"No," he said, "your father is beyond sight and hearing."
The girl had no hope; only the will to hope. The reply was
confirmation of what she already knew. She removed the thin
vellum wrapper from the packet. Within she found a drawing on a
plate of ivory. It represented a shaft of some white stone
standing on the slight elevation of what seemed to be a barren
plateau. And below on the plate, in fine English characters like
an engraving, was the legend, "Erected to the memory of Major
Judson Carstair by the monastery at the Head."
The man added a word of explanation.
"The Brotherhood thought that you would wish to know that your
father's body had been recovered, and that it had received
Christian burial, as nearly as we were able to interpret the
forms. The stone is a sort of granite."
The girl wished to ask a thousand questions: How did her father
meet his death, and where? What did they know? What had they
recovered with his body?
The girl spoke impulsively, her words crowding one another. And
the Oriental seemed able only to disengage the last query from
the others.
"Unfortunately," he said, "some band of the desert people had
passed before our expedition arrived, nothing was recovered but
the body.
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