Archag worked at his lessons with enthusiasm, and the days and weeks passed very quickly. Most of the professors admired his earnestness and intelligence, and were pleased with the progress he made, but unfortunately he had failed to win the favor of Mr. Piralian, who continued to dislike him. It must be confessed that Archag showed little interest in his English lessons; he had never been willing to alter his pronunciation, for he considered Miss Dobbie an excellent teacher, and since she said “auld” and “gir-r-l”, of course that must be right. Therefore, he argued, Professor Piralian was in the wrong and spoke incorrectly; he did not know how to teach, and it was not worth while to work very hard. Our friend thus drew a quantity of false conclusions, with the superb recklessness of youth. In his Christmas reports he was marked “good,” and “very good” in everything except English, in which he had only “medium”; but this made very little impression upon him; he knew that he had not done good work, and did not expect anything better. Garabed stood first in the class, then came Dikran and Archag. Aram was fifth. Nejib, who had always been among the first, stood only eighth because of his bad conduct mark.

The advent of the Christmas holidays was, of course, hailed by the boys with shouts of joy. What great games they would play! What a jolly time they were going to have during those two weeks! On New Year’s Day, the Sophomores were invited to the house of Hosep Paelian, one of the day pupils, and they had a delightful time with him.

They were constantly going to the bazaar to do their Christmas shopping, and returning surrounded with an air of mystery, bringing big parcels which they hid in their trunks.

At this point I hear my readers exclaim, “What! Christmas after New Year’s Day? The world must certainly be upside-down over there!”

It does indeed seem odd to us to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in the month of January. But the Gregorians use the Greek calendar, which is twelve days later than ours. They keep Christmas on the Feast of the Three Kings, the sixth day of January, that is, the eighteenth, New Style.

President Mills had a pine tree brought from Amanus, a mountain to the west of Aintab. For several days the sun was hidden by snow-storms, and this Oriental Christmas differed little from the same season in the North. In the afternoon of Christmas Day, Professor Pagratian conducted a service in the college chapel, after which masters and pupils gathered together for dinner in the great dining-room.

The menu consisted of turkey with chestnuts, and a dessert of grapes and oranges. The boys were little used to delicacies, especially to meat, and their eyes shone with eagerness in anticipation of this feast of good things. The professors were seated at different tables; Mihran hodja and Monsieur Bernier sat with the Sophomores, one at either end of the table. The young Swiss smiled as he looked at his plate, on which were large slices of turkey, pilaaf (rice), and chestnuts, arranged in the form of a tower. Oriental usage requires that the plates be filled to the extent of their capacity, but it is very bad form not to leave a considerable part of what has been given, or one is set down as a gourmand.

Monsieur Bernier was preparing to do justice to his dinner when he observed that he had neither knife nor fork. Supposing it to be a mere oversight, he asked Garabed to get him a knife. After quite five minutes the boy returned in some embarrassment, saying he could not find one. Aram then offered his pen-knife, which, boy-fashion, he was in the habit of using for all sorts of purposes; Monsieur Bernier recalled having seen him digging in the earth with this same knife a few days before, and considered it more hygienic to decline the offer. He noticed how his companions rolled up their meat in the soft, thin bread, using a spoon for the rice and chestnuts, so he did the same, to the great delight of the boys.

The tree had been lighted in the study hall; the Seniors had decorated it with cotton-wool, oranges, apples and gilded nuts, and had laid out the presents on tables. The boys sang a hymn in English; then they made haste to open their parcels, and before long every one was engrossed with his own gifts. Archag received one Turkish pound (about four dollars and a half) from his parents, a book from his sister and another from Garabed, and Aram’s photograph. Dikran was manipulating a microscope which his brother had sent him from New York. Boghos had a kodak from America, which he was showing with pride to his friend Soghomon. No one had been forgotten; for the less fortunate boys whose parents had not been able to send them anything, Mrs. Mills had provided remembrances. After all the presents had been duly admired, the boys put them aside, to play games. At ten o’clock, tea and caghkÉs (little cakes) were served, and at length the boys went off to their dormitories, very happy after their festival.

The next day, the weather was so cold that every one stayed indoors, and Archag, after reading a little while, took a fancy to go upstairs to the museum, which contained good specimens of the flora and fauna of the country.

He spent a long time looking at the different collections of plants, the stuffed birds and the shells; but when that was finished, he did not know what to do with himself. What was there to do, all the rest of the afternoon? As his eyes wandered about the room, they fell on a cabinet standing partly open. He went up to it, and pushing back the door, saw that it contained some rare objects: some insects and Professor Piralian’s collection of butterflies. This worthy man had a mania for collecting; he had hunted for stones, fossils, butterflies and antique coins, by turns; at present he was asking every one for postage-stamps, which he carefully pasted in a new album. His collection of butterflies included some superb specimens which he had caught himself during a stay in Mexico. On his return to Aintab he had presented the collection to the college, where it was highly appreciated.

As the thermometer registered several degrees below zero, the furnace fire was burning at full blast, and the air in the museum, already impregnated with camphor and naphtha, was suffocating. Before long, Archag’s head was burning; he threw open one of the windows near the door, and took a good breath of fresh air. Then he returned to the cabinet and took out a glass box containing the finest specimen of the Piralian collection. It was beginning to grow dark, so he took the box to the window, which he had left open. He stood looking at the marvelous insects with their iridescent wings of blue and green and gold, and was amusing himself by trying to decipher the Latin names, when he felt a smart blow on his arm. The force of the sudden jar made him let go of the box, and down it fell with a crash, on the stone pavement of the courtyard. For an instant Archag stood motionless with fright; then he rushed into the corridor, where he heard a sound of retreating footsteps. He went back to the museum, and looking from the window he could see the shapeless fragments of the box down below. A ray of hope flashed across his mind; could it be, perhaps, that the precious insects had not been injured?

