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THE VINTAGE

_A Romance of the Greek War of
Independence. By_ E. F. BENSON
_Author of "Limitations" "Dodo"
"The Judgment Books" etc._

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

"And the wine-press was trodden without the
city, and blood came out of the wine-press"

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1898

[Illustration: "'COME AND SIT DOWN'"]

THIS ROMANCE

DEALING WITH THE REGENERATION OF HER PEOPLE

IS DEDICATED BY PERMISSION

TO

HER MAJESTY

OLGA

QUEEN OF THE HELLENES

CONTENTS

PART I

THE VINEYARD

    I.  The House on the Road To Nauplia
   II.  The Coming of Nicholas Vidalis
  III.  The Story of a Brigand
   IV.  The Midnight Ordeal
    V.  Mitsos Picks Cherries for Maria
   VI.  The Song from the Darkness
  VII.  The Port Dues of Corinth
 VIII.  The Mending of the Monastery Roof
   IX.  The Singer from the Darkness

PART II

THE EVE OF THE GATHERING

    I.  Mitsos Meets His Cousins
   II.  Mitsos and Yanni find a Horse
  III.  Mitsos Has the Hysterics
   IV.  Yanni Pays a Visit to the Turk
    V.  The Vision at Bassae
   VI.  Three Little Men Fall Off their Horses
  VII.  Mitsos Disarranges a House-roof
 VIII.  The Message of Fire

PART III

THE TREADING OF THE GRAPES

    I.  Te Deum Laudamus
   II.  Two Silver Candlesticks
  III.  The Adventure of the Fire-ship
   IV.  The Training of the Troops
    V.  The Hornets' Nest at Valtetzi
   VI.  The Entry of Germanos
  VII.  The Rule of the Senate
 VIII.  The Song from Tripoli
   IX.  Private Nicholas Vidalis
    X.  The Fall of Tripoli
   XI.  Father and Daughter
  XII.  The Search for Suleima
 XIII.  Nicholas Goes Home
  XIV.  The House on the Road to Nauplia

ILLUSTRATIONS

"'COME AND SIT DOWN'"
"'I AM FATHER ANDRÉA,' HE SHOUTED"
"HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHE HAD PICKED"
"SHE KISSED HIM LIGHTLY ON THE FOREHEAD"
"MITSOS SURVEYED HIM WITH EASY INDIFFERENCE"
"YANNI WAS STRUGGLING IN THE GRASP OF TWO MEN, THE GREEK AND THE TURK"
"KATSI AND A FINE SELECTION OF COUSINS ACCOMPANIED THE TWO"
"AFTER SUPPER MITSOS EXPOUNDED"
"IN THE CENTRE OF THE GREAT CHAMBER STOOD ONE WHOM IT DAZZLED HIS EYES
    TO LOOK UPON"
"'AH, BUT IT IS GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN'"
"MITSOS TORE UP GREAT HANDFULS OF UNDERGROWTH AND THREW THEM ON"
"MIXED WITH THE NOISE OF THE SINGING, ROSE ONE GREAT SOB OF A THANKFUL
    PEOPLE BORN AGAIN"
"BOTH THE BOYS, SEIZING THEIR OARS, ROWED FOR LIFE"
"CASTING HIMSELF DOWN THERE, IN AN AGONY BITTER SWEET, HE PRAYED"
"MITSOS, FLYING AT HIM LIKE A WILD-CAT"
"BORNE IN A CHAIR ON THE SHOULDERS OF FOUR MONKS"
"HE HAD CLAMBERED UP AND DROPPED DOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE"
"UNBUCKLING HIS SWORD, HE LAID IT ON THE TABLE"
"YANNI WAS BY HIM WITH A BRILLIANT SMILE ON HIS FACE"
"'WOULD YOU SLAY ME, FATHER?' SHE CRIED AGAIN"
"BY AN EFFORT HE RAISED HIMSELF ON HIS ELBOW"
"'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"

THE VINTAGE

Part I

THE VINEYARD

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF THE ROAD TO NAUPLIA

Nauplia, huddled together on the edge of its glittering bay, and
grilled beneath the hot stress of the midsummer noon, stood silent as a
city of the dead. Down the middle of the main street, leading up from
the quay to the square, lay a scorching ribbon of sunshine, and the
narrow strips of shadow, sharp cut and blue, spoke of the South.

Along one side of the square ran the barracks of the Turkish garrison
of occupation, two-storied buildings of brown stone, solid but airless,
and faced with a line of arcade. These contained the three companies of
men who were stationed in the town itself, less fortunate in this oven
of heat than the main part of the garrison who held the airier fortress
of Palamede behind, overlooking the plain from a height of five
hundred feet. Down the west side stood the quarters of the officers,
and opposite, the prison, full as usual to overflowing of the native
Greeks, cast there for default of payment to the Turkish usurers of
an interest of forty or fifty per cent. on some small loan; for these
new Turkish laws of 1820 with regard to debt had made the prisons more
populous than ever. A row of shops and a couple of cafés along the
north struck a more domestic note.

A narrow street led out of the square eastwards, and passing the length
of the town, burrowed through the wall of Venetian fortification in
the manner of a tunnel. On the right the outline of the gray fortress
hill, precipitously pitched towards the town in a jagged edge like
forked lightning, rose steep and craggy, weathered by the wind in
places to a tawny red, and peppered over with sun-dried tufts of grass.
Along the base of this the road ran, cobbled unevenly in the Turkish
fashion, and after passing two or three villas which stood white and
segregate among their gardens of flowering pomegranate and serge-clad
cypress, struck out into the plain. Vineyards and rattling maize fields
bordered it on one hand; on the other, beds of rushes and clumps of
king-thistles, which peopled the little swamp between it and the bay.
The spring had been very rainless, and these early days of June saw the
country already yellow and sere. The clumps of succulent leaves round
the base of the asphodels were dried and brown; only the virile stems
with their seeding sprouts remained green and vigorous.

The blinding whiteness of the forenoon gave place before one of the day
to a veiled but unabated heat, and sirocco began to blow up from the
south. Furnace-mouthed, it raised mad little whirlwinds, which spun
across the road and over the hot, reaped fields in petulant eddies,
and powdered all they passed with fine white dust. Two or three hawks,
in despair of spying their dinner through this palpable air, and being
continually blown downwind in the attempt to poise, were following
the example of the rest of the world, and seeking their craggy homes
on the sides of Palamede till the tempest should be overpast. A few
cicalas in a line of white poplars by the wayside alone maintained
their alacrity, and clicked and whirred as if sirocco was of all airs
the most invigorating. The hills of Argolis to the north were already
getting dim and veiled, and losing themselves in an ague of heat.

By the roadside, a mile from the town, stood a small wine-shop, in
front of which projected a rough wooden portico open to the air on
three sides, and roofed with boughs of oleander, plucked leaf and
flower together. A couple of rough stools and a rickety table stood
in the shade in order to invite passers-by to rest, and so to drink,
and the owner himself was lying on a bench under the house wall in
wide-mouthed sleep. A surly-looking dog, shaggy and sturdy, guarded his
slumbers in the intervals of its own, and snapped ineffectually at the
flies.

Directly opposite the wine-shop stood a whitewashed house, built in
a rather more pretentious style than the dwellings of most Greek
peasants, and fronted by a garden, to which a row of white poplars
gave a specious and private air. A veranda ran around two sides of
it, floored with planks, and up the wooden pillars, by which it was
supported, streamed long shoots of flowering roses. A low wooden
settee, cushioned with two Greek saddle-bags, stood in the shade of the
veranda, and on it were sitting two men, one of whom was dressed in the
long black cassock of a priest--both silent.

Then for the first time a human note overscored the thundering of
the hot wind, and a small gray cat scuffled round the corner of the
veranda, pursued by a great long-limbed boy, laughing to himself. He
was dressed in a white linen tunic and tight-fitting linen trousers;
he had no shoes, no socks, and no hat. He almost fell over the settee
before he saw the two men, and then paused, laughing and panting.

"She was after the fish," he explained, "and I was after her. She shall
taste a slapping."

One of the two men looked up at the boy and smiled.

"You'll get into mischief if you run about in the heat at noonday
without your cap on," he said. "Come and sit down. Where are your
manners, Mitsos? Here is Father Andréa."

Mitsos knelt down, and the priest put his hand on the boy's rumpled
black hair.

"God make you brave and good," he said, "and forgive all your sins!"

"Now sit down, Mitsos," said his father. "Who is going to taste a
slapping?"

The boy's face, which had grown grave as he received the priest's
blessing, dimpled into smiles again.

"Why, my cat, Psepséka," he said. "The greedy woman was going down to
the cellar where I put the fish, and I went after her and caught her by
the tail. She spit at me like a little she-devil. Then she scratched
me, and I let go. But soon I will catch her again, and she shall pay
for it all twice over, Turkish fashion. See!"

He held out a big brown hand, down which Psepséka had scored three red
lines.

"What a fierce woman!" said his father. "But you're overbig to run
about after little cats. You're eighteen now, Mitsos, and your uncle
comes here this evening. He'll think you're a boy still."

The boy looked up from his examination of his hand.

"Uncle Nicholas?" he asked.

"Yes. Go and wash your hand, and then lay the table. Put some eggs to
boil, and get out some bread and cheese, and pick some cherries."

Mitsos got up.

"Will the father eat with us?"

"Surely; and put your shoes on before you come to dinner."

And without waiting the boy was off into the house.

The priest looked up at Mitsos' father as he disappeared.

"He is full young yet," he said.

"So I think, and so perhaps Nicholas will think. Yet who knows what
Nicholas thinks? But he is a good lad, and he can keep a secret. He is
strong too; he walked from here to Corinth last week, and came back
next day, and he grows like the aloe flower."

The priest rose and looked fiercely out over the garden.

"May the God of Justice give the Turks what they have deserved!" he
cried. "May He send them bitterness to eat and death to drink! May
their children be fatherless and their wives widows! They had no mercy;
may they find none! The curse of a priest of God be upon them!"

Mitsos' father sat still watching him. Eleven years ago Father Andréa
had been obliged to make a journey to Athens to settle about some plot
of land belonging to his wife, who had lately died, and, if possible,
to sell it--for under the Turkish taxes land was more often an expense
than a revenue. He had taken with him his only daughter, a girl of five
or six years of age, pretty even then, and with promise of wonderful
beauty to come. On his way home, just outside Athens, he had been
attacked by some half dozen Turks, and, after a desperate, hopeless
resistance, had been left on the road more dead than alive, and his
daughter had been carried off, to be trained, no doubt, to the doom of
some Turkish harem. He must have lain there stunned for some hours,
for when he awoke again to an aching consciousness of soul and body,
the day was already reddening to its close, and the shadow of the
hills of Daphne had stretched itself across the plain to where he lay.
Wounded and bleeding as he was, and robbed of the money he had got
for the land, he had dragged himself back to Athens, and stayed there
for weeks, until his hope of ever finding his Theodora again had faded
and died. For it was scant justice that was given to the Greeks by
their masters, who treated them as a thoughtless man will scarce treat
an animal that annoys him. Rape, cruelty, robbery was their method of
rule, and for the unruly a noose.

Since that time one thought, and one only, possessed his brain, a
thought which whispered to him all day and shouted to him in sleep--the
lust for vengeance; not on one Turk alone, on those who had carried
Theodora off, but on the whole of that race of devils. For eleven years
he had thought and schemed and worked, at first only with nothing more
than wild words and bloody thoughts, but of late in a soberer belief
that his day would come; for organized schemes of throwing off the
Turkish rule were on foot, and though they were still things only to be
whispered, it was known that agents of the Club of Patriots were doing
sure and silent work all over the country.

Father Andréa was a tall, finely made man, and, to judge from his
appearance, the story that he would tell you, how he and his family
were of pure Greek descent, had good warrant. He came from the
southwest part of Argolis, a rough, mountainous land which the Turks
had never entirely subdued. His father had died five years before, but
when Andréa went home after the capture of his daughter, the old man
had turned him out of the house and refused to see him again.

"A child is a gift which God has given the father," said he; "it were
better for him to lose himself than lose God's gift; and now we, who
are of the few who have not mixed with that devil-brood--we are fallen
even as others. You have brought disgrace on me, and on our dead, and
on our living, and I would sooner have seen you dead yourself than hear
this from your lips!"

"They were six to one," said Andréa, "and they left me for dead. Would
to God they had killed me!"

"Would to God they had killed you," said his father, "and her too."

"The fault was not mine. Will you not forgive me?"

"Yes, when the fault is wiped out by the death of Theodora."

"Of Theodora? What has she done?"

"She will grow up in shame, and mate with devils. Go!"

Five years passed before they met again. But one day Andréa's father,
left lonely in his house, moved by some vague desire which he hardly
understood himself, saddled his mule and went to Nauplia, whither
Andréa had gone. He was very old and very feeble in body, and perhaps
he felt that death could not be far from him; and to Andréa's cry of
welcome and wonder--"I have come to you, my son," said the old man,
"for otherwise we are both alone, and--and I am very old."

Day by day he used to sit looking up and down the road for Theodora.
There was a bend in it some quarter of a mile farther up, and
sometimes, when the spring days were warm to his bones, he would hobble
up to the corner and sit waiting for her there, where he could command
a longer stretch of country. But Theodora came not, and one evening,
when he came back, he sank into a chair without strength and called
Andréa to him.

