CHAPTER XX

AS FROM THE DEAD

Not for hours after Takvor fell beneath the blow of the chaoush’s gun did he feel returning consciousness. He tried to think where he was, but all was blank. Finally there appeared from the deep obscurity of his mind the childlike face of a little girl. He had seen the face before, but where? It slowly faded away, and in its place came the form of an old gray man. Then followed the sweet face of a little woman seated in a richly furnished room. The picture slowly transformed itself into a dingy prison cell. How familiar it seemed! Haggard faces peered at him from the semidarkness. What was that awful ringing in his ears, like the whirring of wings of myriads of swiftly flying birds? Finally he remembered that he had come to Ak Hissar. But where was he now? How his head throbbed and ached! He opened his eyes; save for a single dim star above him, darkness was everywhere. It was a peculiar position to be in, so doubled up, with one arm painfully bent beneath him. He raised the other arm, but it fell helplessly back against the damp stones which rose like a wall above him. He had been thrown into the well with the dead.

Shuddering at the discovery, he again looked up. The faint ray of light from a passing star, which just for an instant had been visible through a crack in the boards covering the well, had disappeared, and the darkness above was as dense as that about him. To extricate himself, he painfully drew his left arm from beneath his back; how numb it was! Then he discovered that his feet were bare; the shoes and the clothes that Taviloudes had given him were gone, and he was naked. He raised his hands and found he could touch the loose boards above him. Cautiously lifting one of them aside, he listened. Though convinced that no watchman was guarding the well, Takvor still listened long before placing the boards aside to climb out. No nightingale broke the stillness with its customary song; no cricket chirped; no breath of air rustled the leaves; not a light was visible; only the stench-laden smoke, as from a sacrificial altar of old, was rising from the embers of the church.

Presently he saw emerging from the darkness about Dicran’s house the form of a man. It approached the well, passing almost within arm’s reach. It was Hassan Bey. His first thought was to call to his old acquaintance for assistance. In a moment the tax collector, carrying a large bundle, disappeared in the darkness beyond. Again he listened, and as all was silent, he moved toward Dicran’s house.

Entering the door, he groped his way to the large hall which served as a living room. His bewildered mind seemed to recall that Dicran had fallen beneath the stone hurled by the Turkish soldier, and that the girls had been dragged away, but he thought the old servant might be in the house. At the hall door he paused.

“Dede,” he said, instinctively using the name by which Armenouhi had always called the old man.

“Here, child,” faintly came a voice from a corner of the room.

Though Dicran was seriously injured, he had managed to creep to his house unobserved, and there he was lying, bleeding and helpless, when he recognized Takvor’s voice.

“Where are they?” asked Takvor, speaking the words which were uppermost in his mind.

“They have been taken away; the soldiers have taken them to the mountain,” groaned the old man. “Go, child; go and find them; go, go,” and frantic with grief and pain, he kept repeating the command.

“Yes, yes, Dede, but I must take care of you first.”

He groped about in the dark for a candle, lighted it, barred the door, and went to the corner where the old man was lying.

“What has happened to you, child? Where are your clothes?” asked Dicran, seeing by the dim light of the candle that Takvor was naked.

While relating his experiences of the day, Takvor was tending the old man. From a wound in the arm a little stream of blood was trickling down the dirt floor. He quickly bandaged it. Then bathing his face and hands, and dressing him in such clean clothes as he could find, he assisted him in crawling along the floor to his bed.

“Go now, and take care of yourself, child,” whispered Dicran.

Takvor washed away the stains that nearly covered him, and dressed himself in Dicran’s clothing.

“Take that bottle,” added the old man, turning his eyes to a niche in the wall.

Takvor first placed the bottle to the old man’s lips, and then put it in his pocket.

“Under the stone,” again came Dicran’s feeble voice.

He followed the direction of the old man’s eyes to a stone in the middle of the floor, projecting a little above the others. In the hole beneath he found an iron box, empty save for a few tattered papers and a broken padlock, with which it had once been fastened.

“What is it, Dede?” he asked.

“Take the money and go.”

“There is none,” he replied, again searching among the torn papers.

“He has taken that too,” mumbled Dicran to himself; then, after a moment’s reflection, he added, “Look beneath the box.”

Lifting the box from its hiding place, Takvor discovered beneath it another nearly concealed by the dirt. It contained money. He took two of the gold liras, extinguished the candle, and felt his way to the street.