There were three of them, and looking at their bent heads, the terrified traveler recognized the faces of two priests and a bishop. Around the poles were heaped mutilated bodies still more disfigured by devouring birds and animals.
Suddenly the young man heard a smothered moan, like the bitter sigh of a person in the agony of death. He hastened towards the voice. Traces of blood on the ground, like an unseen path, guided his steps to the place from which the moans came. He had hardly advanced twenty steps when his knees trembled and gave way; he fell on the ground and embraced an old man. For several minutes the dying and the living remained speechless. The dying man came to himself sooner than the youth, and murmured in a faltering voice: "Lord, now receive my soul, for I die in the arms of my son." The traveler gave no sign of life. The old man added: "The son who was lost now closes his father's eyes."
The young man was still silent, his head lying upon his father's breast. The old man raised that dear head in his weak, trembling hands and said:—
"Sarhad, my dear Sarhad, let me bless you and then die."
"But first hear your son," said the young man at last. "Yes, the lost son must now close the eyes of his father, whom he finds drenched in blood. But who was the cause of the loss of the son, if not the father himself? I was not a prodigal son,—not a drunkard or a gambler. I only loved weapons, horses and hunting. My pleasures were innocent sports. But you hated them all. You shut me up in the monastery and wanted to make me a hermit. I fled from there. Then you put before me the plough and the spade, the axe and the scythe. I accepted them all, but without laying aside my gun; for I saw that the Kurds carried off our crops and cattle by force, and it was necessary to have something with which to protect them. But you always advised me to be meek. You told me that we were Armenians and our religion taught us to keep our heads always bent, our tongues silent, and never to lift our hands to strike our enemies. But I saw that the more I bowed my head the more they beat me, and the more I kept my mouth shut the more they insulted