"I am dying," he said, "and this is no season to waste idle words. When
Theodora comes back"--he always clung to the idea that she would come
back--"tell her that I waited for her every day, for I should have
loved to see her again. And if you find it hard, Andréa, to forgive
her, forgive her for my sake, for she was very little and the fault was
not hers; nor is it yours, and I was hard on you; yet if I had loved
you not, I should have cared the less. But if, when the day comes,
you spare your hand and do not take vengeance on the Turks to the
uttermost, then may my ghost tear you limb from limb, and give you to
the vultures and the jackals."

The old man rose from his chair.

"Vengeance!" he cried; "death to man, woman, and child. Smite and spare
not, for you are a priest of God and they are of the devil. Smite,
smite, avenge!"

He sank back in his chair again, his head fell over on to his shoulder,
and his arms rattled against the woodwork. And with vengeance on his
lips, and the desire of vengeance in his heart, he died.

From that day a double portion of his spirit seemed to have descended
on Father Andréa. One hope and one desire ruled his life--to help in
wiping out from Greece the whole race of Turks. To him innocent or
guilty mattered not; they were of one accursed brood. But though the
longing burned like fire within him, he kept it in, choking it as it
were with fresh fuel. He was willing to wait till all was ready. For
a year or two large organizations had been at work in North Greece
collecting funds, and, by means of secret agents, feeding and fanning
the smouldering hate against their brutal masters in the minds of the
people. Soon would the net be so drawn round them that escape was
impossible. And then vengeance in the name of God.

Mitsos had encouraged a small charcoal fire to heat the water, and he
went to fetch the eggs. Two minutes of puckered brow were devoted to
the number which he was free to boil. His father usually ate two, the
priest--and he cursed his own good memory--never ate more than one, and
he himself invariably ate as many as he could possibly get. He looked
at the basket of eggs thoughtfully. "It is a hungry day," he said to
himself, "and the hens are very strong. Perhaps father might eat three,
and perhaps Father Andréa might eat two. Then I am allowed three, a
tale of eight."

Mitsos drew a sigh of satisfaction at this liberal conclusion, and his
eyes began to smile; his mouth followed suit, and showed a row of very
white teeth.

"It is such a pity that I am always hungry," he said to himself; "but
when Uncle Nicholas measures me he will see I have grown."

And putting the eight eggs into the pot, he ran off to pick the
cherries.

For the last year both Constantine, Mitsos' father, and the boy had
worked the little land he owned, like common laborers. Two years before
a Turkish pasha, Abdul Achmet by name, in passing through the country
had been struck by the Avilion climate of Nauplia, and had built a
house on the shore of the bay. The land belonged to Constantine, and
the Turk had promised him a fair price for it, feeling that a less
scrupulous man would have taken it off-hand. At the same time he
intimated that if he would not take a fair price for it, he would
get no price at all. The money, of course, was still owing, and on
Constantine's old vineyard stood the house, now finished. Abdul Achmet,
who was Governor of Argos, took up his quarters here permanently,
with his harem; for it was within easy distance of Argos, and on warm
evenings the women were often seen in the garden looking over the
sea-wall which separated it from the bay, a wall some ten feet high,
over which creepers sprawled and flamed. Abdul himself was a fat,
middle-aged Turk, slow of movement and sparing of speech. In temper of
mind he was a Gallio, and his neglect to pay Constantine the money he
owed him was as much due to negligence as to the usual Turkish method
of dealing with Greeks, which was not to pay at all. His harem, for the
years had long since quenched the ardor of his body, were given a good
deal of freedom, and were allowed to wander about the garden, which was
walled off from the country road, as they pleased.

Constantine had applied several times for payment, but had already
given up hopes of securing any equivalent for the land seized. He was a
Greek of the upper peasant class--that is to say, of the first class of
the country--who lived on their own land and employed labor. Like his
race, he was thrifty and industrious; but now, between the loss of his
vineyard and the iniquitous increase in the last year's taxes, which
promised to grow indefinitely, he found it difficult to do more than
make a sparing livelihood. He and Mitsos worked all the spring with
the laborers in the harvest-field, and in the autumn, when they had
finished making the wine from a half-acre of vines still left them, as
laborers in the neighboring vineyards.

Constantine felt the change in his position acutely. Instead of being
a man with men under him, he was himself obliged to work for his
bread, and, what was an added bitterness, it was by gross injustice,
and through no fault of his own, that he was thus reduced. Every year
the taxation became more and more heavy; only six months before he had
been obliged to sell his horse, for a new tax was levied on horses, and
all that remained were an acre or two of ground, a pony, his house,
and his boat. But of late he seemed to have taken up a patient,
uncomplaining attitude, which much puzzled the growling Greeks whom he
met at the cafés. While others grumbled and cursed the Turks beneath
their breath, Constantine would sit with a quiet smile on his lips,
looking half amused, half indulgent. Only two nights before a neighbor
had said to him, point blank:

"You have suffered more than any of us, except perhaps those who have
daughters. Why do you sit there smiling? Are things so prosperous with
you?"

The question was evidently prearranged, for the two or three men
sitting round stopped talking and waited for him to answer.

Constantine knocked the ashes out of his chibouk before replying.

"Things are not prosperous with me," he said; "but I am a man who can
hold his tongue. This I may tell you, however: Nicholas Vidalis comes
here in three days."

"And then?"

"Nicholas will advise you to hold your tongues, too. He will certainly
tell you that, and it may be he will tell you something besides. I will
be going home. Good-night, friends."

And now, when Father Andréa was cursing the Turks in the name of God,
though Constantine crossed himself at that name, he watched him with
the same smile. Then he said:

"Father Andréa, I ask your pardon, but Nicholas does not like too much
talk. He says that talking never yet mended a matter. You know him--in
these things he is not a man of many words, save where it serves some
purpose."

The priest turned round.

"You are right and wrong," he said; "Nicholas is a man of few words;
but I have made a vow that for every time the sun rises, and at every
noonday and every sunset, I will curse the Turk in God's name. That vow
I will keep."

Constantine shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"Well, here is Mitsos. Do not curse before the boy. Mitsos, is dinner
ready?"

Mitsos wrinkled up his forehead till his eyebrows nearly disappeared
under his curly hair.

"Yes, it is ready; but for me, I can find one shoe only."

"Well, look for the other."

"I have looked for it," said the boy, "but it is not, and I ache for
emptiness."

He raised his eyes appealingly to his father, but Constantine was firm.

"You must find it first," he said. "Come, Father, let us go in."

Father Andréa followed him, leaving Mitsos half-shod and disconsolate.

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF NICHOLAS VIDALIS

An hour later, Mitsos, having found his shoe and eaten his dinner in
decency, was curled up in the shady corner of the veranda fast asleep.
He had been out fishing most of the night before, and as the harvest
was over there was no work on hand except to water the vines when the
sun was off the vineyard, which would not be before four. He slept, as
his father said, like a dog--that is to say, he curled himself up and
fell into a light sleep, from which any noise would arouse him--as soon
as he shut his eyes.

He was an enormous boy, of the Greek country type, close on the edge
of manhood, with black, curly hair coming down onto his shoulders,
straight, black eyebrows, long, black eyelashes, and black eyes. His
nose was short and square-tipped, his mouth the fine, scornful mouth
of his race, quick to reflect the most passing shades of emotion.
His hands and face were of that inimitable color for which sun,
wind, and rain are the sole cosmetic--a particularly soft, clear
brown, shading off a little round the eyes and under the hair. As he
slept, with his head thrown back, there showed on his neck the sharp
line where the tanning ended and the whiter skin began. He had that
out-door appearance which is the inheritance of those whose fathers
and grandfathers have lived wholesomely in the open air from sunrise
to sunset all their lives, and who have followed the same course of
life themselves. He had kicked off his shoes again, and his hands were
clasped behind his head, and what would at once characterize him to any
one who was acquainted with the Greek peasant race was that both hands
and feet were clean.

He slept for a couple of hours, and was awakened by the pale,
dust-ridden sunshine creeping round the corner of the veranda and
falling on his head. At first he rolled over again with his face to the
wall, but in a few moments, realizing the uselessness of temporizing,
he got up and stretched himself lazily and luxuriously, with a
cavernous yawn. Then he went round to the stone fountain which stood at
the back of the house and plunged his head into the bright cool water
to finish the process of awakening, and, seeing that the tall shade of
the poplar had stretched its length across the vineyard, took up his
spade and went off to his work.

The stream, which passed through their garden and out into the bay
below, ran for some half-mile along a little raised aqueduct, banked up
with earth to keep it to its course. It passed between small vineyard
plots on each side, so that the water could be turned into them for
irrigation, and Mitsos went out of the garden gate straight into their
vineyard, which lay just above.

Each of the vines stood in its several little artificial hollow dug in
the ground, and he first cleared the water-channels in the vineyard of
all accumulated rubbish and soil, so that, when he let the stream in,
it might flow to all the trees. Having done this, he went back to the
aqueduct and removed a spadeful of earth from the bank, which he placed
in the bed of the stream itself, stamping it down to keep it firm, so
that the whole of the water was diverted into the vineyard. Standing,
as he did, a few feet above the surface of the vines, he could see when
the water had reached them all, and then, hooking out his temporary dam
from the bed of the stream, he replaced it, so as to again send the
water back into its channel; then, jumping down, he hoed away round
the roots of the vines, so that the water might sink well in close to
them, for there had been no rain for weeks, and they must be thoroughly
watered.

The sun was off the land, but it was still very hot, for the sirocco
had increased in violence and was sweeping over the fields like the
blast from the pit. On the windward side of the trees the dark rich
green of the vine-leaves was powdered over with the fine white dust
driven up from the bare, harvested fields. Mitsos stopped now and then
to wipe the sweat off his forehead, but otherwise he worked hard and
continuously, singing to himself the peasant song of the vine-diggers.

His work was nearly over when he saw his father coming towards him. The
latter stood for a moment on the edge of the bank, looking at what the
boy had been doing.

"Poor little Mitsos," he said, "you have had to work alone to-day! I
was obliged to go into Nauplia. You have watered the vines very well.
You have finished, have you not?"

"There are three more vines here," said Mitsos, "which are yet to be
dug. But it won't take long."

His father stepped down into the vineyard.

"You can go and rest," he said. "I'll finish those."

Mitsos threw down his spade.

"Oh, it is hotter than hell!" he said. "Uncle Nicholas will be roasted
coming across the plain."

"He will want a bath," said Constantine. "Do you remember his making
a bath last year out of those spare planks? I suppose it holds water
still?"

"I wish it didn't hold so much," said Mitsos; "it holds six cans."

Constantine laughed.

"And Mitsos' back will ache, eh?"

"I hope not; but it is a great affair to carry six cans of water from
the fountain."

Constantine worked on for half an hour or so, while Mitsos looked on.

"There, that is finished," he said, at last. "You won't go fishing
to-night, will you? The wind is too strong."

"It may go down at sunset," said Mitsos; "but there are enough fish for
to-night and to-morrow night, unless this hot weather turns them. But I
put them in the cellar in water, and I expect they will keep."

They walked back together, but as soon as they got onto the road they
saw that three mules were standing opposite the house. Constantine
quickened his pace.

"Nicholas must have come," he said. "He was ever quicker than a man
could expect. Come, Mitsos."

The veranda was full of boxes and rugs, and the two went through into
the house. A man was sitting on a low chair by the window. As they came
in he got up.

"Well, Constantine," he said, "how is all with you? I have just come.
And Mitsos, little Mitsos is growing still. I will give you a hundred
piastres when you are as tall as your father. It is the devil's own
day, Constantine, and I am full inside and out of this gritty wind. Man
is not a hen that he should sit all day in the dust. May I have a bath
at once? Mitsos, we made a bath together. The mule men will help you to
fill it."

He laid his hand on Mitsos' shoulder.

"You look fitter than a mountain hawk," he said. "Get me plenty of
water, and give me ten minutes of scouring, and then we will talk
together while I dress."

Mitsos left the room, and Constantine turned to his brother-in-law.
"Well?" he asked.

"He is a fine boy," said Nicholas; "I must see if he can be trusted."

"A Turk would trust him," said his father, eagerly.

"Ha! we shall not require that. But in the face of fear?"

Constantine laughed.

"He does not know what fear is."

"Then he has that to learn," said Nicholas, "for the bravest men
learn that best. No one can be brave until he has known the cold fear
clutching at the stomach. However, we shall see."

Nicholas was dressed like Constantine, in Albanian costume, with a
woollen cloak thrown over one shoulder, a red embroidered jacket, cut
very low and open, showing the shirt, a long fustanella and white
leggings, tied with tasselled ends. He was tall and spare, and his face
seemed the face of a man of forty who had lived very hard, or of a man
of fifty who had lived very carefully. In reality he was nearly sixty.
He was clean shaven and very pale in complexion, as one who had never
lived an out-door life; but you might have been led to reject such a
conclusion, if you remarked the wonderful clearness and freshness of
his skin. His eyes looked out from deep under a broad bar which crossed
his forehead from temple to temple; they were large and dark gray in
color, and gathered additional depth from his thick black eyebrows.
His nose was finely chiselled, tending to aquiline, with thin, curved
nostrils, which seemed never still, but expanded and contracted with
the movement of the nostrils of some well-bred horse snuffing some
disquieting thing. His mouth was ascetically thin-lipped, but firm and
clean cut. His hair, still thick and growing low on his forehead and
long behind, was barely touched with gray above the temples. His head
was set very straight and upright on a rather long neck, supported
on two well-drilled shoulders. In height he could not have been less
than six feet three, and his slightness of make made him appear almost
gigantic.

