Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу автора  Phroso: A Romance

Anthony Hope

Anthony Hope

Phroso: A Romance

CHAPTER I

A LONG THING ENDING IN POULOS

‘Quot homines tot sententiæ;’ so many men, so many fancies. My fancy was for an island. Perhaps boyhood’s glamour hung yet round sea-girt rocks, and ‘faery lands forlorn,’ still beckoned me; perhaps I felt that London was too full, the Highlands rather fuller, the Swiss mountains most insufferably crowded of them all. Money can buy company, and it can buy retirement. The latter service I asked now of the moderate wealth with which my poor cousin Tom’s death had endowed me. Everybody was good enough to suppose that I rejoiced at Tom’s death, whereas I was particularly sorry for it, and was not consoled even by the prospect of the island. My friends understood this wish for an island as little as they appreciated my feelings about poor Tom. Beatrice was most emphatic in declaring that ‘a horrid little island’ had no charms for her, and that she would never set foot in it. This declaration was rather annoying, because I had imagined myself, spending my honeymoon with Beatrice on the island; but life is not all honeymoon, and I decided to have the island none the less. Besides I was not to be married for a year. Mrs Kennett Hipgrave had insisted on this delay in order that we might be sure that we knew our own hearts. And as I may say without unfairness that Mrs Hipgrave was to a considerable degree responsible for the engagement – she asserted the fact herself with much pride – I thought that she had a right to some voice in the date of the marriage. Moreover the postponement just gave me the time to go over and settle affairs in the island.

For I had bought it. It cost me seven thousand five hundred and fifty pounds, rather a fancy price but I could not haggle with the old lord – half to be paid to the lord’s bankers in London, and the second half to him in Neopalia, when he delivered possession to me. The Turkish Government had sanctioned the sale, and I had agreed to pay a hundred pounds yearly as tribute. This sum I was entitled, in my turn, to levy on the inhabitants.

‘In fact, my dear lord,’ said old Mason to me when I called on him in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, ‘the whole affair is settled. I congratulate you on having got just what was your whim. You are over a hundred miles from the nearest land – Rhodes, you see.’ (He laid a map before me.) ‘You are off the steamship tracks; the Austrian Lloyds to Alexandria leave you far to the northeast. You are equally remote from any submarine cable; here on the southwest, from Alexandria to Candia, is the nearest. You will have to fetch your letters.’

‘I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing,’ said I indignantly.

‘Then you’ll only get them once in three months. Neopalia is extremely rugged and picturesque. It is nine miles long and five broad. It grows cotton, wine, oil and a little corn. The people are quite unsophisticated, but very good-hearted.’

‘And,’ said I, ‘there are only three hundred and seventy of them, all told. I really think I shall do very well there.’

‘I’ve no doubt you will. By the way, treat the old gentleman kindly. He’s terribly cut up at having to sell. “My dear island,” he writes, “is second to my dead son’s honour, and to nothing else.” His son, you know, Lord Wheatley, was a bad lot, a very bad lot indeed.’

‘He left a heap of unpaid debts, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, gambling debts. He spent his time knocking about Paris and London with his cousin Constantine – by no means an improving companion, if report speaks truly. And your money is to pay the debts, you know.’

‘Poor old chap,’ said I. I sympathised with him in the loss of his island.

‘Here’s the house, you see,’ said Mason, turning to the map and dismissing the sorrows of the old lord of Neopalia. ‘About the middle of the island, nearly a thousand feet above the sea. I’m afraid it’s a tumble-down old place, and will swallow a lot of money without looking much better for the dose. To put it into repair for the reception of the future Lady Wheatley would cost – ’

‘The future Lady Wheatley says she won’t go there on any account,’ I interrupted.

‘But, my very dear lord,’ cried he, aghast, ‘if she won’t – ’

‘She won’t, and there’s an end of it, Mr Mason. Well, good day. I’m to have possession in a month?’

‘In a month to the very day – on the 7th of May.’

‘All right; I shall be there to take it.’

Escaping from the legal quarter, I made my way to my sister’s house in Cavendish Square. She had a party, and I was bound to go by brotherly duty. As luck would have it, however, I was rewarded for my virtue (and if that’s not luck in this huddle-muddle world I don’t know what is); the Turkish Ambassador dropped in, and presently James came and took me up to him. My brother-in-law, James Cardew, is always anxious that I should know the right people. The Pasha received me with great kindness.

‘You are the purchaser of Neopalia, aren’t you?’ he asked, after a little conversation. ‘The matter came before me officially.’

‘I’m much obliged,’ said I, ‘for your ready consent to the transfer.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing to us. In fact our tribute, such as it is, will be safer. Well, I’m sure I hope you’ll settle in comfortably.’

‘Oh, I shall be all right. I know the Greeks very well, you see – been there a lot, and, of course, I talk the tongue, because I spent two years hunting antiquities in the Morea and some of the islands.’

The Pasha stroked his beard, as he observed in a calm tone:

‘The last time a Stefanopoulos tried to sell Neopalia, the people killed him, and turned the purchaser – he was a Frenchman, a Baron d’Ezonville – adrift in an open boat, with nothing on but his shirt’.

‘Good heavens! Was that recently?’

‘No; two hundred years ago. But it’s a conservative part of the world, you know.’ And his Excellency smiled.

‘They were described to me as good-hearted folk,’ said I; ‘unsophisticated, of course, but good-hearted.’

‘They think that the island is theirs, you see,’ he explained, ‘and that the lord has no business to sell it. They may be good-hearted, Lord Wheatley, but they are tenacious of their rights.’

‘But they can’t have any rights,’ I expostulated.

‘None at all,’ he assented. ‘But a man is never so tenacious of his rights as when he hasn’t any. However, autres temps autres mœurs; I don’t suppose you’ll have any trouble of that kind. Certainly I hope not, my dear lord.’

‘Surely your Government will see to that?’ I suggested.

His Excellency looked at me; then, although by nature a grave man, he gave a low humorous chuckle and regarded me with visible amusement.

‘Oh, of course, you can rely on that, Lord Wheatley,’ said he.

‘That is a diplomatic assurance, your Excellency?’ I ventured to suggest, with a smile.

‘It is unofficial,’ said he, ‘but as binding as if it were official. Our Governor in that district of the empire is a very active man – yes, a decidedly active man.’

The only result of this conversation was that when I was buying my sporting guns in St James’s Street the next day I purchased a couple of pairs of revolvers at the same time. It is well to be on the safe side, and, although I attached little importance to the by-gone outrage of which the Ambassador spoke, I did not suppose that the police service would be very efficient. In fact I thought it prudent to be ready for any trouble that the old-world notions of the Neopalians might occasion. But in my heart I meant to be very popular with them. For I cherished the generous design of paying the whole tribute out of my own pocket, and of disestablishing in Neopalia what seems to be the only institution in no danger of such treatment here – the tax-gatherer. If they understood that intention of mine, they would hardly be so short short-sighted as to set me adrift in my shirt like a second Baron d’Ezonville, or so unjust as to kill poor old Stefanopoulos as they had killed his ancestor. Besides, as I comforted myself by repeating, they were a good-hearted race; unsophisticated, of course, but thoroughly good-hearted.

My cousin, young Denny Swinton, was to dine with me that evening at the Optimum. Denny (a familiar form of Dennis) was the only member of the family who sympathised thoroughly with me about Neopalia. He was wild with interest in the island, and I looked forward to telling him all I had heard about it. I knew he would listen, for he was to go with me and help me to take possession. The boy had almost wept on my neck when I asked him to come; he had just left Woolwich, and was not to join his battalion for six months; he was thus, as he put it, ‘at a loose end,’ and succeeded in persuading his parents that he ought to learn modern Greek. General Swinton was rather cold about the project; he said that Denny had spent ten years on ancient Greek, and knew nothing about it, and probably would not learn much of the newer sort in three months; but his wife thought it would be a nice trip for Denny. Well, it turned out to be a very nice trip for Denny; but if Mrs Swinton had known – however, if it comes to that, I might just as well exclaim, ‘If I had known myself!’

Denny had taken a table next but one to the west end of the room, and was drumming his fingers impatiently on the cloth when I entered. He wanted both his dinner and the latest news about Neopalia; so I sat down and made haste to satisfy him in both respects. Travelling with equal steps through the two matters, we had reached the first entrée and the fate of the murdered Stefanopoulos (which Denny, for some reason, declared was ‘a lark’), when two people came in and sat down at the table beyond ours and next to the wall, where two chairs had been tilted up in token of pre-engagement. The man – for the pair were man and woman – was tall and powerfully built; his complexion was dark, and he had good regular features; he looked also as if he had a bit of a temper somewhere about him. I was conscious of having seen him before, and suddenly recollected that by a curious chance I had run up against him twice in St James’s Street that very day. The lady was handsome; she had an Italian cast of face, and moved with much grace; her manner was rather elaborate, and, when she spoke to the waiter, I detected a pronounced foreign accent. Taken together, they were a remarkable couple and presented a distinguished appearance. I believe I am not a conceited man, but I could not help wondering whether their thoughts paid me a similar compliment. For I certainly detected both of them casting more than one curious glance towards our table; and when the man whispered once to a waiter, I was sure that I formed the subject of his question; perhaps he also remembered our two encounters.

‘I wonder if there’s any chance of a row!’ said Denny in a tone that sounded wistful. ‘Going to take anybody with you, Charley?’

‘Only Watkins; I must have him; he always knows where everything is; and I’ve told Hogvardt, my old dragoman, to meet us in Rhodes. He’ll talk their own language to the beggars, you know.’

‘But he’s a German, isn’t he?’

‘He thinks so,’ I answered. ‘He’s not certain, you know. Anyhow, he chatters Greek like a parrot. He’s a pretty good man in a row, too. But there won’t be a row, you know.’

‘I suppose there won’t,’ admitted Denny ruefully.

‘For my own part,’ said I meekly, ‘as I’m going for the sake of quiet, I hope there won’t.’

In the interest of conversation I had forgotten our neighbours; but now, a lull occurring in Denny’s questions and surmises, I heard the lady’s voice. She began a sentence – and began it in Greek! That was a little unexpected; but it was more strange that her companion cut her short, saying very peremptorily, ‘Don’t talk Greek: talk Italian.’ This he said in Italian, and I, though no great hand at that language, understood so much. Now why shouldn’t the lady talk Greek, if Greek were the language that came naturally to her tongue? It would be as good a shield against eavesdroppers as most languages; unless indeed I, who was known to be an amateur of Greece and Greek things, were looked upon as a possible listener. Recollecting the glances which I had detected, recollecting again those chance meetings, I ventured on a covert gaze at the lady. Her handsome face expressed a mixture of anger, alarm, and entreaty. The man was speaking to her now in low urgent tones; he raised his hand once, and brought it down on the table as though to emphasise some declaration – perhaps some promise – which he was making. She regarded him with half-angry distrustful eyes. He seemed to repeat his words and she flung at him in a tone that grew suddenly louder, and in words that I could translate:

‘Enough! I’ll see to that. I shall come too.’

Her heat stirred no answering fire in him. He dropped his emphatic manner, shrugged a tolerant ‘As you will,’ with eloquent shoulders, smiled at her, and, reaching across the table, patted her hand. She held it up before his eyes, and with the other hand pointed at a ring on her finger.

‘Yes, yes, my dearest,’ said he, and he was about to say more, when, glancing round, he caught my gaze retreating in hasty confusion to my plate. I dared not look up again, but I felt his scowl on me. I suppose that I deserved punishment for my eavesdropping.

‘And when can we get off, Charley?’ asked Denny in his clear young voice. My thoughts had wandered from him, and I paused for a moment as a man does when a question takes him unawares. There was silence at the next table also. The fancy seemed absurd, but it occurred to me that there too my answer was being waited for. Well, they could know if they liked; it was no secret.

‘In a fortnight,’ said I. ‘We’ll travel easily, and get there on the 7th of next month; – that’s the day on which I’m entitled to take over my kingdom. We shall go to Rhodes. Hogvardt will have got me a little yacht, and then – good-bye to all this!’ And a great longing for solitude and a natural life came over me as I looked round on the gilded cornices, the gilded mirrors, the gilded flower-vases, and the highly-gilded company of the Optimum.

I was roused from my pleasant dreams by a high vivacious voice, which I knew very well. Looking up, I saw Miss Hipgrave, her mother, and young Bennett Hamlyn standing before me. I disliked young Hamlyn, but he was always very civil to me.

