. He was permitted to go about free, and I met him under the arcade of the monastery, declaiming a passage from Homer. When his eyes met mine, he stopped and addressed me.

"I am coming from Persia, and my land is Ithaca. I am Ulysses, the king of Ithaca." Then he threw out his hands toward me and screamed, "Penelope!"

One may imagine that I was frightened, but before I had time to answer, he burst into a peal of laughter, and exclaimed:

"Why, you are Achilles, dressed in girl's clothes. But you will come with us to fight, will you not?"

Much to my relief a monk came up and said, "Don't stay here and listen to him. It only excites him."

I became quite interested in the young man after this, and later learned that when his forty days were at an end, by a sign St George intimated that he was to remain longer; and a few months later the young man returned to his country entirely cured.

There was one of the monks, Father Arsenius, who was as devout as my mother. To him I really owe all my pleasure while in the monastery. He was an old man, but strong and active. He took me every day for rambles about the mountains, and never would let me walk uphill.