"I have travelled from Corinth to-day," he continued, "and there is
much to tell you. At last the Club of Patriots have put the Morea
entirely into my hands. I have leave to use the funds as I think fit,
and it is I who shall say the word for the vintage of the Turks to
begin. Are there men here whom you can trust, or are they all mule-folk
and chatterers?"

"The main are mule-folk," said Constantine.

"The mule-folk can be useful," remarked Nicholas; "but the man who
travels with a mule to show the way goes a short journey. They follow
where they are led, but some one has to lead. But is there not a priest
here--Father Andréa, I think--with a trumpet for a voice? I should like
to see him. As far as I remember, he talked too much, yet you would not
call him a chatterer."

"He curses the Turk in the name of God three times a day," said
Constantine. "It is a vow."

"And little harm will the Turk suffer from that. Better that he should
learn to bless them, or best to keep a still tongue. Well, little
Mitsos, is the bath ready? You will excuse me, Constantine, but I am an
uneasy man when I am dirty. Come to my room in ten minutes, Mitsos, and
tell me of yourself."

"There is little to tell," said Mitsos.

"We will hope, then, that it is all good. By the way, Constantine, I
have brought some wine with me. Mitsos will drop it into the fountain,
for it must be tepid. Tepid wine saps a man's self-respect, and if a
man, or a boy either, doesn't respect himself, Mitsos, nobody will ever
respect him."

Mitsos followed him out of the room with his eyes, and then turned to
his father.

"My hands are so dirty from that vine-digging," he whispered. "Do you
think Uncle Nicholas saw?"

"He sees everything," said his father. "Wash, then, before you go up to
his room."

Mitsos adored his uncle Nicholas with a unique devotion, for Nicholas
was a finer make of man than any he had ever seen. He had been to
foreign countries, a feat only attainable by sailing for weeks in big
ships. He had been able to talk to some French sailors who had once
been wrecked, within Mitsos' memory, on the coast near, and understand
what they said, though no one in the place, not even the mayor, could
do that; indeed the latter, before Nicholas had interpreted, roundly
asserted that they spoke as sparrows speak. Then Uncle Nicholas was
constantly going on mysterious journeys and turning up again when he
was least expected, but always welcome; and he had a wonderfully low,
soft voice, as unlike as possible to the discordant throats of the
country folk; and he had long, muscular hands and pink nails. Also he
could shoot wild pigeon when they were flying, whereas the utmost that
the mayor's son, who was the acknowledged Nimrod of the neighborhood,
could do, was to shoot them if they were walking about. Even then he
could only hit them for certain if there were several of them together
and he got very close. Also Uncle Nicholas was omniscient: he knew
the names of all birds and plants; he could imitate a horse's neigh
so well that a grazing beast would leave its fodder and come to his
voice; and once when Mitsos was laid up with the fever he had picked
some common-looking leaves from the hedge and boiled them in water, and
given him the water to drink, the effect of which was that next morning
he awoke quite well. Above all, Nicholas told the most enchanting
stories about what he had seen at the ends of the earth.

So Mitsos washed his hands and went up to Nicholas's room, finding him
already bathed and half dressed. His dusty clothes lay on the floor,
and he pointed to them as Mitsos came in.

"I shall be here four days at the least," he said, "and I want these
washed before I go away. The most important thing in the world is to be
clean, Mitsos."

"Father Andréa says--" began the boy.

"Well, what does Father Andréa say?"

"He says that to love God and hate the devil--I think he means the
Turk--is the most important thing."

"Well, Father Andréa is right. But you must remember that I am right
too. Sit you in the window, Mitsos, and talk to me. What have you been
doing since I was here?"

"Looking after the vines," said Mitsos, "since the reaping was over.
And I go fishing very often, almost every night."

"Then to-morrow we will go together; to-night I have much to say to
your father."

"Will you really come with me?" asked the boy. "And will you tell me
some more stories?"

"Yes, I have a new set of stories, which you shall hear--I want to know
what you will think of them. How old are you?"

"Eighteen, nineteen in November; and my mustache is coming."

Nicholas turned the boy's face round to the light.

"Yes, an owner's eye might detect something. Why do you want a
mustache?"

"Because men have mustaches."

"And you want to be a man," said Nicholas; "but a man makes his
mustache, not his mustache the man. But before we go down I have one
thing to say to you, a thing you must never forget: if a Turk ever asks
you if you know aught about me, where I am, or where I may be going,
you must always say you know nothing. Say you have not set eyes on me
for more than a year. Do you understand? That must be your answer and
no other."

"I understand, just that I have not seen you for a year, and know
nothing about you."

"Yes. Whatever happens, do you think you can always answer that and no
more? I may as well tell you that if you answer more than that, if,
when you are questioned--I do not say you will ever be questioned, but
you may be--you tell them where I am, or whether I am expected here, or
anything of the kind, you will perhaps be killing me as surely as if
you shot me this moment with my own gun. Do you promise?"

"Of course, I promise," said Mitsos, with crisp, boyish petulance.

"And should they threaten to kill you if you do not tell them?"

"Why do you ask me?" he said. "I have made the promise."

Nicholas laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, and with a flashing
eye--"And, by God, I believe you are one to keep it!" he said.

The sirocco blew itself out during the night, and a light north wind
had taken its place when day dawned. A smell extraordinarily clean was
in the air, and the whole sky was brisk with the sparkling air of the
south. Northwards from Nauplia the sharp mountainous outlines of the
Argive hills were cut out clear against the pale cobalt of the heavens,
glowing pink in the sunrise, and all their glens and hollows were
brimmed with bluest shadow. To the west, a furlong away, the waters of
the bay gleamed with a transparent, aqueous tint; you would have said
that two skies had been melted together to make the sea. Beyond, the
hills over which the Turkish road to Tripoli wound like a climbing,
yellow snake, lay still in darkness. The lower slopes were covered with
pines; above, the bare, gray stone climbed up, shoulder by shoulder,
to meet the sky. By degrees, as the sun rose higher, the light struck
first the tops, and flowed caressingly down from peak to spur, and spur
to slope, till it reached the lower rounded hills at the base, and then
flashed across the bay and the plain of Argos. There it caught first
the tawny fortress walls of the citadel which kept guard over the town,
then the town itself which clustered round its base, until suddenly
from Constantine's house the sun swung over the rim of the hills to the
northeast, and the whole plain leaped from shadow into light.

There had been a heavy dew during the night, and the close-reaped
cornfields were a loom of gossamer webs, hanging pearly and iridescent
between the stubble-stalks, and in the vineyards the upper surface of
the broad, strong leaves was wet and shining, as if with a fresh coat
of indescribable green. In that first moment of light and heat all the
odors of flowering plants, grafted on the wholesome smell of moist
earth, which had been hanging as if asleep close to the ground all
night, rose and dispersed themselves in the air. A breath of wind shook
the web of sweet smell out of the mimosa trees that grew at the gate
of Constantine's garden, and sent it spreading and shifting like the
gossamers in the fields on to the veranda, and in at the open windows.
The border of wild thyme by the porch trembled like a row of fine
steel springs as the wind passed over it, and gave out its offering
of incense to the morning. A sparrow lit on a spray of rose and flew
off again, scattering dew-drops and petals. The world smiled, breathed
deep, and awoke.

During the morning Mitsos was chiefly employed in making coffee, for
many of the leading Greeks, to whom the secret of the imminent uprising
was known, came from Nauplia to see Nicholas, and to each must be
offered a cup of Turkish coffee. Nicholas sat in the veranda with his
narghilé, which he smoked without intermission, and he appeared to
be giving instructions to his visitors. Among the first to come was
Father Andréa, whom he treated with great respect. When he rose to go,
Nicholas accompanied him as far as the back gate, which led into a
field path towards his house, and Mitsos, who was washing cups at the
fountain screened behind bushes, heard them go by talking.

As they parted he heard Nicholas say, "Above all, be silent. We shall
want you to talk later, and to talk then with the full voice. At
present a word overheard might ruin everything, and the devil himself
scarcely knows when he is being overheard. Even now Mitsos, whom you
never noticed, but whom I noticed, knows all I say to you. Mitsos, come
here."

Mitsos came, cup in hand, flushed and angry.

"You are not fair to me, Uncle Nicholas," he said. "I was not
listening. I could not help hearing."

"No, little one, I am not blaming you," said Nicholas; "I only wanted
Father Andréa to see. That is an instance to hand, father; please let
there not be more. And here is my offering to the Christ and to my
patron saint for having brought me here safely."

Nicholas was punctual to his promise to Mitsos, and soon after sunset
they went off together to where the boat was lying. Mitsos carried a
couple of big pewter ladles, a bag full of resin, a wicker creel for
the fish, and two spears, while Nicholas walked on a little ahead with
the net wound round his shoulders. They were to begin the evening's
work with the spears, and later when the moon was up to sail across the
far side of the bay, where they would use the sweep-net in the shallow
water, where the bottom was sandy and shelving. But the nearer shore of
the bay was rocky, descending rapidly into deep water, and was no place
for netting. Nicholas, however, got into the boat in order to arrange
the net and dispose the lead in what he considered a more satisfactory
manner, leaving the boy to do the spearing alone.

Mitsos took off his linen trousers, fastening his shirt round his waist
with a leather belt. He then slung the creel and the bag round his
neck, and putting a half handful of resin into the ladle, set light to
it, took the spear in his right hand, and rolling up his sleeves to the
shoulder, stepped into the sea. He held the flare close to the surface,
so that its light showed clearly on the bottom of the shallow water, a
luminous lure for the fish. The spear he held ready to bring down if he
saw anything.

It was a scene which Rembrandt would have painted with the hand of
love. The moon was not yet risen, but in the clear starlight the
edges of the serrated hills were sharply etched against the sky, and
the water of the bay, just curdled by the wind, lay vast and sombre
across to the farther shore. The light from the resin-flare vaguely
showed the lines of the boat in which Nicholas was preparing the net,
but all was dim except Mitsos' figure and a few feet of glittering,
flame-scribbled water round him. The highest light was cast on his
brown down-bent face and on his left arm bared to the shoulder, which
stood out as clear-cut as a cameo against the darkness behind, and as
he moved, the water, which lapped about his knees, was stirred into
fire-crested ripples. The sea was slightly phosphorescent, and his
trail was palely luminous like the Milky Way. Now and again, with a
sudden splendid motion, down went the poised spear with a splashing
cluck into the sea, and he would draw it up again, sometimes with a
red mullet, sometimes with a thin brill flapping and struggling on the
point. More rarely he missed his aim, and looked up at Nicholas smiling
and showing his white teeth.

At the end of half an hour the latter had finished his fresh leading
of the net, and as a stiffer breeze had awoke, ruffling the surface
of the water and making it difficult to see the fish distinctly, they
started to sail across the bay. Mitsos waded out to the boat, trousers
and shoes in hand, set the big brown sail, and giving a vigorous shove
or two with the oar sent the boat round so that it caught the wind. In
a moment it heeled over without stirring, and then the whisper of its
moving came sibilantly from the forefoot, and gathering speed it glided
on across the dark water.

Nicholas had taken the rudder, and Mitsos sat down beside him.

"Eight mullet and a dozen other fish," he said. "That is no bad catch
for half an hour. Put her head for under that point, Uncle Nicholas. Do
you see it? There is a house with a light burning a little above it."

"I see. It will take nearly an hour with this wind. Well, what is it?"

"Will you tell me some of the new stories, Uncle Nicholas?"

"No, we will keep the stories for when we go home. It will take us
twice as long to get back against this wind. They are long stories."

For nearly an hour they sailed on in comparative silence; the wind had
freshened, and from over the hills towards Tripoli there came blinking
flashes of summer lightning. The lamp in the house above the point to
which they were steering had been put out, but in the half-darkness of
the summer night the promontory itself was clearly visible. Towards the
east the hills were blocked out with a strange intensity of blackness,
for the moon was on the point of rising behind them, and the deep
velvet blue of the zenith had turned to dove-color.

"Now for our fishing, Mitsos," said Nicholas, as they drew near to the
shore. "Can we run the boat in behind the promontory?"

"Yes, there is four feet of water right up to the land. Just there the
shore is steep. I will take in the sail."

"There is no need. As soon as we pass the corner it will be dead calm."

Nicholas put the helm hard to port as soon as they were opposite the
little point; next moment the sail flapped like a wounded bird against
the mast, and they ran up to the rocks. Mitsos jumped out and tied the
boat up.

They lifted the net on shore, and made their way round the wooded
headland to the little bays which they were to fish. Here the shore was
sandy and shelving, and sprinkled with clumps of succulent seaweed
which grew up from the rocks below, a favorite feeding ground, as
Mitsos knew, for mullet and sole. Nicholas had put on Constantine's
long fishing-boots, reaching up to his hips, before he left the boat,
Mitsos, as before, merely taking off his shoes and trousers.

The net was some twenty-five yards long, and Mitsos, taking one end
into his hand, stepped into the water at right angles to the shore.
He waded out till the net was taut between them, and then Nicholas
followed. As soon as the latter was some ten yards from land they both
moved shorewards up the little bay, which lay in front of them, getting
gradually nearer to each other as they approached the beach, till
when they were within five or six yards of the land they were walking
together, the net trailing in a great bagging oval behind them. The
resistance of the water, the dragging of the lead along the bottom,
and, it was to be hoped, the spoils enclosed made no small weight,
and it was a quarter of an hour or so before they got it in. The moon
had risen, and it was easy to see the silvery glitter of the fish as
they lay fluttering in the dark meshes of the net. The flat, brown
soles, however, required a more careful search, and the sound of their
flapping, rather than the eye, led to their discovery.

