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Mîtri seized the suppliant's hands and pressed them to his heart. "Say on; I listen." Iskender told him how the hatred of the missionaries had reached such a pitch that his mother was obliged to cast him out. He had come to the priest, his best friend, for advice in this dilemma, thinking that he might recommend him to a lodging. "Now may Allah house thee!" said Mîtri with a thoughtful frown.
To hear them talk of Mîtri, any one would suppose the poor, good priest some dreadful ghoul. . . . All that was empty talk, however spiteful, and Allah knows I am well seasoned to it. But when they came to speak of thy Emîr, and swore to turn his mind against thee, I saw danger.
Mitri felt tired, and went into Matrena's hut, where he drank half a bottle of vodka with Sanin to console himself. Then he went home, quarrelled with his wife, and lay down to sleep on the hay. He did not undress, but slept just as he was, with a ragged coat for a coverlet. His wife was in the hut with the girls there were four of them, and the youngest was only five weeks old.
But the words were cut in his mouth by a heavy hand which smote him sideways, deafening one ear; and when he recovered from sensations of a general earthquake, it was to find himself alone with Mîtri. The priest stood smiling down on him with folded arms. "What means this, O son of a dog?" he said through clenched teeth. "Dost thou take us, by chance, for Brûtestânts, for shameless heathens?
Through the door of the sanctuary, he could see the priest Mîtri, gorgeously arrayed, serving at the altar, bright with many candles which leaned this way and that without the least arrangement. Now he walked all round it swinging a little censer, now stopped before a largeish book upon a stand, reciting all the time in nasal tones.
The latter, recognising that his hand was failing and his sight would soon be gone, offered to sell him the business. But Iskender had no money for the purchase. He consented, however, to a scheme of partnership; and, proud of his achievements, sent a letter to the priest Mîtri, announcing his return to claim his bride.
His baptism would follow as a matter of course, in the mind of Mîtri; and he was by no means prepared to receive it, since the priest, for the triumph of his congregation, was certain to demand a public ceremony, and Iskender feared the scorn of his Emîr, whom he imagined to be something of a sceptic.
"We did not set fire to the house, but he himself, the fiend, did it; his workman saw him do it, and will not damn his soul by denying it. You just tell to ask to see my Mitri. Mitri will tell him all about it, as plain as can be. Just think of our being locked up in prison when we never dreamt of any ill, while he, the fiend, is enjoying himself at the pub, with another man's wife."
This last touch pleased the majority of his audience, causing them to praise Allah, and inclining them to accept the truth of the whole story on religious grounds. Elias was preparing to support it with some cognate marvel, when Mîtri announced that the procession was being formed. At the same moment, a few prelusory notes of the concertina were heard without. The house soon emptied.
For some time Mîtri sat immersed in thought; while Iskender, on whom the business of narration had brought back despair, hid his face in his arm. At length the priest pronounced: "In all thy conduct as related I discern no grievous sin, but only folly and a youth's wild fancies.
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