‘Why, how early you two have dined!’ cried Beatrice. ‘You’re at the savoury, aren’t you? We’ve only just come.’

‘Are you going to dine?’ I asked, rising. ‘Take this table, we’re just off.’

‘Well, we may as well, mayn’t we?’ said my fiancée. ‘Sorry you’re going, though. Oh, yes, we’re going to dine with Mr Bennett Hamlyn. That’s what you’re for, isn’t it, Mr Hamlyn? Why, he’s not listening!’

He was not, strange to say, listening, although as a rule he listened to Beatrice with infinite attention and the most deferential of smiles. But just now he was engaged in returning a bow which our neighbour at the next table had bestowed on him. The lady there had risen already and was making for the door. The man lingered and looked at Hamlyn, seeming inclined to back up his bow with a few words of greeting. Hamlyn’s air was not, however, encouraging, and the stranger contented himself with a nod and a careless ‘How are you?’ and, with that, followed his companion. Hamlyn turned round, conscious that he had neglected Beatrice’s remark and full of penitence for his momentary rudeness.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said he, with an apologetic smile.

‘Oh,’ answered she, ‘I was only saying that men like you were invented to give dinners; you’re a sort of automatic feeding-machine. You ought to stand open all day. Really I often miss you at lunch time.’

‘My dear Beatrice!’ said Mrs Kennett Hipgrave, with that peculiar lift of her brows which meant, ‘How naughty the dear child is – oh, but how clever!’

‘It’s all right,’ said Hamlyn meekly. ‘I’m awfully happy to give you a dinner anyhow, Miss Beatrice.’

Now I had nothing to say on this subject, but I thought I would just make this remark:

‘Miss Hipgrave,’ said I, ‘is very fond of a dinner.’

Beatrice laughed. She understood my little correction.

‘He doesn’t know any better, do you?’ said she pleasantly to Hamlyn. ‘We shall civilise him in time, though; then I believe he’ll be nicer than you, Charley, I really do. You’re – ’

‘I shall be uncivilised by then,’ said I.

‘Oh, that wretched island!’ cried Beatrice. ‘You’re really going?’

‘Most undoubtedly. By the way, Hamlyn, who’s your friend?’

Surely this was an innocent enough question, but little Hamlyn went red from the edge of his clipped whisker on the right to the edge of his mathematically equal whisker on the left.

‘Friend!’ said he in an angry tone; ‘he’s not a friend of mine. I only met him on the Riviera.’

‘That,’ I admitted, ‘does not, happily, in itself constitute a friendship.’

‘And he won a hundred louis of me in the train between Cannes and Monte Carlo.’

‘Not bad going that,’ observed Denny in an approving tone.

‘Is he then un grec?’ asked Mrs Hipgrave, who loves a scrap of French.

‘In both senses, I believe,’ answered Hamlyn viciously.

‘And what’s his name?’ said I.

‘Really I don’t recollect,’ said Hamlyn rather petulantly.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ observed Beatrice, attacking her oysters which had now made their appearance.

‘My dear Beatrice,’ I remonstrated, ‘you’re the most charming creature in the world, but not the only one. You mean that it doesn’t matter to you.’

‘Oh, don’t be tiresome. It doesn’t matter to you either, you know. Do go away and leave me to dine in peace.’

‘Half a minute!’ said Hamlyn. ‘I thought I’d got it just now, but it’s gone again. Look here, though, I believe it’s one of those long things that end in poulos.’

‘Oh, it ends in poulos, does it?’ said I in a meditative tone.

‘My dear Charley,’ said Beatrice, ‘I shall end in Bedlam if you’re so very tedious. What in the world I shall do when I’m married, I don’t know.’

‘My dearest!’ said Mrs Hipgrave, and a stage direction might add, Business with brows as before.

‘Poulos,’ I repeated thoughtfully.

‘Could it be Constantinopoulos?’ asked Hamlyn, with a nervous deference to my Hellenic learning.

‘It might conceivably,’ I hazarded, ‘be Constantine Stefanopoulos.’

‘Then,’ said Hamlyn, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if it was. Anyhow, the less you see of him, Wheatley, the better. Take my word for that.’

‘But,’ I objected – and I must admit that I have a habit of assuming that everybody follows my train of thought – ‘it’s such a small place, that, if he goes, I shall be almost bound to meet him.’

‘What’s such a small place?’ cried Beatrice with emphasised despair.

‘Why, Neopalia, of course,’ said I.

‘Why should anybody, except you, be so insane as to go there?’ she asked.

‘If he’s the man I think, he comes from there,’ I explained, as I rose for the last time; for I had been getting up to go and sitting down again several times.

‘Then he’ll think twice before he goes back,’ pronounced Beatrice decisively; she was irreconcilable about my poor island.

Denny and I walked off together; as we went he observed:

‘I suppose that chap’s got no end of money?’

‘Stefan – ?’ I began.

‘No, no. Hang it, you’re as bad as Miss Hipgrave says. I mean Bennett Hamlyn.’

‘Oh, yes, absolutely no end to it, I believe.’

Denny looked sagacious.

‘He’s very free with his dinners,’ he observed.

‘Don’t let’s worry about it,’ I suggested, taking his arm. I was not worried about it myself. Indeed for the moment my island monopolised my mind, and my attachment to Beatrice was not of such a romantic character as to make me ready to be jealous on slight grounds. Mrs Hipgrave said the engagement was based on ‘general suitability.’ Now it is difficult to be very passionate over that.

‘If you don’t mind, I don’t,’ said Denny reasonably.

‘That’s right. It’s only a little way Beatrice – ’ I stopped abruptly. We were now on the steps outside the restaurant, and I had just perceived a scrap of paper lying on the mosaic pavement. I stooped down and picked it up. It proved to be a fragment torn from the menu card. I turned it over.

‘Hullo, what’s this?’ said I, searching for my eye-glass, which was (as usual) somewhere in the small of my back.

Denny gave me the glass, and I read what was written on the back. It was in Greek, and it ran thus:

‘By way of Rhodes – small yacht there – arrive seventh.’

I turned the piece of paper over in my hand. I drew a conclusion or two; one was that my tall neighbour was named Stefanopoulos; another that he had made good use of his ears – better than I had made of mine; for a third, I guessed that he would go to Neopalia; for a fourth, I fancied that Neopalia was the place to which the lady had declared she would accompany him. Then I fell to wondering why all these things should be so, why he wished to remember the route of my journey, the date of my arrival, and the fact that I meant to hire a yacht. Finally, those two chance encounters, taken with the rest, assumed a more interesting complexion.

‘When you’ve done with that bit of paper,’ observed Denny, in a tone expressive of exaggerated patience, ‘we might as well go on, old fellow.’

‘All right. I’ve done with it – for the present,’ said I. But I took the liberty of slipping Mr Constantine Stefanopoulos’s memorandum into my pocket.

The general result of the evening was to increase most distinctly my interest in Neopalia. I went to bed still thinking of my purchase, and I recollect that the last thing which came into my head before I went to sleep was, ‘What did she mean by pointing to the ring?’

Well, I found an answer to that later on.

CHAPTER II

A CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY

Until the moment of our parting came, I had no idea that Beatrice Hipgrave felt my going at all. She was not in the habit of displaying emotion, and I was much surprised at the reluctance with which she bade me good-bye. So far, however, was she from reproaching me that she took all the blame on herself, saying that if she had been kinder and nicer to me I should never have thought about my island. In this she was quite wrong; but when I told her so, and assured her that I had no fault to find with her behaviour, I was met with an almost passionate assertion of her unworthiness and an entreaty that I should not spend on her a love that she did not deserve. Her abasement and penitence compelled me to show, and indeed to feel, a good deal of tenderness for her. She was pathetic and pretty in her unusual earnestness and unexplained distress. I went the length of offering to put off my expedition until after our wedding; and although she besought me to do nothing of the kind, I believe that we might in the end have arranged matters on this footing had we been left to ourselves. But Mrs Hipgrave saw fit to intrude on our interview at this point, and she at once pooh-poohed the notion, declaring that I should be better out of the way for a few months. Beatrice did not resist her mother’s conclusion; but when we were alone again, she became very agitated, begging me always to think well of her, and asking if I were really attached to her. I did not understand this mood, which was very unlike her ordinary manner; but I responded with a hearty and warm avowal of confidence in her; and I met her questions as to my own feelings by pledging my word very solemnly that absence should, so far as I was concerned, make no difference, and that she might rely implicitly on my faithful affection. This assurance seemed to give her very little comfort, although I repeated it more than once; and when I left her, I was in a state of some perplexity, for I could not follow the bent of her thoughts nor appreciate the feelings that moved her. I was however considerably touched, and upbraided myself for not having hitherto done justice to the depth and sincerity of nature which underlay her external frivolity. I expressed this self-condemnation to Denny Swinton, but he met it very coldly, and would not be drawn into any discussion of the subject. Denny was not wont to conceal his opinions and had never pretended to be enthusiastic about my engagement. This attitude of his had not troubled me before, but I was annoyed at it now, and I retaliated by asseverating my affection for Beatrice in terms of even exaggerated emphasis, and hers for me with no less vehemence.

These troubles and perplexities vanished before the zest and interest which our preparations and start excited. Denny and I were like a pair of schoolboys off for a holiday, and spent hours in forecasting what we should do and how we should fare on the island. These speculations were extremely amusing, but in the long run they were proved to be, one and all, wide of the mark. Had I known Neopalia then as well as I came to know it afterwards, I should have recognised the futility of attempting to prophesy what would or would not happen there. As it was, we span our cobwebs merrily all the way to Rhodes, where we arrived without event and without accident. Here we picked up Hogvardt and embarked on the smart little steam yacht which he had procured for me. A day or two was spent in arranging our stores and buying what more we wanted, for we could not expect to be able to purchase any luxuries in Neopalia. I was rather surprised to find no letter for me from the old lord, but I had no thought of waiting for a formal invitation, and pressed on the hour of departure as much as I could. Here, also, I saw the first of my new subjects, Hogvardt having engaged a couple of men who had come to him saying that they were from Neopalia and were anxious to work their passage back. I was delighted to have them, and fell at once to studying them with immense attention. They were fine, tall, capable-looking fellows, and the two, with ourselves, made a crew more than large enough for our little boat; for both Denny and I could make ourselves useful on board, and Hogvardt could do something of everything on land or water, while Watkins acted as cook and steward. The Neopalians were, as they stated in answer to my questions, brothers; their names were Spiro and Demetri, and they informed us that their family had served the lords of Neopalia for many generations. Hearing this, I was less inclined to resent the undeniable reserve and even surliness with which they met my advances. I made allowance for their hereditary attachment to the outgoing family, and their natural want of cordiality towards the intruder did not prevent me from plying them with many questions concerning my predecessors on the throne of the island. My perseverance was ill-rewarded, but I succeeded in learning that the only member of the family on the island, besides the old lord was a girl whom they called ‘the Lady Euphrosyne,’ the daughter of the lord’s brother who was dead. Next I asked after my friend of the Optimum Restaurant, Constantine. He was this lady’s cousin once or twice removed – I did not make out the exact degree of kinship – but Demetri hastened to inform me that he came very seldom to the island, and had not been there for two years.

‘And he is not expected there now?’ I asked.

‘He was not when we left, my lord,’ answered Demetri, and it seemed to me that he threw an inquiring glance at his brother, who added hastily,

‘But what should we poor men know of the Lord Constantine’s doings?’

‘Do you know where he is now?’ I asked.

‘No, my lord,’ they answered together, and with great emphasis.

I cannot deny that something struck me as peculiar in their manner, but when I mentioned my impression to Denny he scoffed at me.

‘You’ve been reading old Byron again,’ he said scornfully. ‘Do you think they’re corsairs?’

Well, a man is not a fool simply because he reads Byron, and I maintained my opinion that the brothers were embarrassed at my questions. Moreover I caught Spiro, the more truculent-looking of the pair, scowling at me more than once when he did not know I had my eye on him.

These little mysteries, however, did nothing but add sauce to my delight as we sprang over the blue waters; and my joy was complete when, on the morning of the day I had appointed, the seventh of May, Denny cried ‘Land!’ and looking over the starboard bow I saw the cloud on the sea that was Neopalia. Day came bright and glorious, and as we drew nearer to our enchanted isle we distinguished its features and conformation. The coast was rocky save where a small harbour opened to the sea, and the rocks ran up from the coast, rising higher and higher till they culminated in a quite respectable peak in the centre. The telescope showed cultivated ground and vineyards, mingled with woods, on the slopes of the mountain; and about half-way up, sheltered on three sides, backed by thick woods, and commanding a splendid sea-view, stood an old grey battlemented house.