They fished for an hour or two with only moderate success, until Mitsos
proposed they should try a little farther down the coast, where shoals
of a certain fish, as small as the whitebait, and as sweet, grazed the
watery pastures. Here the depth was somewhat greater, and before going
in Mitsos divested himself of his shirt, leaving it on the rocks, and
went in completely naked. Nicholas, who had put himself entirely under
his directions, waited in the shallower water near the shore till the
boy had waded out to where the water covered him to the waist; then, as
before, they moved in converging lines towards the shore.

They had approached to within about twenty yards of the beach, and
within about five yards of each other, when Mitsos stopped and pointed
back. The upper edge of the net, fitted at intervals with corks to keep
it floating, was visible on the bright surface of the sea, trailing in
an irregular oval. But inside this oval the moonlit water was strangely
agitated and unquiet, quivering like a jarred metal-plate, and from
moment to moment a little silvery speck would glitter on it.

"Look," he said to Nicholas, "the little fish are there. We must be as
quick as we can. Sometimes if the shoal begins jumping they will all
jump out."

And bending forward to get his whole weight into the work, he pushed
forward towards the land.

The moonlight fell full on his body, dripping and glistening from the
waist downwards with the salt water, and threw the straining muscles
which line the spine, and those chords behind the shoulder-blade which
painters love, into strong light and shadow, as he pulled against the
weight of the dragging net. Already the water came only to his knees,
and the catch was imminent, when suddenly from the net there came a
rustle and a splash like myriad little pebbles being thrown into the
sea, and he turned round just in time to see the whole shoal, which
glistened like a silver sheet, rise and drop into the water outside.

"The little Turks," he said, angrily, "they are all gone."

"Better to pull the net in and look," said Nicholas; "a part only may
have leaped."

Mitsos shook his head.

"When they go like that it is all of them," he said.

Mitsos was quite right. There was a stray fish or two still in the net,
but so few that they were hardly worth picking out.

"That will do for to-night, won't it?" he said. "We have fished all the
best places."

Nicholas assenting, he lay down and rolled over in the warm, dry sand
once or twice, and then standing up brushed the wet stuff off his body.
Then spreading the net out on the rocks higher up on the beach, Mitsos
went off to fetch his shirt. Nicholas employed himself in picking up a
few stray fish, and put them into the creel. Then rolling up the net
they walked back to the boat.

THE STORY OF A BRIGAND

The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blew
freshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They would
have to make two long tacks to get home--the first, right across to the
island in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head of
it; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos went
to the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas.

"It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said.

"Yes, we will have the stories now."

Nicholas paused a moment.

"Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life of
which I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have only
told you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you a
story for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty years
ago, when I was a brigand."

Mitsos stared.

"A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?"

"Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with a
price set on his head--it is there now for you to take if you like--a
man without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than live
in the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying one
might be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk.
The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told you
before; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand,
that will be new to you--a story, as I have said, not for a boy, but
for a man.

"I used to live then at Dimitzana, in Arcadia, and I became a brigand
on the night that my wife died. Why and how that happened comes later.
Well, there I was living in the mountains round Arcadia, sheltering and
hiding for the most part of the day in the woods, but keeping near some
mountain path, so that if a Turk or two or three came by I could--how
shall I say it?--do business with them. For a month or two I was
a-hunting alone, and then I was joined by other men from Dimitzana, who
also had become outlaws. With them I went hunting on rather a larger
scale--we used to take Turks and get ransoms for them. But never did we
take or molest a Greek or lay hands on any woman, Greek or Turk. For
the most part we were very fortunate, and all the time we lost but few
men, and of those the heads of none fell into the hands of the Turks,
for if one was wounded beyond healing we all went and kissed him and
said good-bye; and then one cut his head off and buried it, so that the
Turks should not dishonor him."

Nicholas paused a moment, and then laughed gently to himself.

"Never in my life shall I forget when we took Mohammed Bey--a fat-belly
man, Mitsos, and a devil, with a paunch for two men and a woman's skin.
To see him tied on his mule, crying out to Allah and Mohammed to rescue
him and his dinner from the infidels, as if Mohammed had nothing better
to do than look after such swine! I told him that he would only spend
a day or two with us in the mountains until his friends ransomed him,
adding that we would do our best to make him comfortable. But he wept
tears of pure oil and said that Mohammed would avenge him, which, as
yet, the Prophet has omitted to do. But there is one drawback to that
sort of life, little Mitsos--one cannot keep clean. Sometimes, if one
is travelling or being pursued, one has to go a whole day, or more,
without water to drink, much less to wash in. Once, I remember, we had
been all day without water, and could not find any when we stopped for
the night; but there was a heavy dew, and, though it was a cold night,
we all sat without our shirts for an hour, laying them on the ground
until they were wet with dew, and then wrung them out into our mouths.
Ah, horrible! horrible!"

Nicholas spat over the side of the boat at the thought, and then went
on.

"For the most part we lived up in the mountains to the north of
Arcadia, but somehow or other when summer came we all began to head
southward again. We never spoke to each other of where we were going,
for we all knew. And one evening, just before sunset, we were on the
brow of a big wooded hill above Dimitzana and looked at our homes
again. Homesickness and want of water--these were the two things which
made me suffer, and I would drink the wringings of a shirt sooner than
be sick for home.

"All next day we stopped there, sitting on that spur of wooded hill
looking at home as if our eyes would start from our heads. Now one of
us and then another would roll over, burying his face in his hands, and
the rest of us would pretend not to notice. I cannot say for certain
what the others did when they buried their faces like that; for myself
I can only say that I sobbed--for some had wives there, and some
children. And it hurts a man to sob unless he is a Turk, for Turks sob
if the coffee is not to their taste.

"That evening I could not bear it any longer, and I said to the others,
'I must go down and see my house again.' They tried to stop me, for it
is a foolish thing for an outlaw to go home when there is a price on
his head; but I would not listen to them.

"And I went down to the village and walked up the street, past the
fountain and past the church. I met many Greeks whom I knew, but I
made signs to them that they should not recognize me. Luckily for me
the garrison of Turks had been changed, and though I passed several
soldiers in the street, they stared at me, being a stranger, but did
not know who I was.

"Then I went up past the big plane-tree and saw my house. The windows
were all broken and the door was down, for that, too, had the Turks
done in their malicious anger at not finding me there. And on the
door-step my father was sitting. He was very old, eighty or near it,
and he was playing with a doll that had belonged to my daughter."

Nicholas paused a moment.

"Mitsos," he went on, "you do not know what it is to feel keen,
passionate joy and sorrow mixed together like that, ludicrously. It
is not right that a man should have to bear such a thing, for when
I saw my father sitting there nursing the doll I could not have
contained myself, not if ten companies of angels had been withstanding
me or twenty of devils; and I ran up to him and sat down by him, and
kissed him, and said, 'Father, don't you know me?' But he did not say
anything. He only looked at me in a puzzled sort of way, and went on
nursing his doll.

"It is odd that one remembers these little things, but the stupid face
of the doll, somehow, I remember better than I remember the face of my
father.

"I stopped in the village for an hour, perhaps more, and I swore an
oath which I have never yet forgotten and which I will never forget.
In the church we have a shrine to the blessed Jesus and another to His
mother, and one to St. George, and to each of them I lit tapers and
prayed to them that they would help me to accomplish my oath. They have
helped me and they will help me, and you, Mitsos, can help me, too."

The boy looked up.

"What was your oath, Uncle Nicholas," he said, "and how can I help you?"

He laid his hand on Nicholas's knee, and Nicholas felt it trembling.
The story was going home.

"I will tell you," he said; "but, first, I must tell you how it was I
became an outlaw. This was the way of it:

"You never knew my wife: she died before you were born. She was
the most beautiful and the best-loved of women. That you will not
understand. You do not know yet what a woman is to a man, and your
cousin Helen, to whom the doll belonged, would have been as beautiful
as her mother. A fortnight before I became an outlaw there came a new
officer to command the garrison at Dimitzana. He was a pleasant-seeming
man, and to me, being the mayor of the village, he paid much attention.
He would sit with us all in the garden after dinner. Sometimes I asked
him to take his dinner with us; sometimes he asked me to dine with him.
But Catharine always disliked him; often she was barely civil to him.
He had been in the place nearly a fortnight when I had to go away for
a night, or perhaps two, to Andritsaena for the election of the mayor,
for I had some little property there, and therefore a vote in the
matter. I left about midday, but I had not gone more than four hours
from the town when I met a man from Andritsaena, who told me that the
election would be an affair of form only, as one of the two candidates
had resigned. So I turned my horse round and went home.

"It was dark before I got to the village, and I noticed that there was
no light in my house. However, I supposed that Catharine was spending
the evening with some friend, and I suspected nothing. But it got later
and ever later and she did not come, so at last I went out and called
at all the houses where she was likely to be. She was not at any of
them, and no one had seen her. Then unwillingly, and with a heart grown
somehow suddenly cold, I determined to go to the officer's quarters and
ask if he had seen her. There was a light burning in one of the upper
windows, but the door was locked.

"It was when I found that the door was locked that I drew my pistol
from my belt and loaded it, and then I waited a moment. In that moment
I heard the sound of a woman sobbing and crying from inside the house,
and the next minute I had burst the door open. The room inside was
dark, but a staircase led up from it through the floor of the room
above, and I made two jumps of it. Helen--she was only seven years
old--ran across the room, perhaps knowing my step, crying 'Father,
father!' and as my head appeared the officer fired. He missed me, and
shot Helen dead.

"Before he could fire again I fired at him. He fell with a rattling,
broken sound across the floor, and never spoke nor moved. Catharine was
there, and she came slowly across the room to me.

"'Ah, you have come,' she said; 'you are too late.'

"I sat down on the bed, and my throat was as dry as a sirocco wind, and
laid the double-barrelled pistol, still smoking, by me. Neither of us,
I am sure, gave one thought to the man who was lying there, perhaps
hardly to Helen, for dishonor is worse than death; and for me I could
say no word, but sat there like a thing broken.

"'You are too late,' she repeated; 'and for me this is the only way.'

"And before I could stop her she had taken up the pistol and shot
herself through the head.

"The shots had aroused the soldiers, and two or three burst in up the
stairs. With the officer's pistol, for I had no time to reload mine, I
killed the first, and he went bumping down the stairs, knocking one man
over. Then I opened the window and dropped. It was not more than ten
feet from the ground, and I had only a few feet to fall."

He paused a moment and stood up, letting go of the rudder and raising
his hands.

"God, to whom vengeance belongs," he cried, "and blessed Mother of
Jesus, and holy Nicholas, my patron, help me to keep my vow."

He stood there for a moment in silence.

"And my vow--" he said to Mitsos.

"Your vow--your vow!" cried Mitsos. "The foul devils--your vow is to
root out the Turk, and to-morrow I, too, will light tapers to the holy
saints and make the vow you made. Christ Jesus, the devils! And you
must show me how to keep it."

"Amen to that," said Nicholas. "Enough for to-night, we will speak of
it no more."

He sat down again and took the rudder, and for five minutes or so there
was silence, broken only by the steady hiss of the water round the
boat, and then Mitsos, still in silence and trembling with a strange
excitement, put about on the second tack. Nicholas did not speak, but
sat with wide eyes staring into the darkness, seemingly unconscious of
the boy.

This second tack brought them up close under the sea-wall of Abdul
Achmet, and the white house gleamed brightly in the moonlight. Then, as
Mitsos was putting about again on the tack which would take them home,
Nicholas looked up at it and spoke for the first time.

"That is a new house, is it not?" he said.

"Yes, it is the house of that pig Achmet," said Mitsos.

"Why is he a pig above all other Turks?"

"Because he took our vineyard away and said he would pay a fair price
for it. Not a piastre has he paid. Look, there are a couple of women on
the terrace."

Two women of the house were leaning over the wall. Just as they went
about Nicholas saw a man, probably one of the eunuchs, come up out of
the shadow, and as he got up to them he struck the nearer one on the
face. The woman cried out and said to him, "What is that for?"

Nicholas started and looked eagerly towards them. "Did you hear,
Mitsos?" he said, "she spoke in Greek."

"One of those women?" said Mitsos. "And why not?"

"How do you suppose she knows Greek?"

"Yes, it is strange. We shall not get home in this tack."

CHAPTER IV

THE MIDNIGHT ORDEAL

For the next two days Nicholas devoted himself to the education of
Mitsos. He took the boy out shooting with him and taught him how to
stand as still as a rock or a tree, how to take advantage of the
slightest cover in approaching game, and how, if there was no cover, to
wriggle snake-wise along the ground so that the coarse tall grass and
heather concealed him. There were plenty of mountain hares and roe-deer
on the hills outside Nauplia towards Epidaurus, and they had two days'
excellent shooting.

They were walking home together after sunset on the second day, and
slung over the pony's back were two roe-deer, one of which Mitsos had
shot himself, and several hares which Nicholas, with a skill that
appeared almost superhuman to the boy, had killed running. The pony was
tired and hung back on the bridle, and Mitsos, with the rope over his
shoulder, was pulling more than leading it.

