So away the Turk went, just when the sun was beginning to dip down over the Adriatic and all the wilderness to glow beneath the shimmer of its deepening rays. A hillside, normally grey and cold, shone rose-pink and purple in the waxing splendour of the hour. The burned village became but the blacker for the gift, a charred log lying in a cup of the burnished rocks. Out of it, when every ruin had been twice searched, every heap of ashes turned for possible plunder, out of it went the baggy breeches and the little white horses and the fierce and bristling men, as cool and laconic as though this were but an episode and to-morrow would furnish another. Romancers' tales of troops drunk with lust and slaughter could not be told of them. All that passed, women's fearful struggles to escape their embraces, the shrieks of men whose hearts were being torn out, the gasps of the dying and the livid faces of the dead--all this was already forgotten, and would hardly be remembered when a week had gone. Had not the Prophet commanded them so to do, and was not he a discerning person withal?
Faber had taken a meal with Alussein upon the hillside about midday, and after that he had patrolled the village with Frank at his side, waiting and hoping for the coming of Maryska. To return to Ragusa without her would have been an infamy he could not contemplate; and yet he feared to meet her or to tell her the truth which must be told. When at last he did discover her, some hours had passed, and it was quite dark. The hillside with its savage boulders had given up the most part of the refugees then, and they had come down to the village to wander amid the ruins of their poor homes and to fill the street with their wailing. It was at this time also that another band of Albanians came up the valley to their comrades' rescue; alas, so many hours too late, but yet in time to help the desperate refugees and to bring them food and succour. Fires were now lighted by the valley road, and the women and children grouped about them. The most timid crept down from the rocks above; girls dishevelled and weeping, men who had fled with gashed limbs to the harbourage of caves, children whose parents lay dead beneath the ashes--all came at the summons of the shrill goat's horn. Meanwhile, none thought of burying the dead--none except Faber, who would not leave the body of Louis de Paleologue where it was, and returned with two lusty Albanians at his heels to do what could be done in the matter.