‘There’s my house,’ I cried in natural exultation, pointing with my finger. It was a moment in my life, a moment to mark.

‘Hurrah!’ cried Denny, throwing up his hat in sympathy.

Demetri was standing near and met this ebullition with a grim smile.

‘I hope my lord will find the house comfortable,’ said he.

‘We shall soon make it comfortable,’ said Hogvardt; ‘I daresay it’s half a ruin now.’

‘It’s good enough now for a Stefanopoulos,’ said the fellow with a surly frown. The inference we were meant to draw was plain even to the point of incivility.

At five o’clock in the evening we entered the harbour of Neopalia, and brought up alongside a rather crazy wooden jetty which ran some fifty feet out from the shore. Our arrival appeared to create great excitement. Men, women, and children came running down the narrow steep street which climbed up the hill from the harbour. We heard shrill cries, and a hundred fingers were pointed at us. We landed; nobody came forward to greet us. I looked round, but saw no one who could be the old lord; but I perceived a stout man who wore an air of importance, and walking up to him I asked him very politely if he would be so good as to direct me to the inn; for I had discovered from Demetri that there was a modest house where we could lodge that night; I was too much in love with my island to think of sleeping on board the yacht. The stout man looked at Denny and me; then he looked at Demetri and Spiro, who stood near us, smiling their usual grim smiles. At last he answered my question by another, a rather abrupt one:

‘What do you want, sir?’ And he lifted his tasselled cap a few inches and replaced it on his head.

‘I want to know the way to the inn,’ I answered.

‘You have come to visit Neopalia?’ he asked.

A number of people had gathered round us now, and all fixed their eyes on my face.

‘Oh,’ said I carelessly, ‘I’m the purchaser of the island, you know. I have come to take possession.’

Nobody spoke. Perfect silence reigned for half a minute.

‘I hope we shall get on well together,’ I said, with my pleasantest smile.

Still no answer came. The people round still stared. But presently the stout man, altogether ignoring my friendly advances, said curtly,

‘I keep the inn. Come. I will take you to it.’

He turned and led the way up the street. We followed, the people making a lane for us and still regarding us with stony stares. Denny gave expression to my feelings as well as his own;

‘It can hardly be described as an ovation,’ he observed.

‘Surly brutes!’ muttered Hogvardt.

‘It is not the way to receive his lordship,’ agreed Watkins, more in sorrow than in anger. Watkins had very high ideas of the deference due to his lordship.

The fat innkeeper walked ahead; I quickened my pace and overtook him.

‘The people don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ I remarked.

He shook his head, but made no answer. Then he stopped before a substantial house. We followed him in, and he led us upstairs to a large room. It overlooked the street, but, somewhat to my surprise, the windows were heavily barred. The door also was massive and had large bolts inside and outside.

‘You take good care of your houses, my friend,’ said Denny with a laugh.

‘We like to keep what we have, in Neopalia,’ said he.

I asked him if he would provide us with a meal, and, assenting gruffly, he left us alone. The food was some time in coming, and we stood at the window, peering through our prison bars. Our high spirits were dashed by the unfriendly reception; my island should have been more gracious; it was so beautiful.

‘However it’s a better welcome than we should have got two hundred years ago,’ I said with a laugh, trying to make the best of the matter.

Dinner, which the landlord himself brought in, cheered us again, and we lingered over it till dusk began to fall, discussing whether I ought to visit the lord, or whether, seeing that he had not come to receive me, my dignity did not demand that I should await his visit; and it was on this latter course that we finally decided.

‘But he’ll hardly come to-night,’ said Denny, jumping up. ‘I wonder if there are any decent beds here!’

Hogvardt and Watkins had, by my directions, sat down with us; the former was now smoking his pipe at the window, while Watkins was busy overhauling our luggage. We had brought light bags, the rods, guns, and other smaller articles. The rest was in the yacht. Hearing beds mentioned, Watkins shook his head in dismal presage, saying,

‘We had better sleep on board, my lord.’

‘Not I! What, leave the island now we’ve got here? No, Watkins!’

‘Very good, my lord,’ said Watkins impassively.

A sudden call came from Hogvardt, and I joined him at the window.

The scene outside was indeed remarkable. In the narrow paved street, gloomy now in the failing light, there must have been fifty or sixty men standing in a circle, surrounded by an outer fringe of women and children; and in the centre stood our landlord, his burly figure swaying to and fro as he poured out a low-voiced but vehement harangue. Sometimes he pointed towards us, oftener along the ascending road that led to the interior. I could not hear a word he said, but presently all his auditors raised their hands towards heaven. I saw that some of the hands held guns, some clubs, some knives; and all the men cried with furious energy, ‘Nai, Nai. Yes, yes!’ Then the whole body – and the greater part of the grown men on the island must have been present – started off in compact array up the road, the innkeeper at their head. By his side walked another man whom I had not noticed before; he wore an ordinary suit of tweeds, but carried himself with an assumption of much dignity; his face I could not see.

‘Well, what’s the meaning of that?’ I exclaimed, looking down on the street, empty again save for groups of white-clothed women, who talked eagerly to one another, gesticulating and pointing now towards our inn, now towards where the men had gone.

‘Perhaps it’s their Parliament,’ suggested Denny; ‘or perhaps they’ve repented of their rudeness and are going to erect a triumphal arch.’

These conjectures, being obviously ironical, did not assist the matter, although they amused their author.

‘Anyhow,’ said I, ‘I should like to investigate the thing. Suppose we go for a stroll?’

The proposal was accepted at once. We put on our hats, took sticks, and prepared to go. Then I glanced at the luggage.

‘Since I was so foolish as to waste my money on revolvers – ?’ said I, with an inquiring glance at Hogvardt.

‘The evening air will not hurt them,’ said he; and we each stowed a revolver in our pockets. We felt, I think, rather ashamed of our timidity, but the Neopalians certainly looked rough customers. Leading the way to the door I turned the handle; the door did not open. I pulled hard at it. Then I looked at my companions.

‘Queer,’ said Denny, and he began to whistle.

Hogvardt got the little lantern, which he always had handy, and carefully inspected the door.

‘Locked,’ he announced, ‘and bolted top and bottom. A solid door too!’ and he struck it with his fist. Then he crossed to the window and looked at the bars; and finally he said to me, ‘I don’t think we can have our walk, my lord.’

Well, I burst out laughing. The thing was too absurd. Under cover of our animated talk the landlord must have bolted us in. The bars made the window no use. A skilled burglar might have beaten those bolts, and a battering ram would, no doubt, have smashed the door; we had neither burglar nor ram.

‘We’re caught, my boy,’ said Denny, ‘nicely caught! But what’s the game?’

I had asked myself that question already, but had found no answer. To tell the truth, I was wondering whether Neopalia was going to turn out as conservative a country as the Turkish Ambassador had hinted. It was Watkins who suggested an answer.

‘I imagine, my lord,’ said he, ‘that the natives’ (Watkins always called the Neopalians ‘natives’) ‘have gone to speak to the gentleman who sold the island to your lordship.’

‘Gad,’ said Denny, ‘I hope it’ll be a pleasant interview!’

Hogvardt’s broad good-humoured face had assumed an anxious look. He knew something about the people of these islands; so did I.

‘Trouble, is it?’ I asked him.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he answered, and then we turned to the window again, except Denny, who wasted some energy and made a useless din by battering at the door till we beseeched him to let it alone.

There in the room we sat for nearly two hours. Darkness fell; the women had ceased their gossiping, but still stood about the street and in the doorways of their houses. It was nine o’clock before matters showed any progress. Then came shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the tread of men’s feet in a quick triumphant march. Next the stalwart figures of the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper was alone in front. And all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude barbarous sort of chant, repeating it again and again; while the women and children, crowding out to meet the men, caught up the refrain in shrill voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. So martial and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in time with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have tried to put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough, I fear, as the rough original. Here it is:

 

‘Ours is the land!

Death to the hand

That filches the land!

Dead is that hand,

Ours is the land!

 

 

‘Forever we hold it,

Dead’s he that sold it!

Ours is the land,

Dead is the hand!’

 

Again and again they hurled forth the defiant words, until at last they stopped opposite the inn with one final long-drawn shout of savage triumph.

‘Well, this is a go,’ said Denny, drawing a long breath. ‘What are the beggars up to?’

‘What have they been up to?’ I asked; for I could not doubt that the song we had heard had been chanted over a dead Stefanopoulos two hundred years before. At this age of the world the idea seemed absurd, preposterous, horrible. But there was no law nearer than Rhodes, and there only Turk’s law. The sole law here was the law of the Stefanopouloi, and if that law lost its force by the crime of the hand which should wield it, why, strange things might happen even to-day in Neopalia. And we were caught in the inn like rats in a trap.

‘I don’t see,’ remarked old Hogvardt, laying a hand on my shoulder, ‘any harm in loading our revolvers, my lord.’

I did not see any harm in it either, and we all followed Hogvardt’s advice, and also filled our pockets with cartridges. I was determined – I think we were all determined – not to be bullied by these islanders and their skull-and-crossbones ditty.

A quarter of an hour passed; then there came a knock at the door, while the bolts shot back.

‘I shall go out,’ said I, springing to my feet.

The door opened, and the face of a lad appeared.

‘Vlacho the innkeeper bids you descend,’ said he; and then, catching sight perhaps of our revolvers, he turned and ran downstairs again at his best speed. Following him we came to the door of the inn. It was ringed round with men, and directly opposite to us stood Vlacho. When he saw me he commanded silence with a gesture of his hand, and addressed me in the following surprising style.

‘The Lady Euphrosyne, of her grace, bids you depart in peace. Go, then, to your boat and depart, thanking God for His mercy.’

‘Wait a bit, my man’ said I; ‘where is the lord of the island?’

‘Did you not know that he died a week ago?’ asked Vlacho, with apparent surprise.

‘Died!’ we exclaimed one and all.

‘Yes, sir. The Lady Euphrosyne, Lady of Neopalia, bids you go.’

‘What did he die of?’

‘Of a fever,’ said Vlacho gravely; and several of the men round him nodded their heads and murmured in no less grave assent, ‘Yes, of a fever.’

‘I am very sorry for it,’ said I. ‘But as he sold the island to me before he died, I don’t see what the lady, with all respect to her, has got to do with it. Nor do I know what this rabble is doing about the door. Bid them disperse.’

This attempt at hauteur was most decidedly thrown away. Vlacho seemed not to hear what I said. He pointed with his finger towards the harbour.

‘There lies your boat. Demetri and Spiro cannot go with you, but you will be able to manage her yourselves. Listen now! Till six in the morning you are free to go. If you are found in Neopalia one minute after, you will never go. Think and be wise.’ And he and all the rest, as though one spring moved the whole body, wheeled round and marched off up the hill again, breaking out into the old chant when they had gone about a hundred yards. We were left alone in the doorway of the inn, looking, I must admit, rather blank.

Upstairs again we went, and I sat down by the window and gazed out on the night. It was very dark, and seemed darker now that the gleaming torches were gone. Not a soul was to be seen. The islanders, having put matters on a satisfactory footing, were off to bed. I sat thinking. Presently Denny came to me, and put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Going to cave in, Charley?’ he asked.

‘My dear Denny,’ said I, ‘I wish you were at home with your mother.’

He smiled and repeated, ‘Going to cave in, old chap?’

‘No, by Jove, I’m not!’ cried I, leaping up. ‘They’ve had my money, and I’m going to have my island.’

‘Take the yacht, my lord,’ counselled Hogvardt, ‘and come back with enough force from Rhodes.’

Well, here was sense; my impulse was nonsense. We four could not conquer the island. I swallowed my pride.

‘So be it,’ said I. ‘But look here, it’s only just twelve. We might have a look round before we go. I want to see the place, you know.’ For I was very sorely vexed at being turned out of my island.

Hogvardt grumbled a little at my proposal, but here I overruled him. We took our revolvers again, left the inn, and struck straight up the road. We met nobody. For nearly a mile we mounted, the way becoming steeper with every step. Then there was a sharp turn off the main road.