"And if," Nicholas was saying to him, "if you can approach a roe-deer
as you approached that one to-day, Mitsos, without being seen, you can
also approach a man in the same way, for in things like these the most
stupid of beasts is man. And it is very important when you are hunting
man, or being hunted by him, which is quite as exciting and much less
pleasant, that you should be able to approach him, or pass by him
unseen. After two days I shall be going away, but I shall leave this
gun behind for you."

"For me, Uncle Nicholas?" said Mitsos, scarcely believing his ears.

"Yes, but it shall be no toy-thing to you. For the present you must
go out every day shooting, but you must take the sport as a matter
concerning your life or death, instead of the life and death of a piece
of meat. Stalk every roe as if it were a man whose purpose is to kill
you, and if ever it sees you before you get a shot you must cry shame
on yourself for having wasted your time and my gift to you. But go
fishing, too, and treat that seriously. Do not go mooning in the boat
just to amuse yourself, or only for the catching of fish. Before you
start settle how you are to make your course, in two tacks it may be,
or three, and do so. Practise taking advantage of a wind which blows no
stronger than a man whistling."

"I can sail a boat against any one in Nauplia," said Mitsos, proudly.

"And Nauplia is a very small place, little Mitsos. For instance, we
ought to have got back from our fishing in two tacks, not three. And
study the winds--know what wind to expect in the morning, and know
exactly when the land breeze springs up. Go outside the harbor, too;
know the shapes of the capes and inlets of the gulf outside as you know
the shape of your own hand."

"But how can I shoot and fish, and also look after the vines and get
work in other vineyards in the autumn?"

"That will be otherwise seen to. Obey your father absolutely. I have
spoken to him. Also, you stop at home too much in the evenings. Go and
sit at the cafés in the town and play cards and draughts after dinner,
yet not only for the sake of playing. Keep your ears always open, and
remember all you hear said about these Turks. When I come back you
must be able to tell me, if I ask you, who are good Greeks, who would
risk something for the sake of their wives and children, and who are
the mules, who care for nothing but to drink their sour wine and live
pig-lives. Above all, remember that you haven't seen me for a year--for
two, if you like."

Mitsos laughed.

"Let it not be a year before you come again, uncle."

"It may be more; I cannot tell. You are full young, but--but--well, we
shall see when I come back. Here we are on the plain again. Give me
that lazy brute's bridle. Are you tired, little one?"

"Hungry, chiefly."

"And I also. But, luckily, it is a small thing whether one is hungry
or not. You will learn some day what it is to be dead beat--so hungry
that you cannot eat, so tired that you cannot sleep. And when that day
comes, for come it will, God send you a friend to be by your side, or
at least a drain of brandy; but never drink brandy unless you feel you
will be better for it. Well, that is counsel enough for now. If you
remember it all, and act by it, it will be a fine man we shall make of
the little one."

Nicholas went to see the mayor of Nauplia the next day, and told
Mitsos he had to put on his best clothes and come with him. His best
clothes were, of course, Albanian, consisting of a frilled shirt, an
embroidered jacket, fustanella, gaiters, and red shoes with tassels. To
say that he abhorred best clothes as coverings for the skin would be
a weak way of stating the twitching discomfort they produced in him;
but somehow, when Nicholas was there, it seemed to him natural to wish
to look smart, and he found himself regretting that his fustanella
had not been very freshly washed, and that it was getting ingloriously
short for his long legs.

The mayor received Nicholas with great respect, and ordered his wife to
bring in coffee and spirits for them. He looked at Mitsos with interest
as he came in, and, as Mitsos thought, nodded to Nicholas as if there
was some understanding between them.

When coffee had come and the woman had left the room, Nicholas drew his
chair up closer, and beckoned Mitsos to come to him.

"This is the young wolf," he said. "He is learning to prowl for
himself."

"So that he may prowl for others?" said Demetri.

"Exactly. Now, friend, I go to-morrow, and while I am away I want you
to be as quiet as a hunting cat. I have done all I wanted to do here,
and it is for you to keep very quiet till we are ready. There has been
much harm done in Athens by men who cannot hold their tongues. As you
know, the patriots there are collecting money and men, but they are so
proud of their subscriptions, which are very large, that they simply
behave like cocks at sunrise on the house-roofs. Here let there be no
talking. When the time comes Father Andréa will speak; he will put the
simmering-pot on the fire. I would give five years of my life to be
able to talk as he can talk."

"The next five years?" asked Demetri.

Nicholas smiled.

"Well, no, not the next five years. I would not give them up for fifty
thousand years of heaven, I think. Have you any corn?"

"Black corn for the Turk?"

"Surely."

Demetri glanced at Mitsos, and raised his eyebrows. "Even now the mills
are grinding," he said.

"Let there be no famine."

Mitsos, of course, understood no word of this, and his uncle did not
think fit to enlighten him.

"You will hear more about the black corn," he said to him. "It makes
good bread. At present forget that you have heard of it at all. Have
you got these men for me?" he asked, turning again to Demetri.

"Yes; do you want them to-day?"

"No. Mitsos will go with me as far as Nemea, and they had better join
me there to-morrow night. Turkish dress will be safer."

He rose, leaving the brandy untasted.

"Will you not drink?" asked Demetri.

"No, thanks. I never drink spirits."

Nicholas left next day after sunset, for a half-moon would be rising
by ten of the night, and during the day the plain was no better than
a grilling-rack. Already also it was safer for Greeks to travel by
night, for it was known or suspected among the Turks that some movement
of no friendly sort was on foot among them, and it had several times
happened before now that an attack had been made upon countrymen,
who were waylaid and stopped in solitary mountain paths by bands of
Turkish soldiers. They were questioned about the suspected designs of
their nation, on which subject they for the most part were entirely
ignorant, as the plans of their leaders were at present but sparingly
known, and the interview often ended with a shot or a dangling body.
But through the incredible indolence and laziness of the Turks, while
they feared and suspected what was going on, they contented themselves
with stopping and questioning travellers whom they chanced on, and made
no increase in the local garrisons, and kept no watch upon the roads
at night. Nicholas, of course, knew this, and when, as now, he was
making a long journey into a disaffected part of the country, where
his presence would at once have aroused suspicion--and indeed, as he
had told Mitsos, there had been a price put on his head twenty years
ago--he travelled by night, reaching the village where he was to stay
before daybreak, and not moving again till after dark.

Accordingly he and Mitsos set off after sunset across the plain towards
Corinth. The main road led through Argos, which they avoided, keeping
well to the right of the river bed. Their horses were fresh, and
stepped out at an amble, which covered the ground nearly as quickly as
a trot. By ten o'clock the moon was swung high in a bare heaven, and
they saw in front of them a blot of huddled houses in the white light,
the village of Phyctia. Again they made a detour to the right, in order
to avoid it, for a garrison of Turks was stationed there, turning off
half a mile before its outlying farms began, so as not even to run the
risk of awakening the dogs. Their way lay close under the walls of
the ancient Mycenæ, where it was reported that an antique treasure of
curious gold had lately been found, and as they were in plenty of time
to reach Nemea by midnight, Nicholas halted here for a few minutes, and
he and Mitsos looked wonderingly at the great walls of the citadel.

"They say the kings of Greece are buried here, little Mitsos," said he;
"and perhaps your beard will scarce be grown before there are kings of
Greece once more."

Beyond Mycenæ they followed a mountain path leading through the woods,
which joined a few miles farther up the main road from Corinth to
Argos, and as it was now late, and the ways were quiet, Nicholas saw
no reason for not taking this road as soon as they struck it, and they
wound their way up along the steep narrow path towards it.

The moon had cleared the top of Mount Elias behind them--the moon
of midsummer southern nights--and shone with a great light as clear
as running water, and turning everything to ebony and gleaming
cream-colored ivory. Mitsos was riding first, more than half asleep,
and letting his pony pick its own way among the big stones and bowlders
which strewed the rough path, when suddenly it shied violently, nearly
unseating him, and wheeled sheer round. He woke with a start and
grasped at the rope bridle, which he had tied to the wooden pommel on
the saddle-board, to check it. Nicholas's pony had shied too, but he
was the first to head it round again, and Mitsos, who had been carried
past him, dismounted and led his pony, trembling and restive, up to the
other. Nicholas had dismounted too, and was standing at the point where
the bridle-path led into the main road when Mitsos came up.

"What did they shy at?" Mitsos began, when suddenly he saw that which
stopped the words on his tongue.

From a tree at the juncture of the paths, in the full, white blaze of
the moonlight, hung the figure of a man. His arms were dropped limply
by his side, and his feet dangled some two feet from the ground. On his
shoulder was a deep gash, speaking of a struggle before he was secured,
and blood in black clots was sprinkled on the front of his white linen
tunic. Above the strangling line which went round his neck the muscles
were thick and swollen and the glands of the throat congested into
monstrous lumps.

But Nicholas only stopped the space of a deep-drawn breath, and then,
throwing his bridle to Mitsos, drew his knife and cut the rope. The
two horses shied so violently as Nicholas staggered forward with his
murdered burden that Mitsos, unable to hold them both, let go of his
own and clung with both hands to the bridle of Nicholas's horse, while
his own animal clattered off down the path homeward. Then soothing its
terror from the other, he led it past into the main road, where he tied
it up to a tree some twenty yards on, and himself returned to where
Nicholas was kneeling over the body.

He looked up and spoke with a deadly calm. "We are too late," he said;
"he is quite dead."

And suddenly, after the hot-blooded, warm-hearted nature of his race,
this strong man, who had lived half his life with blood and death and
murder to be the companions of his days and nights, burst into tears.

Mitsos was awed and silent.

"Do you know him, Uncle Nicholas?" he asked, at length.

"No, I do not know him, but he is one of my unhappy race, whom this
brood of devils oppresses and treats as it would not treat a dog.
Mitsos," he said, with a gesture of fire, "swear that you will never
forget this! Look here, look here!" he cried. "Look how they have
made of him an offence to the light; look how they killed him by a
disgraceful death, and why? For no reason but because he was a Greek.
Look at his face; force yourself to look at it. The lips are purple;
the eyes, as dead as grapes, start from his head. He was killed like
a dog. If they catch you alone in such a place they will do the same
to you, to you whose only offence is, as this poor burden's has been,
that you are Greek. Look at his neck, swollen in his death struggle. Do
you know how the accursed men killed Katzantones and his brother? They
beat them to death with wooden hammers, sparing the head only, so that
they might live the longer. Katzantones was ill and weak, and cried out
with the pain; but Yorgi, as he lay on the ground, with arms and legs
and ankles and hands broken, and lying out of semblance of a man, only
laughed, and told them they could not kill a fly with such puny blows."

The boy suddenly turned away.

"Enough, enough!" he said. "I do not wish to look. It is too horrible.
Why do you make it more frightful to me?"

Nicholas did not seem to hear what he said, and went on, in a sort of
savage frenzy.

"Look, look, I tell you!" he cried, "and then swear in the name of God,
remembering also what I told you of my wife and child, that you will
have no pity on the race that has done this--on neither man, woman,
nor child; not even on the poor, weak women, for they are the mothers
of monsters who do these things. This is the work of the men they
bear--this and outrage and infamous lust, and the sins of the cities
which God destroyed."

He was silent a moment, and then spoke more calmly.

"So swear, Mitsos, in the name of God!"

And Mitsos, with quivering lips of horror, but suddenly steeled, looked
at the dead thing and swore.

"And now," said Nicholas, "take hold of the feet, and we will give it
what burial we can. Stay, wait a moment." He tore off a piece of the
man's tunic, and, dipping his finger in the blood that still was wet
on the shoulder, wrote in Turkish the word "Revenge," and fastened it
to the end of the rope which still dangled from the tree. Then he and
Mitsos took the body some yards distant into the copse that lined the
road, and tearing up brushwood gave it covering. On this they laid
stones until it was completely concealed and defended against the
preying creatures of the mountain.

Then Nicholas bared his head.

"God forgive him all his sins," he said, "and impute the double of them
to his murderers. Ah, God," he cried, and his voice rose to a yell,
"grant me that I may kill and kill and kill; and their souls I leave to
Thee, most Just and most Terrible!"

They went to where Nicholas's horse was tied up, and he, hearing the
other had bolted, made Mitsos mount his, as he would have to walk back,
and himself went on foot. It was in silence that they climbed the pass,
but in another hour they came to the junction of the two roads from
Nemea and Corinth, and Nicholas told his nephew to go no farther.

"It is safer that I should go alone here," he said; "and it is already
late, and you will have to walk. Waste no time about getting back to
the plain; the nights are short."

He paused for a moment, looking affectionately at the boy.

"Thus are you baptized in blood," he said, then paused, and he
moistened his lips. "A great deal may depend on you, little one," he
went on. "I have watched you growing up, and you are growing up as I
would have you grow. Distrust everything and everybody except, perhaps,
your father and myself, and be afraid of nothing, while you suspect
everything. At the same time I want you, and many will want you; so
take care."

He put his hands on his shoulders.

"I shall be back in a year or six months, or perhaps to-morrow, or
perhaps never. That does not concern you. Your father and I will always
tell you what to do. And now good-bye."

He kissed him on the cheek, mounted his horse, and rode off, never
looking behind. Mitsos stopped still for a moment looking after him,
and then turned to go home.

Five minutes more brought Nicholas to the edge of the village where
the three men whom Demetri had sent were waiting for him. One of them
was a Greek servant, who held Nicholas's horse while he dismounted
and changed his Albanian costume for a Turkish dress; the others were
leaders of local movements against the Turks, and were going with him
to Corinth. Like Nicholas himself, they all spoke Turkish.

