The Wonder Package

As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid.

Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now once more in full swing.

Her father lay on his invalid's chair, reading; his rubber-shod crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child's stockings and underwear.

Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always fascinated by anything that aroused her imagination, lifted her gaze furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.

Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box a toy she preferred to her doll

but not to her beloved set of water-colours and crayon pencils.

Some centuries ago Pandora's box let loose a world of troubles; Herr Wilner's box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.

It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong rupee silver, perhaps strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage; and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.

Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother's command, returned to their several places in Herr Wilner's box.

There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers in sheaths of fretted silver never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly under-stood, except by the child's father.

There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child's mother, much to the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.

There were writing materials of sandalwood, a few sea shells, a dozen books in German with many steel plate engravings; also a red Turkish fez with a dark blue tassel; two pairs of gold-rimmed spectacles; several tobacco pipes of Dresden porce-lain, a case full of instruments for mechanical drawing, a thick blank book bound in calf and containing the diary of the late Herr Wilner down to within a few minutes before his death.

Also there was a figure in bronze, encrusted with tarnished gold and faded traces of polychrome dec-oration.

Erlik, the Yellow Devil, as Herr Wilner called it, seemed too heavy to be a hollow casting, and yet, when shaken, something within rattled faintly, as though when the molten metal was cooling a fissure formed inside, into which a few loose fragments of bronze had fallen.

It apparently had not been made to represent any benign Chinese god; the aspect of the yellow figure was anything but benevolent. The features were terrific; scowls infested its grotesque countenance; threatening brows bent inward; angry eyes rolled in apparent fury; its double gesture with sword and javelin was violent and almost humorously menac-ing. And Ruhannah adored it.

For a little while the child played her usual game of frightening her doll with the Yellow Devil and then rescuing her by the aid of a fairy prince which she herself had designed, smeared with water-colours, and cut out with scissors from a piece of cardboard.

After a time she turned to the remaining treasures in the wonder-box. These consisted of several volumes containing photographs, others full of sketches in pencil and water-colour, and a thick roll of glazed linen scrolls covered with designs in India ink.

The photographs were of all sorts landscapes, rivers, ships in dock, dry dock, and at sea; light-houses, forts, horses carrying soldiers armed with lances and wearing the red fez; artillery on the march, infantry, groups of officers, all wearing the

same sort of fez which lay there in Herr Wilner's box of olive wood.

There were drawings, too sketches of cannon, of rifles, of swords; drawings of soldiers in various gay uniforms, all carefully coloured by hand. There were pictures of ships, from the sterns of which the crescent flag floated lazily; sketches of great, ugly-looking objects which her father explained were Turkish ironclads. The name "ironclad" always sounded menacing and formidable to the child, and the forbidding pictures fascinated her.

Then there were scores and scores of scrolls made out of slippery white linen, on which had been drawn all sorts of most amazing geometrical designs in ink.

"Plans,

" her father explained vaguely. And,

when pressed by reiterated questions: "Plans for military works, I believeforts, docks, barracks, fortified cuts and bridges. You are not yet quite old enough to understand, Ruhannah."

"Who did draw them, daddy?"

"A German friend of mine, Herr Conrad Wilner."

"What for?"

"I think his master sent him to Turkey to make those pictures."

"For the Sultan?"

"No; for his Emperor."

"Why?"

"I don't exactly know, Rue."

At this stage of the conversation her father usually laid aside his book and composed himself for the inevitable narrative soon to be demanded of him.

Then, although having heard the story many times from her crippled father's lips, but never weary of the repetition, the child's eyes would grow round and very solemn in preparation for her next and inevitable question:

"And did Herr Wilner die, daddy?"

"Yes, dear."

"Tell me!"

"Well, it was when I was a missionary in the Trebizond district, and your mother and I went-"

"And me, daddy? And me, too!"

"Yes; you were a little baby in arms. And we all went to Gallipoli to attend the opening of a beautiful new school which was built for little Mohammedan converts to Christianity-"

"Did I see those little Christian children, dad-dy?"

"Yes, you saw them. But you are too young to remember."

"Tell me. Don't stop!"

"Then listen attentively without interrupting,

Rue: Your mother and you and I went to Gallipoli; and my friend, Herr Wilner, who had been staying with us at a town called Tchardak, came along with us to attend the opening of the American school.

"And the night we arrived there was trouble. The Turkish people, urged on by some bad officials in the Sanjak, came with guns and swords and spears and set fire to the mission school.

They did not offer to harm us. We had already collected our converts and our personal baggage.

Our caravan was starting. The mob might not have done anything worse than burn the school if Herr Wilner had not lost his temper and threatened them with a dog whip. Then they killed him with stones, there in the walled yard."

At this point in the tragedy, the eagerly awaited and ardently desired shivers passed up and down the child's back.

"O oh! Did they kill him dead?"

"Yes, dear."

"Was he a martyr?"

"In a way he was a martyr to his duty, I suppose.

At least I gather so from his diary and from what he once told me of his life."

"And then what happened? Tell me, daddy."

"A Greek steamer took us and our baggage to Trebizond."

"And what then?"

"And then, a year later, the terrible massacre at our Trebizond mission occurred-"

That was what the child was waiting for.

"I know!" she interrupted eagerly. "The wicked

Turks and the cruel Kurds did come galloping and shouting "Allah!' And all the poor, converted people became martyrs. And God loves martyrs, doesn't He?"

"Yes, dear-"

"And then they did kill all the poor little Christian children!" exclaimed the child excitedly. "And they did cut you with swords and guns! And then the kind sailors with the American flag took you and mamma and me to a ship and saved us by the grace of our Lord Jesus!"

"Yes, dear-"

"Tell me!"

"That is all-"

"No; you walk on two crutches, and you cannot be a missionary any more because you are sick all the time! Tell me, daddy!"

"Yes. And that is all, Rue"

"Oh, no! Please! Tell me!... And then, don't you remember how the brave British sailors and our brave American sailors pointed their cannon at the Ironclads, and they said, Do not shoot or we shall shoot you to pieces.' And then the brave American sailors went on shore and brought back

"some poor little wounded

converted children, and your baggage and the magic box of Herr

Wilner!"

"Yes, dear. And now that is enough tonight––"

"Oh, daddy, you must first read in the di-a-ry which Herr Wilner

made!"

"Bring me the book, Rue."

With an interest forever new, the Carew family prepared to

listen to the words written by a strange man who had died only a

few moments after he had made the last entry in the book—before

even the ink was entirely dry on the pages.

The child, sitting cross-legged on the floor, clasped her little

hands tightly; her mother laid aside her sewing, folded it, and

placed it in her lap; her father searched through the pencilled

translation which he had written in between the lines of German

script, found where he had left off the time before, then continued

the diary of Herr Conrad Wilner, deceased:

March 3. My original plans have been sent to the

Yildiz Palace. My duplicates are to go to Berlin when a messenger

from our Embassy arrives. Murad Bey knows this. I am sorry he knows

it. But nobody except myself is aware that I have a third set of plans hidden