‘That will lead to the house,’ said Hogvardt, who had studied the map of Neopalia very carefully.

‘Then we’ll have a look at the house. Show us a light, Hogvardt. It’s precious dark.’

Hogvardt opened his lantern and cast its light on the way. But suddenly he extinguished it again, and drew us close into the rocks that edged the road. We saw coming towards us, in the darkness, two figures. They rode small horses. Their faces could not be seen; but as they passed our silent motionless forms, one said in a clear, sweet, girlish voice:

‘Surely they will go?’

‘Ay, they’ll go or pay the penalty,’ said the other voice. At the sound of it I started. For it was the voice of my neighbour in the restaurant, Constantine Stefanopoulos.

‘I shall be near at hand, sleeping in the town,’ said the girl’s voice, ‘and the people will listen to me.’

‘The people will kill them if they don’t go,’ we heard Constantine answer, in tones that witnessed no great horror at the idea. Then the couple disappeared in the darkness.

‘On to the house!’ I cried in sudden excitement. For I was angry now, angry at the utter humbling scorn with which they treated me.

Another ten minutes’ groping brought us in front of the old grey house which we had seen from the sea. We walked boldly up to it. The door stood open. We went in and found ourselves in a large hall. The wooden floor was carpeted here and there with mats and skins. A long table ran down the middle; the walls were decorated with mediæval armour and weapons. The windows were but narrow slits, the walls massive and deep. The door was a ponderous iron-bound affair; it shamed even the stout doors of our inn. I called loudly, ‘Is anyone here?’ Nobody answered. The servants must have been drawn off to the town by the excitement of the procession and the singing; or, perhaps, there were no servants. I could not tell. I sat down in a large armchair by the table. I enjoyed the sense of proprietorship; I was in my own house. Denny sat on the table by me, dangling his legs. For a long while none of us spoke. Then I exclaimed suddenly:

‘By Heaven, why shouldn’t we see it through?’ I rose, put my hands against the massive door, and closed and bolted it, saying, ‘Let them open that at six o’clock in the morning.’

‘Hurrah!’ cried Denny, leaping down from his table, on fire with excitement in a moment.

I faced Hogvardt. He shook his head, but he smiled. Watkins stood by with his usual imperturbability. He wanted to know what his lordship decided – that was all; and when I said nothing more, he asked,

‘Then your lordship will sleep here to-night?’

‘I’ll stay here to-night, anyhow, Watkins,’ said I. ‘I’m not going to be driven out of my own island by anybody.’

As I spoke, I brought my fist down on the table with a crash. And then to our amazement we heard, from somewhere in the dark recesses of the hall where the faint light of Hogvardt’s lantern did not reach, a low but distinct groan, as of someone in pain. Watkins shuddered, Hogvardt looked rather uncomfortable; Denny and I listened eagerly. Again the groan came. I seized the lantern from Hogvardt’s hand, and rushed in the direction of the sound. There, in the corner of the hall, on a couch covered with a rug, lay an old man in an uneasy attitude, groaning now and then and turning restlessly. By his side sat an old serving-woman in weary heavy slumber. In a moment I guessed the truth – part of the truth.

‘He’s not dead of that fever yet,’ said I.

CHAPTER III

THE FEVER OF NEOPALIA

I looked for a moment on the old man’s pale, clean-cut, aristocratic face; then I shook his attendant by the arm vigorously. She awoke with a start.

‘What does this mean?’ I demanded. ‘Who is he?’

‘Heaven help us! Who are you?’ she cried, leaping up in alarm. Indeed we four, with our eager fierce faces, must have looked disquieting enough.

‘I am Lord Wheatley; these are my friends,’ I answered in brisk sharp tones.

‘What, it is you, then – ?’ A wondering gaze ended her question.

‘Yes, yes, it is I. I have bought the island. We came out for a walk and – ’

‘But he will kill you if he finds you here.’

‘He? Who?’

‘Ah, pardon, my lord! They will kill you, they – the people – the men of the island.’

I gazed at her sternly. She shrank back in confusion. And I spoke at a venture, yet in a well-grounded hazard:

‘You mean that Constantine Stefanopoulos will kill me?’

‘Ah, hush,’ she cried. ‘He may be here, he may be anywhere.’

‘He may thank his stars he’s not here,’ said I grimly, for my blood was up. ‘Attend, woman. Who is this?’

‘It is the lord of the island, my lord,’ she answered. ‘Alas, he is wounded, I fear, to death. And yet I fell asleep. But I was so weary.’

‘Wounded? By whom?’

Her face suddenly became vacant and expressionless.

‘I do not know, my lord. It happened in the crowd. It was a mistake. My dear lord had yielded what they asked. Yet some one – no, by heaven, my lord, I do not know who – stabbed him. And he cannot live.’

‘Tell me the whole thing,’ I commanded.

‘They came up here, my lord, all of them, Vlacho and all, and with them my Lord Constantine. The Lady Euphrosyne was away; she is often away, down on the rocks by the sea, watching the waves. They came and said that a man had landed who claimed our island as his – a man of your name, my lord. And when my dear lord said he had sold the island to save the honour of his house and race, they were furious; and Vlacho raised the death chant that One-eyed Alexander the Bard wrote on the death of Stefan Stefanopoulos long ago. Then they came near with knives, demanding that my dear lord should send away the stranger; for the men of Neopalia were not to be bought and sold like bullocks or like pigs. At first my lord would not yield, and they swore they would kill the stranger and my lord also. Then they pressed closer; Vlacho was hard on him with drawn knife, and the Lord Constantine stood by him, praying him to yield; and Constantine drew his own knife, saying to Vlacho that he must fight him also before he killed the old lord. But at that Vlacho smiled. And then – and then – ah, my dear lord!’

For a moment her voice broke, and sobs supplanted words. But she drew herself up, and after a glance at the old man whom her vehement speech had not availed to waken, she went on.

‘And then those behind cried out that there was enough talk. Would he yield or would he die? And they rushed forward, pressing the nearest against him. And he, an old man, frail and feeble (yet once he was as brave a man as any), cried in his weak tones, “Enough, friends, I yield, I – ” and they fell back. But my lord stood for an instant, then he set his hand to his side, and swayed and tottered and fell; the blood was running from his side. The Lord Constantine fell on his knees beside him, crying, “Who stabbed him?” Vlacho smiled grimly, and the others looked at one another. But I, who had run out from the doorway whence I had seen it all, knelt by my lord and staunched the blood. Then Vlacho said, fixing his eyes straight and keen on the Lord Constantine, “It was not I, my lord.” “Nor I by heaven,” cried the Lord Constantine, and he rose to his feet, demanding, “Who struck the blow?” But none answered; and he went on, “Nay, if it were in error, if it were because he would not yield, speak. There shall be pardon.” But Vlacho, hearing this, turned himself round and faced them all, saying, “Did he not sell us like oxen and like pigs?” and he broke into the death chant, and they all raised the chant, none caring any more who had struck the blow. And the Lord Constantine – ’ The impetuous flow of the old woman’s story was frozen to sudden silence.

‘Well, and the Lord Constantine?’ said I, in low stern tones that quivered with excitement; and I felt Denny’s hand, which was on my arm, jump up and down. ‘And Constantine, woman?’

‘Nay, he did nothing,’ said she. ‘He talked with Vlacho awhile, and then they went away, and he bade me tend my lord, and went himself to seek the Lady Euphrosyne. Presently he came back with her; her eyes were red, and she wept afresh when she saw my poor lord; for she loved him. She sat by him till Constantine came and told her that you would not go, and that you and your friends would be killed if you did not go. Then, weeping to leave my lord, she went, praying heaven she might find him alive when she returned. “I must go,” she said to me, “for though it is a shameful thing that the island should have been sold, yet these men must be persuaded to go away and not meet death. Kiss him for me if he awakes.” Thus she went and left me with my lord, and I fear he will die.’ She ended in a burst of sobbing.

For a moment there was silence. Then I said again:

‘Who struck the blow, woman? Who struck the blow?’

She shrank from me as though I had struck her.

‘I do not know; I do not know,’ she moaned.

But the question she dared not answer was to find an answer.

The stricken man opened his eyes, his lips moved, and he groaned, ‘Constantine! You, Constantine!’ The old woman’s eyes met mine for a moment and fell to the ground again.

‘Why, why, Constantine?’ moaned the wounded man. ‘I had yielded, I had yielded, Constantine. I would have sent them – ’

His words ceased, his eyes closed, his lips met again, but met only to part. A moment later his jaw dropped. The old lord of Neopalia was dead.

Then I, carried away by anger and by hatred of the man who, for a reason I did not yet understand, had struck so foul a blow against his kinsman and an old man, did a thing so rash that it seems to me now, when I consider it in the cold light of memory, a mad deed. Yet then I could do nothing else; and Denny’s face, ay, and the eyes of the others too told me that they were with me.

‘Compose this old man’s body,’ I said, ‘and we will watch it. But do you go and tell this Constantine Stefanopoulos that I know his crime, that I know who struck that blow, that what I know all men shall know, and that I will not rest day or night until he has paid the penalty of this murder. Tell him I swore this on the honour of an English gentleman.’

‘And say I swore it too!’ cried Denny; and Hogvardt and Watkins, not making bold to speak, ranged up close to me; I knew that they also meant what I meant.

The old woman looked at me with searching eyes.

‘You are a bold man, my lord,’ said she.

‘I see nothing to be afraid of up to now,’ said I. ‘Such courage as is needed to tell a scoundrel what I think of him I believe I can claim.’

‘But he will never let you go now. You would go to Rhodes, and tell his – tell what you say of him.’

‘Yes, and further than Rhodes, if need be. He shall die for it as sure as I live.’

A thousand men might have tried in vain to persuade me; the treachery of Constantine had fired my heart and driven out all opposing motives.

‘Do as I bid you,’ said I sternly, ‘and waste no time on it. We will watch here by the old man till you return.’

‘My lord,’ she replied, ‘you run on your own death. And you are young; and the youth by you is yet younger.’

‘We are not dead yet,’ said Denny; I had never seen him look as he did then; for the gaiety was out of his face, and his lips had grown set and hard.

She raised her hands towards heaven, whether in prayer or in lamentation I do not know. We turned away and left her to her sad work; going back to our places, we waited there till dawn began to break and from the narrow windows we saw the grey crests of the waves dancing and frolicking in the early dawn. As I watched them, the old woman was by my elbow.

‘It is done, my lord,’ said she. ‘Are you still of the same mind?’

‘Still of the same,’ said I.

‘It is death, death for you all,’ she said, and without more she went to the great door. Hogvardt opened it for her, and she walked away down the road, between the high rocks that bounded the path on either side. Then we went and carried the old man to a room that opened off the hall, and, returning, stood in the doorway, cooling our brows in the fresh early air. While we stood there, Hogvardt said suddenly,

‘It is five o’clock.’

‘Then we have only an hour to live,’ said I, smiling, ‘if we don’t make for the yacht.’

‘You’re not going back to the yacht, my lord?’

‘I’m puzzled,’ I admitted. ‘If we go this ruffian will escape. And if we don’t go – ’

‘Why, we,’ Hogvardt ended for me, ‘may not escape.’

I saw that Hogvardt’s sense of responsibility was heavy; he always regarded himself as the shepherd, his employers as the sheep. I believe this attitude of his confirmed my obstinacy, for I said, without further hesitation:

‘Oh, we’ll chance that. When they know what a villain the fellow is, they’ll turn against him. Besides, we said we’d wait here.’

Denny seized on my last words with alacrity. When you are determined to do a rash thing, there is a great comfort in feeling that you are already committed to it by some previous act or promise.

‘So we did,’ he cried. ‘Then that settles it, Hogvardt’

‘His lordship certainly expressed that intention,’ observed Watkins, appearing at this moment with a big loaf of bread and a great pitcher of milk. I eyed these viands.

‘I bought the house and its contents,’ said I; ‘come along.’

Watkins’ further researches produced a large lump of native cheese; when he had set this down he remarked:

‘In a pen behind the house, close to the kitchen windows, there are two goats; and your lordship sees there, on the right of the front door, two cows tethered.’

I began to laugh, Watkins was so wise and solemn.

‘We can stand a siege, you mean?’ I asked. ‘Well, I hope it won’t come to that.’

Hogvardt rose and began to move round the hall, examining the weapons that decorated the walls. From time to time he grunted disapprovingly; the guns were useless, rusted, out of date; and there was no ammunition for them. But when he had almost completed his circuit, he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and came to me holding an excellent modern rifle and a large cartridge-case.

