Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/104

 for Armenian relief and had been on their way back together to their perilous post.

"Mattie?" the little man was asking anxiously of Ruth as he looked up at her. "Mattie?"

Mattie, Ruth knew, must have been his wife, and she turned back the bedding beyond him.

"She's gone," Ruth told him, mercifully thrusting him back as he tried to turn about. "She's gone where you are going."

The little missionary's eyes closed. "The order for all moneys is in my pocket. Luke, 27," his lips murmured. "Luke, 27 and 35."

The hand which again was holding Ruth's and which had been so strong the instant before, was quiet now. "The sixth chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke and the twenty-seventh verse," the little man's voice murmured, "But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies."

Ruth covered his face decently with the sheet; and, rising, she grasped the jagged edges of the hole blown by the German shell in the side of the ship; and she stared out it. A mile and a half away; two miles or more perhaps—she could not tell—but at any rate just where the fringe of the mist stopped sight, she saw a long, low shape scudding over the swell of the sea; puffs of haze of a different quality hung over it, cleared and hung again. Ruth understood that these were the gases from guns firing—the guns which had sent that shell which had slain in their beds the little Armenian missionary and his wife, the guns which were sending the shells now bursting aboard the Ribot further below and more astern.