a boy, 'My child, do you know where the people of
this house are?' 'Two weeks ago they got into a wagon and drove away,'
answered the lad. 'Where are they gone?' I asked. 'That I don't know,'
he said.

"I would not have believed it, but an old woman came up to me on the
street, of her own accord, and said:

"'They all got into a wagon and have moved away into a Russian village.'

"What the village was called she could not tell me, and so every trace
of them was lost.

"Many years later a gentleman came from Stavropol to our city, who gave
me some news of the poor wretches. They had settled in a Cossack
village--he told me the name, but I have forgotten--where at first they
suffered great want; and just as things were going a little better with
them, Mairam and Sarkis died of the cholera and Takusch and Toros were
left alone. Soon after, a Russian officer saw Takusch and was greatly
pleased with her. After a few months she married him. Toros carried on
his father's business for a time, then gave it up and joined the army.
So much I found out from the gentleman from Stavropol.

"Some time later I met again one who knew Takusch. He told me that she
was now a widow. Her husband had been a drunkard, spent his whole nights
in inns, often struck his poor wife, and treated her very badly. Finally
they brought him home dead. Toros's neck had been broken at a horse-race
and he was dead. He said also that Takusch had almost forgotten the
Armenian language and had changed her faith.

"'That is the history of the Vacant Yard."

* * * * *

ARMENIAN POEMS

[_Metrical Version, by Robert Arnot, M.A._]

* * * * *

ARMENIAN POEMS

A PLAINT

Were I a springtime breeze,
A breeze in the time when the song-birds pair,
I'd tenderly smooth and caress your hair,
And hide from your eyes in the budding trees.

Were I a June-time rose,
I'd glow in the ardor of summer's behest,
And die in my passion upon your breast,
In the passion that only a lover knows.

Were I a lilting bird,
I'd fly with my song and my joy and my pain,
And beat at your lattice like summer-rain,
Till I knew that your inmost heart was stirred.

Were I a winged dream,
I'd steal in the night to your slumbering side,
And the joys of hope in your bosom I'd hide,
And pass on my way like a murmuring stream.

Tell me the truth, the truth,