‘See!’ he grunted in huge delight. ‘“C. S.” on the stock. I expect you can guess whose it is, my lord.’

‘This is very thoughtful of Constantine,’ observed Denny, who was employing himself in cutting imaginary lemons in two with a fine damascened scimitar that he had taken from the wall.

‘As for the cows,’ said I, ‘perhaps they will carry them off.’

‘I think not,’ said Hogvardt, taking an aim with the rifle through the window.

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes past six.

‘Well, we can’t go now,’ said I. ‘It’s settled. What a comfort!’ I wonder whether I had ever in my heart meant to go!

The next hour passed very quietly. We sat smoking pipes or cigars and talking in subdued tones. The recollection of the dead man in the adjoining room sobered the excitement to which our position might otherwise have given occasion. Indeed I suppose that I at least, who through my whim had led the rest into this quandary, should have been utterly overwhelmed by the burden on me. But I was not. Perhaps Hogvardt’s assumption of responsibility relieved me; perhaps I was too full of anger against Constantine to think of the risks we ourselves ran; and I was more than half-persuaded that the revelation of what he had done would rob him of his power to hurt us. Moreover, if I might judge from the words I heard on the road, we had on our side an ally of uncertain, but probably considerable, power in the sweet-voiced girl whom the old woman called the Lady Euphrosyne; she would not support her uncle’s murderer, even though he were her cousin.

Presently Watkins carried me off to view his pen of goats, and having passed through the lofty flagged kitchen, I found myself in a sort of compound formed by the rocks. The ground had been levelled for a few yards, and the rocks rose straight to the height of ten or twelve feet; from the top of this artificial bank they ran again in wooded slopes towards the peak of the mountain. I followed their course with my eye, and three hundred or more feet above us, just beneath the summit, I perceived a little wooden châlet or bungalow. Blue smoke issued from the chimneys; and, even while we looked, a figure came out of the door and stood still in front of it, apparently gazing down towards the house.

‘It’s a woman,’ I pronounced.

‘Yes, my lord. A peasant’s wife, I suppose.’

‘I daresay,’ said I. But I soon doubted Watkins’ opinion; in the first place, because the woman’s dress did not look like that of a peasant woman; and secondly, because she went into the house, appeared again, and levelled at us what was, if I mistook not, a large pair of binocular glasses. Now such things were not likely to be in the possession of the peasants of Neopalia. Then she suddenly retreated, and through the silence of those still slopes we heard the door of the cottage closed with violence.

‘She doesn’t seem to like the looks of us,’ said I.

‘Possibly,’ suggested Watkins with deference, ‘she did not expect to see your lordship here.’

‘I should think that’s very likely, Watkins,’ said I.

I was recalled from the survey of my new domains – my satisfaction in the thought that they were mine survived all the disturbing features of the situation – by a call from Denny. In response to it I hurried back to the hall and found him at the window, with Constantine’s rifle rested on the sill.

‘I could pick him off pat,’ said Denny laughingly, and he pointed to a figure which was approaching the house. It was a man riding a stout pony; when he came within about two hundred yards of the house, he stopped, took a leisurely look, and then waved a white handkerchief.

‘The laws of war must be observed,’ said I, smiling. ‘This is a flag of truce.’ I opened the door, stepped out, and waved my handkerchief in return. The man, reassured, began to mop his brow with the flag of truce, and put his pony to a trot. I now perceived him to be the innkeeper Vlacho, and a moment later he reined up beside me, giving an angry jerk at his pony’s bridle.

‘I have searched the island for you,’ he cried. ‘I am weary and hot! How came you here?’

I explained to him briefly how I had chanced to take possession of my house, and added significantly:

‘But has no message come to you from me?’

He smiled with equal meaning, as he answered:

‘No; an old woman came to speak to a gentleman who is in the village – ’

‘Yes, to Constantine Stefanopoulos,’ said I with a nod.

‘Well then, if you will, to the Lord Constantine,’ he admitted with a careless shrug, ‘but her message was for his ear only; he took her aside and they talked alone.’

‘You know what she said, though?’

‘That is between my Lord Constantine and me.’

‘And the young lady knows it, I hope – the Lady Euphrosyne?’

Vlacho smiled broadly.

‘We could not distress her with such a silly tale,’ he answered; and he leant down towards me. ‘Nobody has heard the message but the Lord Constantine and one man he told it to. And nobody will. If that old woman spoke, she – well, she knows and will not speak.’

‘And you back up this murderer?’ I cried.

‘Murderer?’ he repeated questioningly. ‘Indeed, sir, it was an accident done in hot blood. It was the old man’s fault, because he tried to sell the island.’

‘He did sell the island,’ I corrected; ‘and a good many other people will hear of what happened to him.’

He looked at me again, smiling.

‘If you shouted it in the hearing of every man in Neopalia, what would they do?’ he asked scornfully.

‘Well, I should hope,’ I returned, ‘that they’d hang Constantine to the tallest tree you’ve got here.’

‘They would do this,’ he said with a nod; and he began to sing softly the chant I had heard the night before.

I was disgusted at his savagery, but I said coolly:

‘And the Lady?’

‘The Lady believes what she is told, and will do as her cousin bids her. Is she not his affianced wife?’

‘The deuce she is!’ I cried in amazement, fixing a keen scrutiny on Vlacho’s face. The face told me nothing.

‘Certainly,’ he said gently. ‘And they will rule the island together.’

‘Will they, though?’ said I. I was becoming rather annoyed. ‘There are one or two obstacles in the way of that. First, it’s my island.’

He shrugged his shoulders again. ‘That,’ he seemed to say, ‘is not worth answering.’ But I had a second shot in the locker for him, and I let him have it for what it was worth. I knew it might be worth nothing, but I tried it.

‘And secondly,’ I went on, ‘how many wives does Constantine propose to have?’

A hit! A hit! A palpable hit! I could have sung in glee. The fellow was dumbfoundered. He turned red, bit his lip, scowled fiercely.

‘What do you mean?’ he blurted out, with an attempt at blustering defiance.

‘Never mind what I mean. Something, perhaps, that the Lady Euphrosyne might care to know. And now, my man, what do you want of me?’

He recovered his composure, and stated his errand with his old cool assurance; but the cloud of vexation still hung heavy on his brow.

‘On behalf of the Lady of the island – ’ he began.

‘Or shall we say her cousin?’ I interrupted.

‘Which you will,’ he answered, as though it were not worth while to wear the mask any longer. ‘On behalf, then, of my Lord Constantine, I am to offer you safe passage to your boat, and a return of the money you have paid – ’

‘How’s he going to pay that?’

‘He will pay it in a year, and give you security meanwhile.’

‘And the condition is that I give up the island?’ I asked; I began to think that perhaps I owed it to my companions to acquiesce in this proposal however distasteful it might be to me.

‘Yes,’ said Vlacho, ‘and there is one other small condition, which will not trouble you.’

‘What’s that? You’re rich in conditions.’

‘You’re lucky to be offered any. It is that you mind your own business.’

‘I came here for the purpose,’ I observed.

‘And that you undertake, for yourself and your companions, on your word of honour, to speak to nobody of what has passed on the island or of the affairs of the Lord Constantine.’

‘And if I won’t give this promise?’

‘The yacht is in our hands; Demetri and Spiro are our men; there will be no ship here for two months.’ The fellow paused, smiling at me. I took the liberty of ending his period for him.

‘And there is,’ I said, returning his smile, ‘as we know by now, a particularly sudden and fatal form of fever in the island.’

‘Certainly you may chance to find that out,’ said he.

‘But is there no antidote?’ I asked, and I showed him the butt of my revolver in the pocket of my coat.

‘It may keep it off for a day or two – not longer. You have the bottle there, but most of the drug is with your luggage at the inn.’

His parable was true enough; we had only two or three dozen cartridges apiece.

‘But there’s plenty of food for Constantine’s rifle,’ said I, pointing to the muzzle of it, which protruded from the window.

He suddenly became impatient.

‘Your answer, sir?’ he demanded peremptorily.

‘Here it is,’ said I. ‘I’ll keep the island and I’ll see Constantine hanged.’

‘So be it, so be it,’ he cried. ‘You are warned; so be it!’ Without another word he turned his pony and trotted rapidly off down the road. And I went back to the house feeling, I must confess, not in the best of spirits. But when my friends heard all that had passed, they applauded me, and we made up our minds to ‘see it through,’ as Denny said.

The day passed quietly. At noon we carried the old lord out of his house, having wrapped him in a sheet; we dug for him as good a grave as we could in a little patch of ground that lay outside the windows of his own chapel, a small erection at the west end of the house. There he must lie for the present. This sad work done, we came back and – so swift are life’s changes – killed a goat for dinner, and watched Watkins dress it. Thus the afternoon wore away, and when evening came we ate our goat-flesh and Hogvardt milked our cows; then we sat down to consider the position of the garrison.

But the evening was hot and we adjourned out of doors, grouping ourselves on the broad marble pavement in front of the door. Hogvardt had just begun to expound a very elaborate scheme of escape, depending, so far as I could make out, on our reaching the other side of the island and finding there a boat which we had no reason to suppose would be there, when Denny raised his hand, saying ‘Hark!’

From the direction of the village and the harbour came the sound of a horn, blowing long and shrill and echoed back in strange protracted shrieks and groans from the hillside behind us. And following on the blast we heard, low in the distance and indistinct, yet rising and falling and rising again in savage defiance and exultation, the death-chant that One-Eyed Alexander the Bard had made on the death of Stefan Stefanopoulos two hundred years ago. For a few minutes we sat listening; I do not think that any of us felt very comfortable. Then I rose to my feet, saying:

‘Hogvardt, old fellow, I fancy that scheme of yours must wait a little. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re going to have a lively evening.’

Well, then we shook hands all round, and went in and bolted the door, and sat down to wait. We heard the death-chant through the walls now; it was coming nearer.

CHAPTER IV

A RAID AND A RAIDER

It was between eight and nine o’clock when the first of the enemy appeared on the road in the persons of two smart fellows in gleaming kilts and braided jackets. It was no more than just dusk, and I saw that they were strangers to me. One was tall and broad, the other shorter and of very slight build. They came on towards us confidently enough. I was looking over Denny’s shoulder; he held Constantine’s rifle, and I knew that he was impatient to try it. But, inasmuch as might was certainly not on our side, I was determined that right should abide with us, and was resolute not to begin hostilities. Constantine had at least one powerful motive for desiring our destruction; I would not furnish him with any plausible excuse for indulging his wish: so we stood, Denny and I at one window, Hogvardt and Watkins at the other, and quietly watched the approaching figures. No more appeared; the main body did not show itself, and the sound of the fierce chant had suddenly died away. But the next moment a third man came in sight, running rapidly after the first two. He caught the shorter by the arm, and seemed to argue or expostulate with him. For a while the three stood thus talking; then I saw the last comer make a gesture of protest as though he yielded his point unwillingly, and they all came on together.

‘Push the barrel of that rifle a little farther out,’ said I to Denny. ‘It may be useful to them to know it’s there.’

Denny obeyed; the result was a sudden pause in our friends’ advance; but they were near enough now for me to distinguish the last comer, and I discerned in him, although he had discarded his tweed suit and adopted the national dress, Constantine Stefanopoulos himself.

‘Here’s an exercise of self-control!’ I groaned, laying a detaining hand on Denny’s shoulder.

As I spoke, Constantine put a whistle to his lips and blew loudly. The blast was followed by the appearance of five more fellows; in three of them I recognised old acquaintances – Vlacho, Demetri and Spiro. These three all carried guns. The whole eight came forward again, till they were within a hundred yards of us. There they halted, and, with a sudden swift movement, three barrels were levelled straight at the window where Denny and I were stationed. Well, we ducked; there is no use in denying it; for we thought that the bombardment had really begun. Yet no shot followed, and after an instant, holding Denny down, I peered out cautiously myself. The three stood motionless, their aim full on us. The other five were advancing warily, well under the shelter of the rock, two on the left side of the road and three on the right. The slim boyish fellow was with Constantine on the left; a moment later the other three dashed across the road and joined them. In a moment what military men call ‘the objective,’ the aim of these manœuvres, flashed across me. It was simple almost to ludicrousness; yet it was very serious, for it showed a reasoned plan of campaign with which we were very ill-prepared to cope. While the three held us in check, the five were going to carry off our cows. Without our cows we should soon be hard put to it for food. For the cows had formed in our plans a most important pièce de résistance.

