people began to wonder what on
earth he meant to do with them.

Subsequently he announced that any captive who brought him his
children should receive a silver denarius per head for each one of
them. This was not much, it is true; but then there was little demand
for children. In the slave-market only the adult human animal had its
price-current. And so it came about that innumerable children were
brought to the worthy dervish.

He took them away with him to a mosque at Adrianople. Folks laughed at
him, and asked him mockingly if he was going to plant a garden with
them.

Haji Begtash accepted the jest in real earnest, and called his
children the flowers of Begtash's garden; and this name they preserved
in the coming centuries.

These saplings (amongst them were some of the loveliest little
creatures of six and seven years of age) were brought up by the
indefatigable Haji year after year. He instructed them in the Kuran;
he told them everything concerning the innumerable and ineffable joys
which the Prophet promises to those who fall in the defence of the
true Faith; and at the same time accustomed them to endure all the
hardships and privations of this earthly life.

Most of these children had never known father or mother, and those who
had quickly forgot all about them as they grew up. No love of home or
kindred bound them to this world, and therefore they were all the more
attached to one another. Their comrades were the only beings they
learned to love, and every one of them treated old Begtash as a
father. His words were sacred to them.

Their days were passed in hard work, in perpetual martial exercises,
fighting, and swimming. A youth of twelve among them was capable of
coping with full-grown men elsewhere, and each one of them at maturity
was a veritable Samson.

In those days the Ottoman armies suffered many defeats from the
Christian arms. Their strength lay for the most part in their cavalry,
but their innumerable infantry was a mere mob, two of their
foot-soldiers not being equal to one of the well-disciplined European
men-at-arms who advanced irresistibly against them in huge compact
masses; and they were of no use at all in sieges, except to fill up
the ditches and trenches with their dead bodies, and thus make a road
for the more valiant warriors that came after them.

And now, as if by magic, a little band of infantry suddenly appeared
on the theatre of the war. These new soldiers were dressed