Nicholas dressed himself quickly, but then stopped for a moment
irresolute. Then--

"Take the horse on," he said to the servant. "I will go on foot awhile."

Mitsos meantime was walking quickly along the road back towards Argos.
He would scarcely acknowledge to himself how very much he disliked
the thought of taking that bridle-path through the woods, for the
recollection he retained of that end of rope dangling from the tree,
with the fragment of tunic fluttering in the breeze, and that heap of
white stones glimmering among the bushes, was too vivid for his liking.
Even his pony would have been companionable; but his pony, as he hoped,
was near home by this time.

Once or twice he thought he heard movements and whispered rustlings in
the bushes, which made his heart beat rather quicker than its wont.
Ordinarily he would not have noticed such things, but the scene at the
crossroad still twanged some string of horror within him.

However, the road must be trod, and keeping his eyes steadily
averted--for like his race he held ghosts in accredited horror--he
marched with a show of courage past the spot, and began making his way
down the rough bridle-path.

Thin skeins of clouds had risen from the sea, and the moon was
travelling swiftly through them, casting only a diffused and aqueous
light; but the path, with the glimmering white stones of its cobbling,
showed clearly enough, and there was no fear of his missing his way.
But about a couple of hundred yards down the path he heard a noise
which made his heart spring suddenly into his throat and stay there
poised for a moment, giving a little cracking sound at each beat. The
sound needed not interpretation; two men, if not three, were running
down the main road he had just left. Instantly he had left the path,
and striking into the bushes at the side moved quickly up the hill
again, hoping to turn them off the scent. But as they came nearer he
stopped, still crouching in the bushes, and though he was, as he knew,
very indifferently concealed, he dared not go farther among the trees
for fear that the sound of his steps crackling among the dry brushwood
should lead them to him, and, remembering Nicholas's lessons in the
art of keeping still, he waited. His pursuers, if pursuers they were,
seemed to go the more slowly as they turned into the path he had just
left, and soon he caught sight of them through the tree trunks. There
were two of them, and he saw they were Turks. As they came nearer he
could hear them speaking together in low tones, and then one ran off
down the path, in order, so he supposed, to see whether he was still on
ahead.

Mitsos drew a long breath; there was only one to be reckoned with now,
and stealing out of the bush where he had been crouching, he moved as
quietly as he could farther into cover. But a twig cracking with a
sharp report under his foot revealed his hiding, and the man who had
waited in the path shouted out to the other. The next moment they were
in pursuit.

As he pushed through the trees that seemed to stretch out fingers to
clutch him, Mitsos felt in his belt for the knife he always carried
with him, but to his wondering dismay found it had gone. Never in his
life could he remember being without it; but this was no season to
waste time, and knowing that his only chance lay in running he plunged
along through the bushes in order to get back to the path and match his
speed against theirs. But his pursuers were close behind him, and in
jumping, or trying to jump, a small thicket which closed his path, he
caught his foot and fell.

Then came cold fear with a clutch. Before he had time to recover
himself they had seized him. Once he let out with his right hand at the
face of one of the men, who just avoided the blow, and then both wrists
were seized. They whipped a cord round his legs, tied his hands behind
his back, and carried him off straight to the tree from which the end
of the rope and its ghastly legend were still hanging.

A third Turk was sitting there on the ground in the shadow smoking, and
as the others came up he said a word to them in Turkish which Mitsos
did not understand. Then one of his captors turned to him, and speaking
in Greek, "Tell us where Nicholas Vidalis is," he said, "and we will
let you go."

Silence.

"We know who you are. You are Mitsos Codones, the son of Constantine,
from Nauplia, and he is your uncle."

Mitsos looked up.

"That is so. But I have not seen him for a year--more than a year," he
said.

One of the men laughed.

"Tell us where he is," he said, "and we will let you go, and this for
your information, for you were seen with him yesterday in Nauplia," and
he held out a handful of piastres.

This time Mitsos laughed, though laughing was not in his thoughts, and
the sound was strange to his own ears.

"That is a lie," he said; "he has not been at Nauplia for a year. As
for your piastres, if you think I am telling you a lie, do you suppose
that I should speak differently for the sake of them? Be damned to your
piastres," and he laughed again.

"I will give you one minute," said the other, "and then you will hang
from that tree if you do not tell us. One of your countrymen, I see,
has cut the rope, but there will be enough for a tall boy like you."

They strolled away towards where the third man was sitting, leaving him
there bound.

"Perhaps the end of the rope might help him to speak," said one. But
the third man shook his head.

What Mitsos thought of during these few seconds he never clearly knew,
and as far as he wished for anything, he wished them to be quick. He
noticed that the edge of the moon was free of the clouds again, and it
would soon be lighter. He felt a breeze come up from the east, which
fluttered the rag of tunic hanging from the rope, and once a small
bird, clucking and frightened, flew out of a thicket near. Then the
two men came up and pulled him under the tree. The end of the piece of
tunic flapped against his forehead.

They untied the rope, and the one made a noose in it, while the other
turned back the collar of his coat. Then the rope was passed round his
throat and tightened till he felt the knot behind, just where the hair
grows short on the neck.

"One more chance," said the man. "Will you tell us?"

Mitsos had shut his eyes, and he clinched his teeth to help himself not
to speak. For a moment they all waited, quite still.

"Then up with him," said the man.

He waited for the choking tension of the rope, still silent, still with
clinched teeth and eyelids. But instead of that he felt two hands on
his shoulders, and fingers at the knot behind, and he opened his eyes.
The third man, who had been silent, was standing in front of him.

"Mitsos," he said, "my great little Mitsos."

For a moment the world spun dizzily round him, and he half fell, half
staggered against Nicholas.

"You!" he said.

"Yes, I. Mitsos, will you forgive me? I ought to have been certain of
you, and indeed in my heart I was; but I wanted to test you to the
full, to put the fear of death before you, for it was needful that I
should give convincing proof to others. My poor boy, don't tremble so;
it was necessary, believe me. By the Virgin, Mitsos, if you had hit
one hundredth part of a second sooner one of these men would have gone
home with no nose and fewer teeth. You hit straight from the shoulder,
with your weight in your fist. And that double you made up the hill was
splendid. Mitsos, speak to me!"

But the boy, pale and trembling, had sunk down on the ground with bent
head, and said nothing.

"Here, spirits," said Nicholas, and he made Mitsos drink.

He sat down by him, and with almost womanly tenderness was stroking his
hair.

"You were as firm as a rock," he said, "when you stood there, and I saw
the muscle of your jaw clinch."

Mitsos, to whom spirit was a new thing, recovered himself quickly with
a little choking.

"I wasn't frightened at the moment," he said; "I was only frightened
before, when I knew I was caught."

Then, as his boyish spirits began to reassert themselves, "Did I--did I
behave all right, Uncle Nicholas?"

"I wish to see no better behavior. It is even as your father told me,
that you were fit for the keeping of secrets."

Mitsos flushed with pleasure.

"Then I don't mind if it has made you think that, though, by the
Virgin, my stomach was cold. But if I had had my knife there would have
been blood let. I cannot think how I lost it."

Nicholas laughed.

"Here it is," he said. "It was even I who took it away from you while
you were dozing as you rode. I thought it might be dangerous in your
barbarous young hands."

Mitsos put it back in his belt.

"I am ready now. I shall start off again."

Nicholas rose, too.

"I will come with you as far as the plain, and then my road is forward.
The piastres were a poor trick, eh?"

"Very poor indeed, I thought," said Mitsos, grinning.

The uncle and nephew walked on together, and the other two men strolled
more slowly after them. Nicholas could have shouted aloud for joy. He
had found what he had sought with such fastidiousness--some one whom
he could trust unreservedly, and over whom he had influence. To do
him justice, the cruelty of what he had done made his stomach turn
against himself; but he was associated with men who rightly mistrusted
everybody, except on convincing proof of their trustworthiness. Mitsos
had stood the severest test that could be devised without flinching. He
was one of ten thousand.

At the end of the woods they parted. Mitsos' nerve had come back to
him, and the knowledge that he had won Nicholas's trust, combined with
the fascination the man exercised over him, quite overscored any grudge
he might have felt, for Nicholas's last words to him were words to be
remembered.

"And now, good-bye," he said. "You have behaved in a way I scarce
dared to hope you could, though I think I believed you would. You have
been through a man's test, the test of a strong, faithful man. Others
will soon know of it, and know you to be trustworthy to the uttermost.
Greece shall be revenged, and you shall be among the foremost of her
avengers."

So Nicholas went his way northward and Mitsos towards home, and just as
the earliest streak of dawn lit the sky he reached his father's house.

The truant pony was standing by the way-side cropping the dew-drenched
grass.

CHAPTER V

MITSOS PICKS CHERRIES FOR MARIA

At Nauplia the summer passed quietly, though from other parts of the
country came fresh tales of intolerable taxation, cruelty, and outrage,
hideous beyond belief. But this Argive district was exceptionally
lucky in having for its governor a man who saw that it was possible
to overstep the mark even in dealing with these infidel dogs; partly,
also, Nicholas's visit, his injunctions to the leading Greeks to keep
quiet, and his hints that they would not need to keep quiet long
produced a certain effect; as also did an exhortation delivered by
Father Andréa, in which he spoke of the blessings of peace with a
ferocious tranquillity which left no loop-hole for misconstruction.

July and August were a tale of scorched and burning days, but the vines
were doing well, and the heat only served to ripen them the sooner.
In some years, when the summer months had been cold and unseasonable,
the grapes would not swell to full ripeness till the latter days of
October, and thus there was the danger of the first autumn storms
wrecking the maturing crop. But this year, thanks to the heat, there
was no doubt that they would be ripe for gathering by the third week in
September, and, humanly speaking, a fine grape harvest was assured.

A certain change had come over Mitsos since the events of the night
recorded in the last chapter. He suddenly seemed to have awoke to a
sense of his budding manhood, and his cat, much to that sedately minded
creature's satisfaction, was allowed to shape her soft-padded basking
life as she pleased. He used to go out in the dewiness of dawn, while
it was still scarce light, to try for a shot at the hares which came
down from the hills at night to feed in the vineyards, and at evening
again he would lie in wait near a spring below Mount Elias to shoot
the roe when they came to water. But during the day there was no mark
for his gun, for the game went high away among the hills to avoid the
broiling heat of the plains, or stayed in cover of the pine woods
upon the mountain-sides, where the growth was too thick for shooting,
and where some cracking twig would ever advertise a footstep, however
stealthy.

But the sudden and violent winds of the summer months had set in, and
sailing gave him day-long occupation. He made it his business to know
the birth-hour of the land-breeze, the length of the dead calm that
follows, and the hour when the sea-breeze again winnows the windless
heaven; to read the signs of the thread-like streamers in the upper
air, which mean a strong breeze; the vibration on the sea's horizon,
like the trembling of a steel spring, which means heat and calm, and
the soft-feathered clouds, with dim, blurred outlines that tell of
moisture in the air, which will fall the hour after sunset in fine,
warm, needle-pointed rain. His boat might often be seen scudding across
the bay and into the water of the gulf outside, skirting round the
promontories, running up into the creeks and inlets until, as Nicholas
had told him he should do, he got to know the shape of the land as
he knew the shape of his own head. Above all, he would practise
beating out to sea in the teeth of the sea-breeze, running out to a
given point in as few tacks as possible, and then, when the sea-breeze
died away, he would put into some inlet, fish for a little, and sleep
curled up in the bottom of the boat, awake with the awakening of the
land breeze, and run back again, close hauled, past Nauplia, and up to
the side of the bay, where he beached his boat. In these long hours
alone on the sea he would sit in the stern, when the boat was steady
on some two-mile tack, thinking intently of the new life for which he
was preparing himself. Though Nicholas's stories, and the tales of
oppression and outrage with which all mouths were full, made personal
to him the longing for vengeance on that bestial breed, it was Nicholas
himself who was the inspirer, and his indignation was scarce more than
an image in a mirror of Nicholas. His uncle had long been acquiring
that domination a man can have for a boy, and the main desire and
resolve of his mind was to obey Nicholas, whatever order he might lay
on him, and this resolve to obey was rapidly becoming an instinct
over-mastering and unique. His father, far from making objections to
his spending his time in sailing and shooting, encouraged him thereto,
for Nicholas had bade him hire labor whenever he wanted a lad in
Mitsos' place, saying that the club at Athens had authorized him to
make payments for such things. Mitsos, in fact, had definitely entered
into the service of his country, and it was only right that his father
should be compensated for the loss of a hand.

But during these months there was little or no farm-work to be done.
Early in July Constantine had put up a little reed-built shed to
overlook his vineyard, and there he spent most of the day scaring away
the birds that came to eat the grapes, and playing with his string of
polished beads, which he passed to and fro between his hands, every
now and then stopping to sling a pebble at a bird he saw settling in
the vines. The sparrows were the greatest enemies, for they would
fly over in flocks of eighty or a hundred and settle in different
parts of the vineyard, and when he cleared one quarter and turned
to clear another, the first covey would be back and renewing their
depredations on the grapes. He had an almost exaggerated repugnance
in taking the funds of the club unless it was absolutely necessary
to hire an extra hand, and until the last week before the harvest he
managed alone; but then--for the grapes were tight-skinned and juicy,
and a single bird holding on to a bunch with its claws and feeding
indiscriminately from this grape and that would spoil the hundredfold
of what it ate--he hired a boy from Nauplia, and erected another shed
some fifty yards off. There they would sit from sunrise to sunset, and
at sunset Mitsos returned brown and fresh, with a song from the sea,
with his black hair drying back into its crisp curls after his evening
bathe, and an enormous appetite. He and Constantine sat together till
about nine, and then Mitsos would go off to the cafés, following
Nicholas's instructions, and play cards or draughts, ever pricking an
attentive ear when comments on the Turks were on the board. Nicholas's
directions, however, that there should be no talking of the great
matter, was being obeyed too implicitly for Mitsos to pick up much; but
he acquired great skill at the game of draughts, even being able to
play three games at a time.

