Page:Talbot Mundy - Eye of Zeitoon.djvu/375

353 "What next?" Will demanded dryly.

"Next?" said Kagig, "You effendim make your escape! The Turks will surely seek to be revenged on you. I will show you a way across the mountains into Persia."

"And you?" I asked.

"Into hiding!" he answered grimly. "Maga—little Maga, she shall come with me, and teach me more about the earth and sky and wind and water! Perhaps at last some day she shall make me—no, never a king, but a sportman."

"Come with us," said Will. "Come to the States."

"No, no, effendi. I know my people. They are good folk. They mistrust me now, and if I were to stay among them where they could see me and accuse me, and where the Turks could make a peg of me on which to hang mistrust, I should be a source of weakness to them. Nevertheless, I am ever the Eye of Zeitoon! I shall go into hiding, and watch! There will come an hour again—infallibly—when the Turks will seek to blot out the last vestige of Armenia. If I hide faithfully, and watch well, by that time I shall be a legend among my people, and when I appear again in their desperation they will trust me."

Will met Gloria's eyes in silence for a moment.

"I've a mind to stay with you, Kagig, and lend a hand," he said at last.

"Nay, nay, effendi!"

"We can attach ourselves to some mission station, and be lots of use," Gloria agreed.

"Use?" said Kagig, cracking his fingers. "The missions have done good work, but you can be of much more use—you two. You have each other. Go back to the blessed land you come from, and be happy together. But