‘This won’t do,’ said I. ‘They’re after the cows.’ I took the rifle from Denny’s hand, cautioning him not to show his face at the window. Then I stood in the shelter of the wall, so that I could not be hit by the three, and levelled the rifle, not at my human enemies, but at the unoffending cows.

‘A dead cow,’ I remarked, ‘is a great deal harder to move than a live one.’

The five had now come quite near the pen of rude hurdles in which the cows were. As I spoke, Constantine appeared to give some order; and while he and the boy stood looking on, Constantine leaning on his gun, the boy’s hand resting with jaunty elegance on the handle of the knife in his girdle, the others leapt over the hurdles. Crack! went the rifle, and a cow fell. I reloaded hastily. Crack! and the second cow fell. It was very fair shooting in such a bad light, for I hit both mortally; my skill was rewarded by a shout of anger from the robbers. (For robbers they were; I had bought the live stock.)

‘Carry them off now!’ I cried, carelessly showing myself at the window. But I did not stay there long, for three shots rang out, and the bullets pattered on the masonry above me. Luckily the covering party had aimed a trifle too high.

‘No more milk, my lord,’ observed Watkins in a regretful tone. He had seen the catastrophe from the other window.

The besiegers were checked. They leapt out of the pen with alacrity. I suppose they realised that they were exposed to my fire while at that particular angle I was protected from the attack of their friends. They withdrew to the middle of the road, selecting a spot at which I could not take aim without showing myself at the window. I dared not look out to see what they were doing. But presently Hogvardt risked a glance, and called out that they were in retreat and had rejoined the three, and that the whole body stood together in consultation and were no longer covering my window. So I looked out, and saw the boy standing in an easy graceful attitude, while Constantine and Vlacho talked a little way apart. It was growing considerably darker now, and the figures became dim and indistinct.

‘I think the fun’s over for to-night,’ said I, glad to have it over so cheaply.

Indeed what I said seemed to be true, for the next moment the group turned and began to retreat along the road, moving briskly out of our sight. We were left in the thick gloom of a moonless evening and the peaceful silence of still air.

‘They’ll come back and fetch the cows,’ said Hogvardt. ‘Couldn’t we drag one in, my lord, and put it where the goat is, behind the house?’

I approved of this suggestion; Watkins having found a rope, I armed Denny with the rifle took from the wall a large keen hunting-knife, opened the door and stole out, accompanied by Hogvardt and Watkins, who carried their revolvers. We reached the pen without interruption, tied our rope firmly round the horns of one of the dead beasts and set to work to drag it along. It was no child’s play, and our progress was very slow, but the carcase moved, and I gave a shout of encouragement as we got it down on to the smoother ground of the road and hauled it along with a will. Alas, that shout was a great indiscretion! I had been too hasty in assuming that our enemy was quite gone. We heard suddenly the rush of feet; shots whistled over our heads. We had but just time to drop the rope and turn round, when Denny’s rifle rang out, and then – somebody was at us! I really do not know exactly how many there were. I had two at me, but by great good luck I drove my big knife into one fellow’s arm at the first hazard, and I think that was enough for him. In my other assailant I recognised Vlacho. The fat innkeeper had got rid of his gun and had a knife much like the one I carried myself. I knew him more by his voice as he cried fiercely, ‘Come on!’ than by his appearance, for the darkness was thick now. Parrying his fierce thrust – he was very active for so stout a man – I called out to our people to fall back as quickly as they could, for I was afraid that we might be taken in the rear also.

But discipline is hard to maintain in such a force as mine.

‘Bosh!’ cried Denny’s voice.

‘Mein Gott, no!’ exclaimed Hogvardt. Watkins said nothing, but for once in his life he also disobeyed me.

Well, if they would not do as I said I must do as they did. The line advanced – the whole line, as at Waterloo. We pressed them hard. I heard a revolver fired, and a cry follow. Fat Vlacho slackened in his attack, wavered, halted, turned, and ran. A shout of triumph from Denny told me that the battle was going well there. Fired with victory, I set myself for a chase. But, alas, my pride was checked. Before I had gone two yards, I fell headlong over the body for which we had been fighting (as Greeks and Trojans fought for the body of Hector), and came to an abrupt stop, sprawling most ignominiously over the cow’s broad back.

‘Stop! Stop!’ I cried. ‘Wait a bit, Denny! I’m down over this infernal cow.’ It was an inglorious ending to the exploits of the evening.

Prudence or my cry stopped them. The enemy was in full retreat; their steps pattered quick along the rocky road; and Denny observed in a tone of immense satisfaction:

‘I think that’s our trick, Charley.’

‘Anybody hurt?’ I asked, scrambling to my feet.

Watkins owned to a crack from the stock of a gun on his right shoulder, Hogvardt to a graze of a knife on the left arm. Denny was unhurt. We had reason to suppose that we had left our mark on at least two of the enemy. For so great a victory it was cheaply bought.

‘We’ll just drag in the cow,’ said I – I like to stick to my point – ‘and then we might see if there’s anything in the cellar.’

We did drag in the cow; we dragged it through the house, and finally bestowed it in the compound behind. Hogvardt suggested that we should fetch the other also, but I had no mind for another surprise, which might not end so happily, and I decided to run the risk of leaving the second animal till the morning. So Watkins ran off to seek for some wine, for which we all felt very ready, and I went to the door with the intention of securing it. But before I shut it, I stood for a moment on the step, looking out on the night and sniffing the sweet, clear, pure air. It was in quiet moments like these, not in such a tumult as had just passed, that I had pictured my beautiful island; and the love of it came on me now and made me swear that these fellows and their arch-ruffian Constantine should not drive me out of it without some more, and more serious, blows than had been struck that night. If I could get away safely and return with enough force to keep them quiet, I would pursue that course. If not – well, I believe I had very bloodthirsty thoughts in my mind, as even the most peaceable man may, when he has been served as I had and his friends roughly handled on his account.

Having registered these determinations, I was about to proceed with my task of securing the door, when I heard a sound that startled me. There was nothing hostile or alarming about it; rather it was pathetic and appealing, and, in spite of my previous fierceness of mood, it caused me to exclaim, ‘Hullo, is that one of those poor beggars we mauled?’ For the sound was a faint distressed sigh, as of somebody in suffering; it seemed to come from out of the darkness about a dozen yards ahead of me. My first impulse was to go straight to the spot, but I had begun by now to doubt whether the Neopalians were not unsophisticated in quite as peculiar a sense as that in which they were good-hearted, and I called to Denny and Hogvardt, bidding the latter to bring his lantern with him. Thus protected, I stepped out of the door in the direction from which the sigh had come. Apparently we were to crown our victory by the capture of a wounded enemy.

An exclamation from Hogvardt told me that he, aided by the lantern, had come on the quarry; but Hogvardt spoke in disgust rather than triumph.

‘Oh, it’s only the little one!’ said he. ‘What’s wrong with him, I wonder.’ He stooped down and examined the prostrate form. ‘By heaven, I believe he’s not touched – yes, there’s a bump on his forehead, but not big enough for any of us to have given it.’

By this time Denny and I were with him, and we looked down on the boy’s pale face, which seemed almost deathlike in the glare of the lantern. The bump was not such a very small one, but it could hardly have been made by any of our weapons, for the flesh was not cut. A moment’s further inspection showed that it must be the result of a fall on the hard rocky road.

‘Perhaps he tripped on the cord, as you did on the cow,’ suggested Denny with a grin.

It seemed likely enough, but I gave very little thought to the question, for I was busy studying the boy’s face.

‘No doubt,’ said Hogvardt, ‘he fell in running away and was stunned; and they didn’t notice it in the dark, or were afraid to stop. But they’ll be back, my lord, and soon.’

‘Carry him inside,’ said I. ‘It won’t hurt us to have a hostage.’

Denny lifted the lad in his long arms – Denny was a tall powerful fellow – and strode off with him. I followed, wondering who it was that we had got hold of: for the boy was strikingly handsome. I was last in and barred the door. Denny had set our prisoner down in an armchair, where he sat now, conscious again, but still with a dazed look in his large dark eyes as he glanced from me to the rest and back again to me, finally fixing a long gaze on my face.

‘Well, young man,’ said I, ‘you’ve begun this sort of thing early. Lifting cattle and taking murder in the day’s work is pretty good for a youngster like you. Who are you?’

‘Where am I?’ he cried, in that blurred indistinct kind of voice that comes with mental bewilderment.

‘You’re in my house,’ said I, ‘and the rest of your infernal gang’s outside and going to stay there. So you must make the best of it.’

The boy turned his head away and closed his eyes. Suddenly I snatched the lantern from Hogvardt. But I paused before I brought it close to the boy’s face, as I had meant to do, and I said:

‘You fellows go and get something to eat, and a snooze if you like. I’ll look after this youngster. I’ll call you if anything happens outside.’

After a few unselfish protests they did as I bade them. I was left alone in the hall with the prisoner; soon merry voices from the kitchen told me that the battle was being fought again over the wine. I set the lantern close to the boy’s face.

‘H’m,’ said I, after a prolonged scrutiny. Then I sat down on the table and began to hum softly that wretched chant of One-Eyed Alexander’s, which had a terrible trick of sticking in a man’s head.

For a few minutes I hummed. The lad shivered, stirred uneasily, and opened his eyes. I had never seen such eyes; I could not conscientiously except even Beatrice Hipgrave’s, which were in their way quite fine. I hummed away; and the boy said, still in a dreamy voice, but with an imploring gesture of his hand:

‘Ah, no, not that! Not that, Constantine!’

‘He’s a tender-hearted youth,’ said I, and I was smiling now. The whole episode was singularly unusual and interesting.

The boy’s eyes were on mine again; I met his glance full and square. Then I poured out some water and gave it to him. He took it with a trembling hand – the hand did not escape my notice – and drank it eagerly, setting the glass down with a sigh.

‘I am Lord Wheatley,’ said I, nodding to him. ‘You came to steal my cattle, and murder me, if it happened to be convenient, you know.’

The boy flashed out at me in a minute.

‘I didn’t. I thought you’d surrender if we got the cattle away.’

‘You thought!’ said I scornfully. ‘I suppose you did as you were bid.’

‘No; I told Constantine that they weren’t to – ’ The boy stopped short, looked round him, and said in a surprised voice, ‘Where are all the rest of my people?’

‘The rest of your people,’ said I, ‘have run away, and you are in my hands. And I can do just as I please with you.’

His lips set in an obstinate curve, but he made no answer. I went on as sternly as I could.

‘And when I think of what I saw here yesterday, of that poor old man stabbed by your bloodthirsty crew – ’

‘It was an accident,’ he cried sharply; the voice had lost its dreaminess and sounded clear now.

‘We’ll see about that when we get Constantine and Vlacho before a judge,’ I retorted grimly. ‘Anyhow, he was foully stabbed in his own house for doing what he had a perfect right to do.’

‘He had no right to sell the island,’ cried the boy, and he rose for a moment to his feet with a proud air, only to sink back into the chair again and stretch out his hand for water.

Now at this moment Denny, refreshed by meat and drink and in the highest of spirits, bounded into the hall.

‘How’s the prisoner?’ he cried.

‘Oh, he’s all right. There’s nothing the matter with him,’ I said, and as I spoke I moved the lantern, so that the boy’s face and figure were again in shadow.

‘That’s all right,’ observed Denny cheerfully. ‘Because I thought, Charley, we might get a little information out of him.’

‘Perhaps he won’t speak,’ I suggested, casting a glance at the captive who sat now motionless in the chair.

‘Oh, I think he will,’ said Denny confidently: and I observed for the first time that he held a very substantial-looking whip in his hand; he must have found it in the kitchen. ‘We’ll give the young ruffian a taste of this, if he’s obstinate,’ said Denny, and I cannot say that his tone witnessed any great desire that the boy should prove at once compliant.

I shifted my lantern so that I could see the proud young face, while Denny could not. The boy’s eyes met mine defiantly.

‘Do you see that whip?’ I asked. ‘Will you tell us all we want to know?’

The boy made no answer, but I saw trouble in his face, and his eyes did not meet mine so boldly now.

‘We’ll soon find a tongue for him,’ said Denny, in cheerful barbarity; ‘upon my word, he richly deserves a thrashing. Say the word, Charley!’

