Page:Ravished Armenia.djvu/228

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216
RAVISHED ARMENIA

with God—thanking Him that my prayers have come true!” When I had kissed and cried over Hovnan and Mardiros and Sarah I looked again into mother’s face.

Little Aruciag—she was not there. Mother saw the question in my eyes.

“Aruciag has gone. She grew tired one day and could not keep up. A soldier threw her over a precipice!”

An officer of the hamidieh came up to learn what was happening, why mother and the children had dismounted to stand in the way of the horsemen. Mother explained to him that I was her daughter, who had come back to her. She said she wished that I might travel with her. The officer was kind. He gave permission and promised to send another donkey for me to ride.

There were four young Armenian girls with mothers and several older women, whose faces bore the marks of much suffering. As we rode along mother explained to me.

When I was stolen from her and our party from Tchemesh-Gedzak, so many weeks before, she was lying at the roadside, cruelly wounded by the soldiers. But the thought of the children summoned her back to life. Friends cared for her, and the next day when the company moved on they carried her in their arms until she could walk again.

She passed Malatia, Geulik and Diyarbekir. At