Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/135

 girl in his arms and showed no sign of fatigue, while Maurice and I were staggering with the father between us, almost winded, hardly able to get him along.

I could write pages about it all, but where would be the use? Enough has been written already to answer all practical purposes; matters of graver import await, and I must hasten on.

We buried the father, but we saved the daughter. Saved her for what?

Merciful God! I cannot think of it without a shudder. But I anticipate and must return.

She suffered much, poor child. Her frozen limbs and hands were but the lightest of it. Her grief for her father was pitiful to see.

Did she recall us?

She did, and from the first. Some time elapsed before we could question her; there was the weeping to be over  with, and hunger had to be satisfied, of course. We got to it at last.

Her’s [sic] was a strange story. It ran thus:

Walla Benjow was the daughter of a tribe which inhabits the southern slope of the Kuen-lun mountains, a region far  to the north of where we were, into which no European has  ever set foot. As different from the Thibetans as they are from the Tartars who surround them, these people have  dwelt in their mountain homes from time immemorial—even  their name, which I am not going to give, is unknown to the  civilized world.

At an early age this girl had been stolen from her parents and carried south, ultimately reaching Mandalay, where by  a singular combination of circumstances she had fallen into the hands of an American merchant, a Mr. Julius Archer, whom I have since learned was a Philadelphian, long established in business at Mandalay.

You see I took particular pains to investigate this matter afterward and had the satisfaction of proving the entire  truth of Walla’s claim, which was that she had lived ten  years with the Archers; at the first as nurse to their children,  later as companion. Fortunately or otherwise, Madam Archer conceived a violent fancy for her, and went to considerable trouble to educate the girl, and I must admit that  she succeeded admirably, for Walla could not only read and  write English, but had been instructed in other branches,