One evening, just before the vintage began, he returned earlier than
usual with a frown on his face. His father was sitting on the veranda,
not expecting him yet.

"Have you heard," said Mitsos, "what these Turks have in hand about the
vintage?"

"About the vintage? No."

"Instead of paying one-tenth to the tax-collector, we are to pay
one-seventh; and instead of paying in grapes, we pay in wine."

"One-seventh? It is impossible!"

"It is true."

"Where did you hear it?"

"In the last hour at the café in the square. They are all clacking and
swearing right and left, and the soldiers are patrolling the streets."

Constantine got up.

"I must go, then," he said. "This is just what Nicholas did not want to
happen. Have there been blows between the soldiers and the Greeks?"

"Yanko knocked a Turkish soldier down with such a bang for calling him
a dog that the man will never have front teeth again. They took him and
clapped him in prison."

"The fat lout shall eat stick from me when he comes out. I suppose,
as usual, he was neither drunk nor sober," said Constantine. "As if
knocking a soldier down took away the tax. Is Father Andréa there?"

"I passed him just now on the road," said Mitsos, "going to the town."

Constantine got up.

"Stop here, Mitsos," he said; "I will catch Father Andréa up, and make
him tell them to be quiet. He can do what he pleases with that tongue
of his."

"But mayn't I come?" said Mitsos, scenting an entrancing row.

"And get your black head broken? No, that will keep for a worthier
cause."

Constantine hurried off and caught Father Andréa up before he entered
the town.

"Father," he said, "you can stop this, for they will listen to you.
Remember what Nicholas said."

Father Andréa nodded.

"I heard there were loud talk and blows in the town, and I am on the
road for that reason. Nicholas is right. We must pay the extra tax, and
for every pint of wine we pay we will exact a gallon of blood. Ah, God,
how I have fasted and prayed one prayer--to wash my hands in the blood
of the Turks."

"Softly," said Constantine, "here is the guard."

The guard at the gate was unwilling at first to let them pass, but
Andréa, without a moment's hesitation, said that he was a priest going
to visit a dying man who wished to make a confession, with Constantine
as witness, and they were admitted.

"God will forgive me that lie," he said, as they passed on. "It is for
His cause that I lied."

Since Mitsos' departure the disturbance had increased. There were
some forty or fifty Greeks collected in the centre of the square,
and Turkish soldiers were coming out one by one from the barracks
and mingling with the crowd. The Greeks, according to their custom,
all carried knives, but were otherwise unarmed; the Turks had guns
and pistols. There was a low, angry murmur going up from the people,
which boded mischief. Just as they came up Father Andréa turned to
Constantine.

"Stop outside the crowd," he said, "do not mix yourself up in this.
They will not touch me, for I am a priest."

Then elbowing his way among the people, he shouted: "A priest--a priest
of God! Let me pass."

The Greeks in the crowd parted, making way for him as he pushed
through, conspicuous by his great height, though here and there a
Turkish soldier tried to stop him. But Andréa demanded to be let into
the middle of them with such authority that they too fell back, and he
continued to elbow his way on. He was already well among the people
when two voices detached themselves, as it were, from the angry, low
murmur, shrilling up apart in loud, violent altercation, and the next
moment a Greek just in front of him rushed forward and stabbed a Turk
in the arm. The soldier raised his pistol and fired, and the man turned
over on his face, with a grunt and one stretching convulsion, dead.
There was a moment's silence, and then the murmur grew shriller and
louder, and the crowd pressed forward. Andréa held up his hand.

[Illustration: "'I AM FATHER ANDRÉA,' HE SHOUTED"]

"I am Father Andréa," he shouted, "whom you know. In God's name listen
to me a moment. Silence there, all of you."

For a moment again there was a lull at his raised voice, and Andréa
took advantage of it.

"The curse of all the saints of God be upon the Greek who next uses his
knife," he cried. "Who is the officer in command?"

A young Turkish officer standing close to him turned round.

"I am in command," he said, "and I command you to go, unless you would
be seized with the other ringleaders."

"I shall not go; my place is here."

"For the last time, go."

"I offer myself as hostage for the good conduct of the Greeks," said
Andréa, quietly. "Blood has been shed. I am here that there may be
no more. Let me speak to them and then take me, and if there is more
disturbance kill me."

"Very good," said the officer. "I have heard of you. But stop the riot
first, if you can. I desire bloodshed no more than you."

The group had now collected round them, still waiting irresolutely, in
the way a crowd does on any one who seems to have authority. Father
Andréa turned to them.

"You foolish children," he cried, "what are you doing? The Sultan has
added a tax, it is true, but will it profit you to be killed like dogs?
You have knives, and you can cut a finger nail with knives, and these
others have guns. This poor dead thing learned that, and he has paid
for his lesson. Is it better for him that he has wounded another man
now that he has gone to appear before God? And those of you who are not
shot will be taken and hanged. I am here unarmed, as it befits a priest
to be. I am a hostage for you. If there is further riot you yourselves
will be shot down like dogs, or as you shoot the little foxes among the
grapes and leave them for the crows to eat; I shall be hanged, for I
go hostage for you; and the tax will be no less than before. So now to
your homes."

The crowd listened silently--for in those days to behave with aught but
respect to a priest was sacrilege--and one or two of the nearest put
back their knives into their belts, yet stood there still irresolute.

"Come, every man to his home," said Andréa again. "Let those who have
wine-shops close them, for there has been blood spilled to-night."

But they still stood there, and the murmur rose and died, and rose
again like a sound carried on a gusty wind, until Andréa, pushing
forward, laid his hand on the shoulder of one of the ringleaders.

"Christos," he said, "there is your home, and your wife waits for you.
Go home, man, lest you are carried in feet first."

The man, directly and individually addressed by a stronger, turned
and went, and the others began to melt away till there were only left
in the square the Turkish soldiers and Andréa. Then he spoke to the
officer again:

"I am at your disposal," he said, "until you are satisfied that things
are quiet again."

The officer stood for a moment without replying. Then, "I wish to treat
you with all courtesy," he said, "and you have saved me a great deal
of trouble to-night. But perhaps it will be better if you stop in my
quarters for an hour or two, though I think we shall have no more of
this. With your permission I will give you in custody."

And with the fine manners of his race, which the Greeks for the most
part could not understand and so distrusted, he beckoned to two
soldiers, who led him off to the officer's quarters.

The Turkish captain remained in the square an hour longer, but the
disturbance seemed to be quite over, and he followed Father Andréa.

"You will smoke or drink?" he said, laying his sword on the table.

"I neither smoke nor drink," answered Andréa.

The officer sat down, looking at him from his dark, lustreless eyes.

"It is natural you should hate us," he said, "and but for you there
would have been a serious disturbance, and not Greek blood alone would
have been shed. I am anxious to know why you stopped the riot."

Father Andréa smiled.

"For the reason I gave to the rioters. Is not that sufficient?"

"Quite sufficient; it only occurred to me there might be a further
reason, a further-reaching reason, so to speak. I will not detain you
any longer. I am sure no further disturbance will take place."

Andréa rose, and for a moment the two men faced each other. They were
both good types of their race: the Greek, fearless and hot-blooded; the
Turk, fearless and phlegmatic.

"I will wish you good-night," said the captain; "perhaps we shall meet
again. My name is Mehemet Salik. You owe nothing to me nor I to you.
You stopped the riot and saved me some trouble, but it was for reasons
of your own. I have detained you till I am satisfied there will be no
more disturbance; so if we meet again no quarter on either side, for we
shall be enemies."

"I shall neither give quarter nor ask it," said Andréa.

The vintage began the next week, and for the time Mitsos had to
abandon his boat and gun for the wine-making, since he alone knew
the particularities of manufacture which Constantine practised--the
amount of fermentation before finally casking the wine, the measure
of resin to be put in, and the right quality of it, all which were as
incommunicable as the unwritten law of tea-making for an individual
taste. The small vineyard close to the house, which was all that was
left to them after the seizure of the bigger vineyard by the Turk,
contained the best vines, which, being nearer to hand, had inevitably
received the better cultivation. These again were divided into two
classes, most of them being the ordinary country stock; but the other
was a nobler grape from Nemea, which yielded the finest wine. They were
always gathered last, and fermented in a barrel by themselves.

The evening before the grape-picking began, several girls from
neighboring farms came to find labor in the gathering for a couple of
days, as the harvest would not be ripe in other vineyards for a day or
two yet. Constantine engaged four of them, who came early next morning,
just as he and Mitsos were getting out the big two-handled panniers in
which the grapes were carried to the press from the vineyard, which lay
dewy and glistening under the clear dawn. Spero, the boy who had been
employed for the last week in scaring birds, was also engaged for the
picking, and in all they were seven. For the larger half of an hour
they all picked together, until two of the big baskets were full and
the treading could begin. The press, an old stone-built construction,
moss-ridden and creviced outside, and coated inside with fine stucco,
stood close to the house. The bottom of it sloped down towards a
small wooden sluice which opened from its lower end, and which could
be raised from the inside when there was sufficient must trodden to
fill one of the big shallow casks in which it was fermented. Mitsos
had spent the previous day in washing and scouring it with avuncular
thoroughness, scrubbing the sides with powdered resin, and when Spero
had wanted to assist in treading the grape instead of gathering, he
looked scornful, and only said:

"We do not make wine for you to wash in. Get you back to the picking."

They poured the first two big panniers of grapes into the press just as
the sun rose, stalks and all, and after turning his trousers up to the
knees, and scrubbing his feet and legs in hot water, Mitsos stepped in
and began the treading. The purple fruit was ripe and tight-skinned,
and the red stuff soon began to splash and spurt up, staining his legs.
Another basket came before he had got the first two well under, and
by degrees the pickers gained on him. The day promised a scorching,
and the press, which had at first stood in the shade, had been swung
round into the full blaze of the sun before a couple of hours were
over. About nine o'clock Constantine, who had just carried up another
basket with Spero, and stayed for a moment looking at Mitsos dancing
fantastically in the sun, saw that there was already stuff enough to
fill a cask.

"There is food for a cask there," he said to Mitsos, "but it is not
trodden enough yet. You will not keep pace without some one to help
you."

Mitsos paused a moment and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"I am broiled meat," he said. "Yes, send one of the girls. Make her
wash first."

Constantine smiled.

"There speaks Nicholas," he remarked, "who is always right."

So Maria was sent to help Mitsos. She was a pretty girl, about
seventeen years old, fawn eyed and olive skinned. As she stood on the
edge of the press before stepping in, with her shoes off and her skirt
tucked up, Mitsos found himself noticing the gentle curve of her calf
muscle from the ankle to behind the knee, and how prettily one foot,
pink from the hot water, broadened as she rested her weight on it for a
moment. He gave her his hand to help her down into the press, and their
eyes met.

"We shall do nicely now," he said.

Constantine meantime had fetched one of the casks, open at the top,
and with a tap at the bottom, about six inches above the other end,
from which the fermented liquid would be drawn off when it was clear,
and placing it under the sluice, looked over to see if the must was
sufficiently trodden. No baskets had come in for a quarter of an hour,
and Mitsos and Maria between them had reduced the whole must to one
consistency.

"It is ready now," he said to Mitsos; "raise the sluice."

The must had risen above the ring by which the sluice was raised at
the lower end of the press, and Mitsos and Maria groped about for half
a minute or so before they found it. Once they tightly grasped each
other's fingers, and both exclaimed triumphantly, "I've got it."

Maria found it first; but the wood had swollen with the scouring of the
day before and it was stiff, so Mitsos had to raise it himself. Then
with a gurgle and a gulp the purple mass of pulp, juice, stalks, and
skins poured riotously out, splashing Constantine, and foaming into the
cask with a lusty noise. When it was three-quarters full Mitsos closed
the sluice again, for in the process of fermentation the must would
swell to the top, and Constantine and Spero took the barrel, clucking
as it was moved, off into the veranda out of the sun, and covered it
with a cloth.

They all rested for an hour at mid-day, and ate their dinner in the
shade of the poplar by the spring. The others had brought their food
with them, with the exception of Maria, who said she was not hungry and
did not care to eat. But Mitsos, pausing for a moment in his own meal,
saw her sitting close to him looking rather tired and fagged from the
morning's work, and fetched her some bread and some fresh cheese, cool
and sweet from the cellar, and Maria's want of appetite vanished before
these things. After dinner they all lay down and dozed for that hour of
fiercest heat, when, as the poet of the South says, "even the cicala is
still," some in the veranda, some in the shade of the poplars. Mitsos
was the first to wake, and he, under a stern sense of duty, aroused
himself and the others. Maria had disposed herself under a farther
tree, where she lay with her hands clasped behind her head, and her
mouth half open and set with the rim of her white teeth. She had drawn
up one leg, and her short skirt showed it bare to above the knee.
Mitsos stood looking at her a moment, thinking how pretty were her long
eyelashes and slightly parted mouth, and wondering why it had never
occurred to him before that she was pretty, when she woke and saw him
standing in front of her. She sat up quickly and drew her skirt down
over her leg, and a faint tinge of red showed under her skin.