‘We haven’t asked him anything yet,’ said I.

‘Oh, I’ll ask him something. Look here, who was the fellow with you and Vlacho?’

Denny spoke in English; I turned his question into Greek. But the prisoner’s eyes told me that he had understood before I spoke. I smiled again.

The boy was silent; defiance and fear struggled in the dark eyes.

‘You see he’s an obstinate beggar,’ said Denny, as though he had observed all necessary forms and could now get to business; and he drew the lash of the whip through his fingers. I am afraid Denny was rather looking forward to executing justice with his own hands.

The boy rose again and stood facing that heartless young ruffian Denny – it was thus that I thought of Denny at the moment; then once again he sank back into his chair and covered his face with his hands.

‘Well, I wouldn’t go out killing if I hadn’t more pluck than that,’ said Denny scornfully. ‘You’re not fit for the trade, my lad.’

I did not interpret this time; there was no need; the boy certainly understood. But he had no retort. His face was buried in those slim hands of his. For a moment he was quite still: then he moved a little; it was a movement that spoke of helpless pain, and I heard something very like a stifled sob.

‘Just leave us alone a little, Denny,’ said I. ‘He may tell me what he won’t tell you.’

‘Are you going to let him off?’ demanded Denny, suspiciously. ‘You never can be stiff in the back, Charley.’

‘I must see if he won’t speak to me first,’ I pleaded, meekly.

‘But if he won’t?’ insisted Denny.

‘If he won’t,’ said I, ‘and you still wish it, you may do what you like.’

Denny sheered off to the kitchen, with an air that did not seek to conceal his opinion of my foolish tender-heartedness. Again I was alone with the boy.

‘My friend is right,’ said I gravely. ‘You’re not fit for the trade. How came you to be in it?’

My question brought a new look, as the boy’s hands dropped from his face.

‘How came you,’ said I, ‘who ought to restrain these rascals, to be at their head? How came you, who ought to shun the society of men like Constantine Stefanopoulos and his tool Vlacho, to be working with them?’

I got no answer; only a frightened look appealed to me in the white glare of Hogvardt’s lantern. I came a step nearer and leant forward to ask my next question.

‘Who are you? What’s your name?’

‘My name – my name?’ stammered the prisoner. ‘I won’t tell my name.’

‘You’ll tell me nothing? You heard what I promised my friend?’

‘Yes, I heard,’ said the lad, with a face utterly pale, but with eyes that were again set in fierce determination.

I laughed a low laugh.

‘I believe you are fit for the trade after all,’ said I, and I looked at him with mingled distaste and admiration. But I had my last weapon still, my last question. I turned the lantern full on his face, I leant forward again, and I said in distinct slow tones – and the question sounded an absurd one to be spoken in such an impressive way:

‘Do you generally wear – clothes like that?’

I had got home with that question. The pallor vanished, the haughty eyes sank. I saw long drooping lashes and a burning flush, and the boy’s face once again sought his hands.

At that moment I heard chairs pushed back in the kitchen. In came Hogvardt with an amused smile on his broad face; in came Watkins with his impassive acquiescence in anything that his lordship might order; in came Master Denny brandishing his whip in jovial relentlessness.

‘Well, has he told you anything?’ cried Denny. It was plain that he hoped for the answer ‘No.’

‘I have asked him half-a-dozen questions,’ said I, ‘and he has not answered one.’

‘All right,’ said Denny, with wonderful emphasis.

Had I been wrong to extort this much punishment for my most inhospitable reception? Sometimes now I think that I was cruel. In that night much had occurred to breed viciousness in a man of the most equable temper. But the thing had now gone to the extreme limit to which it could go, and I said to Denny:

‘It’s a gross case of obstinacy, of course, Denny, but I don’t see very well how we can horsewhip the lady.’

A sudden astounded cry, ‘The lady!’ rang from three pairs of lips, while the lady herself dropped her head on the table and fenced her face round about with her protecting arms.

‘You see,’ said I, ‘this lady is the Lady Euphrosyne.’

For who else could it be that would give orders to Constantine Stefanopoulos, and ask where ‘my people’ were? Who else, I also asked myself, save the daughter of the noble house, would boast the air, the hands, the face, that graced our young prisoner? And who else would understand English? In all certainty here was the Lady Euphrosyne.

CHAPTER V

THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL

The effect of my remark was curious. Denny flushed scarlet and flung his whip down on the table; the others stood for a moment motionless, then turned tail and slunk back to the kitchen. Euphrosyne’s face remained invisible. On the other hand, I felt quite at my ease. I had a triumphant conviction of the importance of my capture, and a determination that no misplaced chivalry should rob me of it. Politeness is, no doubt, a duty, but only a relative duty; and, in plain English, men’s lives were at stake here. Therefore I did not make my best bow, fling open the door, and tell the lady that she was free to go whither she would, but I said to her in a dry severe voice:

‘You had better go, madam, to the room you usually occupy here, while we consider what to do with you. You know where the room is; I don’t.’

She raised her head, and said in tones that sounded almost eager:

‘My own room? May I go there?’

‘Certainly,’ said I. ‘I shall accompany you as far as the door; and when you’ve gone in, I shall lock the door.’

This programme was duly carried out, Euphrosyne not favouring me with a word during its progress. Then I returned to the hall, and said to Denny:

‘Rather a trump card, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, but they’ll be back pretty soon to look for her, I expect.’

Denny accompanied this remark with such a yawn that I suggested he should go to bed.

‘Aren’t you going to bed?’ he asked.

‘I’ll take first watch,’ said I. ‘It’s nearly twelve now. I’ll wake you at two, and you can wake Hogvardt at five; then Watkins will be fit and fresh at breakfast-time, and can give us roast cow.’

Thus I was again left alone; and I sat reviewing the position. Would the islanders fight for their lady? Or would they let us go? They would let us go, I felt sure, only if Constantine were out-voted, for he could not afford to see me leave Neopalia with a head on my shoulders and a tongue in my mouth. Then probably they would fight. Well, I calculated that so long as our provisions held out, we could not be stormed; our stone fortress was too strong. But we could be blockaded and starved out, and should be very soon unless the lady’s influence could help us. I had just arrived at the conclusion that I would talk to her very seriously in the morning when I heard a remarkable sound.

‘There never was such a place for queer noises,’ said I, pricking up my ears.

This noise seemed to come directly from above my head; it sounded as though a light stealthy tread were passing over the roof of the hall in which I sat. The only person in the house besides ourselves was the prisoner: she had been securely locked in her room; how then could she be on the top of the hall? For her room was in the turret above the doorway. Yet the steps crept over my head, going towards the kitchen. I snatched up my revolver and trod, with a stealth equal to the stealth of the steps overhead, across the hall and into the kitchen beyond. My three companions slept the sleep of tired men, but I roused Denny ruthlessly.

‘Go on guard in the hall,’ said I. ‘I want to have a look round.’

Denny was sleepy but obedient. I saw him start for the hall, and went on till I reached the compound behind the house.

Here I stood deep in the shadow of the wall; the steps were now over my head again. I glanced up cautiously, and above me, on the roof, three yards to the left, I saw the flutter of a white kilt.

‘There are more ways out of this house than I know,’ I thought to myself.

I heard next a noise as though of something being pushed cautiously along the flat roof. Then there protruded from between two of the battlements the end of a ladder. I crouched closer under the wall. The light flight of steps was let down; it reached the ground, the kilted figure stepped on it and began to descend. Here was the Lady Euphrosyne again. Her eagerness to go to her own room was fully explained: there was a way from it across the house and out on to the roof of the kitchen; the ladder shewed that the way was kept in use. I stood still. She reached the ground, and, as she touched it, she gave the softest possible little laugh of gleeful triumph; a pretty little laugh it was. Then she walked briskly across the compound, till she reached the rocks on the other side. I crept forward after her, for I was afraid of losing sight of her in the darkness, and yet did not desire to arrest her progress till I saw where she was going. On she went, skirting the perpendicular drop of rock. I was behind her now. At last she came to the angle formed by the rock running north and that which, turning to the east, enclosed the compound.

‘How’s she going to get up?’ I asked myself.

But up she began to go, her right foot on the north rock, her left on the east. She ascended with such confidence that it was evident that steps were ready for her feet. She gained the top; I began to mount in the same fashion, finding the steps cut in the face of the cliff. I reached the top and saw her standing still, ten yards ahead of me. She went on; I followed; she stopped, looked, saw me, screamed. I rushed on her. Her arm dealt a blow at me; I caught her hand, and in her hand there was a little dagger. Seizing her other hand, I held her fast.

‘Where are you going to?’ I asked in a matter-of-fact tone, taking no notice of her hasty resort to the dagger. No doubt that was merely a national trait.

Seeing that she was caught, she made no attempt to struggle.

‘I was trying to escape,’ she said. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes, I heard you. Where were you going to?’

‘Why should I tell you? Shall you threaten me with the whip again?’

I loosed her hands. She gave a sudden glance up the hill. She seemed to measure the distance.

‘Why do you want to go to the top of the hill?’ I asked. ‘Have you friends there?’

She denied the suggestion, as I thought she would.

‘No, I have not. But anywhere is better than with you.’

‘Yet there’s some one in the cottage up there,’ I observed. ‘It belongs to Constantine, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does,’ she answered defiantly. ‘Dare you go and seek him there? Or dare you only skulk behind the walls of the house?’

‘As long as we are four against a hundred I dare only skulk,’ I answered. She did not annoy me at all by her taunts. ‘But do you think he’s there?’

‘There! No; he’s in the town; and he’ll come from the town to kill you to-morrow.’

‘Then is nobody there?’ I pursued.

‘Nobody,’ she answered.

‘You’re wrong,’ said I. ‘I saw somebody there to-day.’

‘Oh, a peasant perhaps.’

‘Well, the dress didn’t look like it. Do you really want to go there now?’

‘Haven’t you mocked me enough?’ she burst out. ‘Take me back to my prison.’

Her tragedy-air was quite delightful. But I had been leading her up to something which I thought she ought to know.

‘There’s a woman in that cottage,’ said I. ‘Not a peasant; a woman in some dark-coloured dress, who uses opera-glasses.’

I saw her draw back with a start of surprise.

‘It’s false,’ she cried. ‘There’s no one there. Constantine told me no one went there except Vlacho and sometimes Demetri.’

‘Do you believe all Constantine tells you?’ I asked.

‘Why shouldn’t I? He’s my cousin, and – ’

‘And your suitor?’

She flung her head back proudly.

‘I have no shame in that,’ she answered.

‘You would accept his offer?’

‘Since you ask, I will answer. Yes. I had promised my uncle that I would.’

‘Good God!’ said I, for I was very sorry for her.

The emphasis of my exclamation seemed to startle her afresh. I felt her glance rest on me in puzzled questioning.

‘Did Constantine let you see the old woman whom I sent to him?’ I demanded.

‘No,’ she murmured. ‘He told me what she said.’

‘That I told him he was his uncle’s murderer?’

‘Did you tell her to say that?’ she asked, with a sudden inclination of her body towards me.

‘I did. Did he give you the message?’

She made no answer. I pressed my advantage.

‘On my honour, I saw what I have told you at the cottage,’ I said. ‘I know what it means no more than you do. But before I came here I saw Constantine in London. And there I heard a lady say she would come with him. Did any lady come with him?’

‘Are you mad?’ she asked; but I could hear her breathing quickly, and I knew that her scorn was assumed. I drew suddenly away from her, and put my hands behind my back.

‘Go to the cottage if you like,’ said I. ‘But I won’t answer for what you’ll find there.’

‘You set me free?’ she cried with eagerness.

‘Free to go to the cottage; you must promise to come back. Or I’ll go to the cottage, if you’ll promise to go back to your room and wait till I return.’

She hesitated, looking towards where the cottage was; but I had stirred suspicion and disquietude in her. She dared not face what she might find in the cottage.

‘I’ll go back and wait for you,’ she said. ‘If I went to the cottage and – and all was well, I’m afraid I shouldn’t come back.’

The tone sounded softer. I would have sworn that a smile or a half-smile accompanied the words, but it was too dark to be sure, and when I leant forward to look, Euphrosyne drew back.

‘Then you mustn’t go,’ said I decisively; ‘I can’t afford to lose you.’

‘But if you let me go I could let you go,’ she cried.

‘Could you? Without asking Constantine? Besides, it’s my island you see.’