Running downstairs two steps at a time, the next moment he was in the courtyard. Alas! the butterflies were ruined; most of them were reduced to powder. In the face of this disaster Archag felt powerless, constrained by an agony of fear. He could not bring himself to think of the thing he ought to do, to go at once to Professor Piralian and tell him frankly what had happened. His only thought was that he should be expelled from the college. How dreadful, oh, how very dreadful!

When he entered the schoolroom, he was so pale that Garabed was frightened:

“Why, what is the matter with you? Are you ill?”

“I have a bad headache.”

He took up a book, but the words danced before his eyes, without conveying the slightest meaning to his mind.

Garabed, seeing that he did not want to talk, asked no more questions. Every time the door was opened, the culprit trembled: now, his misdeed had been discovered, he thought, and some one was coming to question the boys. His heart beat like a trip-hammer, and he felt as if he must suffocate. The evening passed without any disturbance, but Archag had a restless night; he kept dreaming that he had been sent away in disgrace, and his classmates’ shouts of derisive laughter seemed to ring in his ears. Several times he woke up with a start, to hear Garabed anxiously asking if he were ill, and if he would like to have Badvili Melikian called. He would reply impatiently that he did not need anything, and turn over on the other side.

The next morning, Dr. Mills came into the schoolroom before prayers, looking very grave.

“Now for it!” said Archag to himself.

The president told them what had happened, and made the misdeed appear very disgraceful. When he called on the guilty one to come forward and acknowledge his fault, our friend rose mechanically and went to the desk.

“It was I who did it,” he said simply.

“You! you!” repeated Dr. Mills. “A boy whom we have all loved! How can you have done a thing like that? It can’t be possible!”

However, he led the culprit away to his office, and questioned him closely. Archag confessed to opening the cabinet and taking the box of butterflies to the window in order to see them better, but when he said that some one had pushed him, his judge smiled incredulously. He called Badvili Melikian, who assured him that, with the exception of Nejib who was in the city, none of the Sophomores had left the study-hall that afternoon.

Archag had always been on good terms with his classmates, and it seemed impossible that any one of them should have wanted to play him such a trick. Dr. Mills questioned the boys again, but each gave the same reply: not one of them had gone up to the museum that day. Indeed, the president asked these questions merely to satisfy his own conscience; he was quite convinced of Archag’s guilt. Professor Piralian had often complained of his bad conduct and lack of application; he had just given him a “medium” mark in English. It seemed therefore quite probable that Archag had deliberately taken revenge on his teacher by destroying his collection.

All the professors assembled in the president’s room to talk the matter over, and Dr. Mills laid Archag’s case before them at some length, and then waited for their counsel. A painful silence followed; Armenians hate to give an opinion outright; they prefer to evade the main question, and to prolong their discussions without coming to any decision.

At last Professor Pagratian rose and addressed the president:

“I must say, that for my part, I have always found Archag loyal and truthful.” A murmur of assent was heard from the other masters. “I have watched him both in and out of study-hours, and it is my private opinion that one of his classmates really did give him a push by way of revenge. I have my own suspicions, too, as to that, which I shall do my utmost to verify. The lad is diffident and awkward; he did wrong not to confess his fault at once, but he made up for that by admitting his guilt before the whole college. You will reply that he could not do otherwise, since Badvili Melikian knew he was in the museum that afternoon. I do not admit that argument; if he had meant to lie about it all, he would have denied the whole or nothing. Let us punish him for his disobedience in handling the collection; that was his only fault, and does not deserve expulsion from the college.”

The professors discussed the matter at length; Monsieur Bernier and Badvili Melikian agreed with Professor Pagratian; the others wished Archag to be expelled.

“I don’t believe,” said the president, at last, “that we shall ever come to an agreement. I suggest therefore that we leave the decision to Professor Piralian, who is better able to judge than we.”

The professor had received a grievous blow in the destruction of his precious collection, and he had none too much sympathy with Archag. But at the moment of giving his judgment he seemed to see his pupil’s bright face with its frank and straightforward expression, and he felt that eyes like his could not have lied. His decision was made.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I ask you to keep Archag here; five days on bounds will be sufficient punishment for him.”

Meanwhile our friend was wandering about the campus like a lost soul. He had gone off by himself, ashamed to let his grief be seen. Was he really going to be expelled? All his pride revolted at the thought. He would cheerfully take any punishment if only he might be spared this disgrace.

After a while he heard someone calling him:

“Archag, Archag!”

“What is it?”

“Dr. Mills is asking for you.”

Archag entered the room where all the professors were seated around the table.

“My friend,” said the president to him, “you have committed a serious fault in touching the collection of butterflies after having been told not to do so. The loss you have occasioned to our museum is irreparable. We are willing, however, to take into consideration your youth and inexperience, as extenuating circumstances, since you are just at the beginning of your college career. You will have five days on bounds, and be marked zero for conduct in your next report.”

“Then I am not expelled?”

“No; we think you are sufficiently punished in this way.”

“Oh! thank you, thank you, Machallah!” cried Archag. He kissed the president’s hand again and again, then fled precipitately to hide the sobs that stifled him.