"Is it time to go on?" she said; "and I am nothing but a bag of sleep."

"I will help you up," said Mitsos, putting out his hand.

But she stretched herself, smiling, and got up without his assistance.

Then the work went on till nearly sunset; a second cask and a third
were filled, which were taken away to the veranda, where they were put
on trestles and covered like the first; and, as there would not be time
to fill a fourth before sunset, they stopped work for the day.

Mitsos and Constantine ate their supper together, but afterwards Mitsos
said he would not go to the café to-night, he was sleepy, and to-morrow
would be as to-day. The two sat there in silence for the most part, the
father smoking and playing with his beads, and Mitsos lying full length
on the floor of the veranda intermittently eating a cherry from the
remains of their supper.

About nine he got up and stretched himself.

"I am for bed," he said. "How pretty Maria is. I wonder why I never
noticed before that girls were pretty."

Constantine smiled.

"We all notice it sooner or later," he said. "I noticed it when I was
about as old as you."

"Did you? What did you do then?"

"God granted me to marry the one I thought the prettiest."

"My mother? It is little I remember of her. But I am not going to marry
Maria. Yet she is even very pretty."

The second day was devoted to picking the remainder of the ordinary
grapes, which Mitsos and Maria trod, as on the day before, and Mitsos
feeling a desire--to which he had hitherto been a stranger--to look
well in a girl's eyes, told her stories about the shooting, and his own
prowess therein--for all the world like a young cock-bird in spring and
the mating-time strutting before his lady. The girls were not required
for the third day's picking, and in the evening Constantine paid them
their two days' wage. Mitsos walked back with Maria through the garden,
and together they washed their feet of the must at the spring. A little
further on they came to the cherry-tree, and here he told her to hold
out her apron while he picked a little supper for her, again taking
pride to swing himself with an unnecessary display of gymnastics from
one bough to another, while Maria looked on from below with up-turned
eyes bidding him be careful, and saying, as was indeed true, that there
were plenty of cherries on the lower boughs, and his exertions were
needless. Something in his conduct seemed to amuse her, for as they
said good-night at the gate she broke out into a laugh, and, with the
air of a great, fine lady to a pretty boy, "Good-night, little Mitsos,"
she said; "and will you come to my wedding?"

Mitsos, in spite of his determination of the night before, felt a
perceptible shock.

"Your wedding? Whom are you going to marry?"

"Yanko. At least, so I think. He has asked me, and I have not said no."

"Yanko Vlachos? That ugly brute?"

Maria laughed again.

"I don't find him ugly--at least, not to matter."

Mitsos recollected his manners.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I like Yanko very much. He knocked a
Turkish soldier down last week--such a bang on the back of his head!"

"Oh, he's a very good man," said Maria, walking off with a great,
important air.

Mitsos went slowly back to the house, his strutting over.

The third day was devoted to the gathering of the finer grapes, which
were fermented by themselves in a separate cask. These the two boys and
Constantine picked together, until all the trees but one were stripped,
but instead of throwing them in stalk and all, they picked each grape
separately off the bunches and shed them into the cask, until there was
a layer some fifteen inches deep. Mitsos trod these as before, while
his father and Spero went on picking, and when they were sufficiently
pulped he poured on to them about a quart of brandy. More grapes
were then put in, trodden, and more brandy added. When the cask was
three-quarters full they moved it away with the others, but covered it
more closely with two layers of thick woollen blanket. The remainder of
the fine grapes were sufficient to fill another half-cask.

Then there came the final act of the grape-gathering, a page of pagan
ritual surviving from the time when the rout of Dionysus laughed and
rioted through the vineyard. Mitsos fetched a big bowl from the house,
and Constantine cut all the grapes from the remaining vine. These he
placed in the bowl and left in the middle of the vineyard for the birds
to eat.

For the next two days the must required no attention, though the
fermentation, owing to the heat of the weather, was going on very
rapidly, and by the end of the second day the thin acrid smell mingled
strongly with the garden scents. Once or twice Constantine raised the
cloths which covered the casks to see what progress it made, or drew a
little from the tap at the bottom. But the stuff was still thick, and
had not cleared sufficiently to be disturbed yet.

On the second day Mitsos went off to get fresh resin for the wine.
The ordinary pine resin was generally used by Greeks for this, but
Constantine always preferred the resin from the dwarf pine, which
was less bitter and finer in quality. The sides of Mount Elias were
plentiful with the common pine, but the dwarf pine only grew on the
hills round Epidaurus, a five hours' journey. Mitsos took his gun with
him on the chance of sighting and slaying game, and started off on
his pony before dawn, for the way wound over low, unsheltered hills,
a day-long target for the sun; but before he reached the shoulder of
mountain in which was cut the old grass-grown theatre, about which
the dwarf pines grew, the sun, already high, had drawn up the heavy
dews of the night before, and the air was quivering with heat like
a man in an ague fit. The growth of these pines was that of bushes
rather than trees, some of them covering a space of ten yards square,
gnarl-trunked, and sprawling along the ground. On some dozen of them he
selected a place near the root and cut off a piece of bark a few inches
square in order that the resin might ooze from the lips of the wounded
trunk, placing below each a flat stone to catch the dripping. In a few
days' time there would be sufficient resin collected for the year's
wine. On several trees he found the incisions he had made in previous
years, in some of which, where the flow of resin had continued after
he had removed it for the wine, it had gone on dripping until a little
pillar, like the slag-wax from a candle, stood up between the stone and
the tree. He cut off one of these to see whether it was still good, but
the damp had soaked into it, and the outside surface was covered with a
gray fungus growth which rendered it useless.

He ate his dinner under shelter of the more shady trees which grew
higher up the slope, and waited till the sun had lost its noonday heat,
listening lazily to the bell on the neck of his pony, which was grazing
on the hill-side above, dozing and wondering what the next year would
bring for him. He had no idea what Nicholas would call on him to do,
but he was willing to wait. The love of adventure and excitement was
fermenting in him, though he was contented to go on living his usual
life from day to day. Nicholas, he knew, would not fail; some day, he
knew not when, the summons would come, and he would obey blindly. Then
he thought of the horrible scene which Nicholas and he had looked on
three months ago, when they saw that dead, misshapen thing dangling
from a tree, and his blood began to boil and the desire to avenge the
wrongs done to his race stirred in him.

"Spare not man, woman, or child," Nicholas had said.

He lay back on the short turf and began to think about Maria. Supposing
Maria had been a Turkish woman, and Nicholas had put a knife into his
hand while he was looking at her mid-day sleep beneath the poplars, and
told him to kill her, would he have been able? Could he have struck
anything so soft and pretty? Fancy that heavy lout, Yanko, marrying
Maria; he was all fat, and sat drinking all day at the wine-shop, yet
he was never drunk, like a proper man, and he was seldom sober. Then
Mitsos for the first time in his life became analytical, though his
vocabulary boasted no such word. Why was it that since the day he stood
in front of Maria as she lay asleep he had regarded women somehow with
different eyes? What was it to him whether Yanko or another had her?
Hitherto he had thought of women in the obvious, work-a-day light in
which they are presented to a Greek boy, as beasts of burden, hewers of
wood and drawers of water, inferior beings who waited on the men, and
when alone chattered shrilly and volubly to each other like jays, or a
bushful of silly, jabbering sparrows--creatures altogether unfit for
the companionship of men. But since that moment he or they had changed;
there was something wonderful about them which men did not share,
something demanding protection, even tenderness, affording food for
vague, disquieting thought. He had not understood at all, not having
known his mother, why Nicholas had spoken as he had of his wife, except
in so far that she was a possession of which the Turks had robbed him.
But Mitsos could think of nothing the loss of which would make him
devote his life to the extermination of the race that had robbed him of
it. Even if the Turks took away his gun he realized that he would not
wish to destroy the whole race for that. The brutal hanging of a man
was a different matter; a man was a man, and a woman--Well, that woman
was Nicholas's wife. Suppose the Turks killed Maria, would that be
worse than if they killed, say, Nicholas? Well, not worse, not nearly
so bad in fact, but, somehow, different.

Thus knocked Mitsos at the door of the habitation called love, and
waited for its sesame.

CHAPTER VI

THE SONG FROM THE DARKNESS

When Constantine looked at one of the casks of fermenting wine on the
fourth day, he saw that the crust of skins, stalks, and stones had
risen to within six inches of the top, like coffee on the boil, and
was thickly covered with a pink, sour-smelling froth. The fermentation
was at its height, and it was time to mix up the crust with the fluid
again to excite it even further. In one cask, into which the ripest
fruit from the more sun-baked corner of the vineyard had been put, this
crust had risen even higher, and threatened to overflow. The ordinary
custom in Greece at this time was for a naked man to get into the cask
and stir it up again, a remnant, no doubt, of some now insignificant
superstition; but Constantine, though he still put the grapes of one
vine in a bowl for the birds to eat, did not think it necessary to make
this further concession, but only stirred up the frothing mass with an
instrument like a wooden pavier. The crust was already growing thick
and compacted, and it was ten minutes' work to get it thoroughly mixed
up again with the fluid in each case, and from the seething, bubbling
surface there rose thickly the sour fumes of the decomposing matter,
heavily laden with carbonic-acid gas. One cask leaked slightly round
the tap at the bottom and was dripping on the floor. A little red
stream had trickled down to the edge of the veranda, and he noticed
that it was full of small bubbles, like water that had stood in the
sun, showing that the fermentation was not yet over. He caulked this up
with a lump of resin, and then moved all the casks out of the shade for
an hour or two, so that the heat might hasten the second fermentation,
which naturally was slower and less violent than the first. The cask
and a half of fine wine, however, he did not touch; there it was better
that the fermentation should go on slowly and naturally.

That evening Mitsos went out fishing, as the work of wine-making was
over for the present. In four or five days he would have to go over to
Epidaurus to get the resin from the pine-trees, but just now there was
nothing more to be done. Later on the vines would have to be cut back,
but Constantine preferred delaying this till the leaves fell and the
sap had sunk back again into the roots and main stem.

Though the day was one of early autumn, and in most years the serenity
of summer would continue into the middle or end of October, the top
of the hills above the farther side of the gulf had been shrouded all
day in thick storm-boding clouds, and as sunset drew near these spread
eastward, making a sullen sky. The sun, as it dropped behind them,
illumined their edges, turning them to a dark translucent amber, and
the afterglow, which spread slowly across the heavens, cast a strange
lurid light through the half opaque floor of cloud. The night would
soon fall dark, perhaps with storm. It was very hot, and the land
breeze was but a languid air, and blew as if weary with its travel over
the broiling plain, but there was quite enough of it, with Mitsos'
economical methods, to send the boat along at a good pace. He sailed
almost before it out seaward for two miles or so, meaning to fish
from the island, but then changed his mind, and went back on tedious
tacks to the head of the bay, the water seeming to him a thick thing,
and the boat going but heavily. Dark fell, dense and premature, and
when an hour later he put the boat about on the last tack he had to
keep two eyes open as he neared the land; but as there were no other
boats abroad, he did not think it necessary to light his lantern at
the bows. Against the dark sky and the dark water it would hardly have
been possible to see the brown-sailed craft from more than forty yards
distant, and even then, if the thin white line of broken water at the
forefoot had not caught the eye, or the stealthy, subdued hiss as it
cut through the sea fallen on the ear, it might have passed close and
unnoticed. Then, with a curious suddenness, he saw faintly the white
glimmer of the sea-wall of Abdul Achmet's house straight in front of
him, and knew that in the dead darkness he had taken too starboard a
course. However, by running up as close as possible to this, one tack
more would certainly take him across to the fishing bay where he was
bound, and sitting rudder in hand, he waited till the last possible
moment before putting about. He had, however, forgotten that the wall
would take the wind from him, and when he was about fifty yards off,
the sail flapped once and fell dead against the mast, and the boom
swung straight, the line of white water faded from under the forefoot,
and the hiss of the motion was quenched. He got up for an oar, so as
to pull her round again, when quite suddenly he heard the sound of a
woman's voice from the terrace singing. For a moment or so he stood
still, and then his ear focussed itself to the sounds. She was singing
a song Mitsos knew well, a song which the vine-tenders sing as they are
digging the vines in the spring of the year, and she sang in Greek:

  "Dig we deep around the vines,
     Give the sweet spring showers a home,
   Else the fairest sun that shines
   Sends no sparkle to our wines,
     Lights no lustre in the foam."

He could not see the singer; all he saw was the circle of black night,
the faint lines of his boat a shade blacker against it, and just ahead
the white glimmer of the wall. The voice, low and sweet, came out
of the darkness like a bird flying through a desert--a living thing
amid death. Mitsos stood perfectly still, strangely and bewilderingly
excited. Then he took up his oar and turned the boat's head round,
rowed a few strokes out, and waited again. But the voice had ceased.

He felt somehow unaccountably shy, as if he had intruded into another's
privacy; but having intruded, he was determined to make his presence
known. So just as the sail caught the wind again he stood up in the
stern, and in his boyish voice answered the unseen singer with the
second verse:

  "Dig we deep, the summer's here;
     Saw we not among the eaves
   Summer's messenger appear,
   Swallows flitting here and there,
     Through the budding almond leaves?"

The boat bent over to the wind, the white line streaked the water, and
he hissed off into the night again.