‘It’s not,’ she cried, with a stamp of her foot. And without more she walked straight by me and disappeared over the ledge of rock. Two minutes later I saw her figure defined against the sky, a black shadow on a deep grey ground; then she disappeared. I set my face straight for the cottage under the summit of the hill. I knew that I had only to go straight and I must come to the little plateau scooped out of the hillside, on which the cottage stood. I found, not a path, but a sort of rough track that led in the desired direction, and along this I made my way very cautiously. At one point it was joined at right angles by another track, from the side of the hill where the main road across the island lay. This, of course, afforded an approach to the cottage without passing by my house. In twenty minutes the cottage loomed, a blurred mass, before me. I fell on my knees and peered at it.

There was a light in one of the windows. I crawled nearer. Now I was on the plateau, a moment later I was under the wooden verandah and beneath the window where the light glowed. My hand was on my revolver; if Constantine or Vlacho caught me here, neither side would be able to stand on trifles; even my desire for legality would fail under the strain. But for the minute everything was quiet, and I began to fear that I should have to return empty-handed; for it would be growing light in another hour or so, and I must be gone before the day began to appear. Ah, there was a sound, a sound that appealed to me after my climb, the sound of wine poured into a glass; then came a voice I knew.

‘Probably they have caught her,’ said Vlacho the innkeeper. ‘What of that? They will not hurt her, and she’ll be kept safe.’

‘You mean she can’t come spying about here?’

‘Exactly. And that, my lord, is an advantage. If she came here – ’

‘Oh, the deuce!’ laughed Constantine. ‘But won’t the men want me to free her by letting that infernal crew go?’

‘Not if they think Wheatley will go to Rhodes and get soldiers and return. They love the island more than her. It will all go well, my lord. And this other here?’

I strained my ears to listen. No answer came, yet Vlacho went on as though he had received an answer.

‘These cursed fellows make that difficult too,’ he said. ‘It would be an epidemic.’ He laughed, seeming to see wit in his own remark.

‘Curse them, yes. We must move cautiously,’ said Constantine. ‘What a nuisance women are, Vlacho.’

‘Ay, too many of them,’ laughed Vlacho.

‘I had to swear my life out that no one was here, and then, “If no one’s there, why mayn’t I come?” You know the sort of thing.’

‘Indeed, no, my lord. You wrong me,’ protested Vlacho humorously, and Constantine joined in his laugh.

‘You’ve made up your mind which, I gather?’ asked Vlacho.

‘Oh, this one, beyond doubt,’ answered his master.

Now I thought that I understood most of this conversation, and I was very sorry that Euphrosyne was not by my side to listen to it. But I had heard about enough for my purposes, and I had turned to crawl away stealthily – it is not well to try fortune too far – when I heard the sound of a door opening in the house. Constantine’s voice followed directly on the sound.

‘Ah, my darling, my sweet wife,’ he cried, ‘not sleeping yet? Where will your beauty be? Vlacho and I must work and plan for your sake, but you need not spoil your eyes with sleeplessness.’

Constantine did it uncommonly well. His manner was a pattern for husbands. I was guilty of a quiet laugh all to myself in the verandah.

‘For me? You’re sure it’s for me?’ came in that Greek with a strange accent, which had first fallen on my ears in the Optimum Restaurant.

‘She’s jealous, she’s most charmingly jealous!’ cried Constantine in playful rapture. ‘Does your wife pay you such compliments, Vlacho?’

‘She has no cause, my lord. But my lady Francesca thinks she has cause to be jealous of the Lady Euphrosyne.’

Constantine laughed scornfully at the suggestion.

‘Where is she now?’ came swift and sharp from the woman. ‘Where is Euphrosyne?’

‘Why, she’s a prisoner to that Englishman,’ answered Constantine.

I suppose explanations passed at this point, for the voices fell to a lower level, as is apt to happen in the telling of a long story, and I could not catch what was said till Constantine’s tones rose again as he remarked:

‘Oh, yes; we must have a try at getting her out, just to satisfy the people. For me, she might stay there as long as she likes, for I care for her just as little as, between ourselves, I believe she cares for me.’

Really this fellow was a very tidy villain; as a pair, Vlacho and he would be hard to beat – in England, at all events. About Neopalia I had learned to reserve my opinion. Such were my reflections as I turned to resume my interrupted crawl to safety. But in an instant I was still again – still, and crouching close under the wall, motionless as an insect that feigns death, holding my breath, my hand on the trigger. For the door of the cottage was flung open, and Constantine and Vlacho appeared on the threshold.

‘Ah,’ said Vlacho, ‘dawn is near. See, it grows lighter on the horizon.’

A more serious matter was that, owing to the open door and the lamp inside, it had grown lighter on the verandah, so light that I saw the three figures – for the woman had come also – in the doorway, so light that my huddled shape would be seen if any of the three turned an eye towards it. I could have picked off both men before they could move; but a civilised education has drawbacks; it makes a man scrupulous; I did not fire. I lay still, hoping that I should not be noticed. And I should not have been noticed but for one thing. Acting up to his part in the ghastly farce which these two ruffians were playing with the wife of one of them, Constantine turned to bestow kisses on the woman before he parted from her. Vlacho, in a mockery that was horrible to me who knew his heart, must needs be facetious. With a laugh he drew back; he drew back farther still; he was but a couple of feet from the wall of the house; and that couple of feet I filled. In a moment, with one step backwards, he would be upon me. Perhaps he would not have made that step; perhaps I should have gone, by grace of that narrow interval, undetected. But the temptation was too strong for me. The thought of the thing threatened to make me laugh. I had a pen-knife in my pocket. I opened it, and dug it hard into that portion of Vlacho’s frame which came most conveniently and prominently to my hand. Then, leaving the pen-knife where it was, I leapt up, gave the howling ruffian a mighty shove, and with a loud laugh of triumph bolted for my life down the hill. But when I had gone twenty yards I dropped on my knees, for bullet after bullet whistled over my head. Constantine, the outraged Vlacho too, perhaps, carried a revolver! Their barrels were being emptied after me. I rose and turned one hasty glance behind me. Yes, I saw their dim shapes like moving trees. I fired once, twice, thrice, in my turn, and then went crashing and rushing down the path that I had ascended so cautiously. I cannoned against the tree trunks; I tripped over trailing branches; I stumbled over stones. Once I paused and fired the rest of my barrels. A yell told me I had hit – but Vlacho, alas, not Constantine; I knew the voice. At the same instant my fire was returned, and a bullet went through my hat. I was defenceless now, save for my heels, and to them I took again with all speed. But as I crashed along, one at least of them came crashing after me. Yes, it was only one! I had checked Vlacho’s career. It was Constantine alone. I suppose one of your heroes of romance would have stopped and faced him, for with them it is not etiquette to run away from one man. Ah, well, I ran away. For all I knew, Constantine might still have a shot in the locker; I had none. And if Constantine killed me, he would kill the only man who knew all his secrets. So I ran. And just as I got within ten yards of the drop into my own territory, I heard a wild cry, ‘Charley! Charley! Where the devil are you, Charley?’

‘Why, here, of course,’ said I, coming to the top of the bank and dropping over.

I have no doubt that it was the cry uttered by Denny which gave pause to Constantine’s pursuit. He would not desire to face all four of us. At any rate the sound of his pursuing feet died away and ceased. I suppose he went back to look after Vlacho, and show himself safe and sound to that most unhappy woman, his wife. As for me, when I found myself safe and sound in the compound, I said, ‘Thank God!’ And I meant it too. Then I looked round. Certainly the sight that met my eyes had a touch of comedy in it.

Denny, Hogvardt and Watkins stood in the compound. Their backs were towards me, and they were all staring up at the roof of the kitchen, with expressions which the cold light of morning revealed in all their puzzled foolishness. And on the top of the roof, unassailable and out of reach – for no ladder ran from roof to ground now – stood Euphrosyne, in her usual attitude of easy grace. Euphrosyne was not taking the smallest notice of the helpless three below, but stood quite still with unmoved face, gazing up towards the cottage. The whole thing reminded me of nothing so much as of a pretty composed cat in a tree, with three infuriated helpless terriers barking round the trunk. I began to laugh.

‘What’s all the shindy?’ called out Denny. ‘Who’s doing revolver-practice in the wood? And how the dickens did she get there, Charley?’

But when the still figure on the roof saw me, the impassivity of it vanished. Euphrosyne leant forward, clasping her hands, and said to me:

‘Have you killed him?’

The question vexed me. It would have been civil to accompany it, at all events, with an inquiry as to my own health.

‘Killed him?’ I answered gruffly. ‘No, he’s sound enough.’

‘And – ’ she began; but now she glanced, seemingly for the first time, at my friends below. ‘You must come and tell me,’ she said, and with that she turned and disappeared from our gaze behind the battlements. I listened intently. No sound came from the wood that rose grey in the new light behind us.

‘What have you been doing?’ demanded Denny surlily; he had not enjoyed Euphrosyne’s scornful attitude.

‘I have been running for my life,’ said I, ‘from the biggest scoundrels unhanged. Denny, make a guess who lives in that cottage.’

‘Constantine?’

‘I don’t mean him.’

‘Not Vlacho – he’s at the inn.’

‘No, I don’t mean Vlacho.’

‘Who then, man?’

‘Someone you’ve seen.’

‘Oh, I give it up. It’s not the time of day for riddles.’

‘The lady who dined at the next table to ours at the Optimum,’ said I.

Denny jumped back in amazement, with a long low whistle.

‘What, the one who was with Constantine?’ he cried.

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘the one who was with Constantine.’

They were all three round me now; and thinking that it would be better that they should know what I knew, and four lives instead of one stand between a ruffian and the impunity he hoped for, I raised my voice and went on in an emphatic tone,

‘Yes. She’s there, and she’s his wife.’

A moment’s astonished silence greeted my announcement. It was broken by none of our party. But there came from the battlemented roof above us a low, long, mournful moan that made its way straight to the heart, armed with its dart of outraged pride and trust betrayed. It was not thus, boldly and abruptly, that I should have told my news. But I did not know that Euphrosyne was still above us, hidden by the battlements. We all looked up. The moan was not repeated. Presently we heard slow steps retreating, with a faltering tread, across the roof; and we also went into the house in silence and sorrow. For a thing like that gets hold of a man; and when he has heard it, it is hard for him to sit down and be merry, until the fellow that caused it has paid his reckoning. I swore then and there that Constantine Stefanopoulos should pay his.

CHAPTER VI

THE POEM OF ONE-EYED ALEXANDER

There is a matter on my conscience which I cannot excuse but may as well confess. To deceive a maiden is a very sore thing, so sore that it had made us all hot against Constantine; but it may be doubted by a cool mind whether it is worse, nay, whether it is not more venial than to contrive the murder of a lawful wife. Poets have paid more attention to the first offence – maybe they know more about it – the law finds greater employment, on the whole, in respect to the second. For me, I admit that it was not till I found myself stretched on a mattress in the kitchen, with the idea of getting a few hours’ sleep, that it struck me that Constantine’s wife deserved a share of my concern and care. Her grievance against him was at least as great as Euphrosyne’s; her peril was far greater. For Euphrosyne was his object; Francesca (for that appeared from Vlacho’s mode of address to be her name) was an obstacle which prevented him attaining that object. For myself I should have welcomed a cut throat if it came as an alternative to Constantine’s society; but probably his wife would not agree with me, and the conversation I had heard left me in little doubt that her life was not safe. They could not have an epidemic, Vlacho had prudently reminded his master; the island fever could not kill Constantine’s wife and our party all in a day or two. Men suspect such an obliging malady, and the old lord had died of it, pat to the happy moment, already. But if the thing could be done, if it could be so managed that London, Paris, and the Riviera would find nothing strange in the disappearance of one Madame Stefanopoulos and the appearance of another, why, to a certainty, done the thing would be, unless I could warn or save the woman in the cottage. But I did not see how to do either. So (as I set out to confess) I dropped the subject. And when I went to sleep I was thinking not how to save Francesca, but how to console Euphrosyne, a matter really of less urgency, as I should have seen had not the echo of that sad little cry still filled my ears.

The news which Hogvardt brought me when I rose in the morning, and was enjoying a slice of cow-steak, by no means cleared my way. An actual attack did not seem imminent – I fancy these fierce islanders were not too fond of our revolvers – but the house was, if I may use the term, carefully picketed, and that both before and behind. Along the road which approached it in front there stood sentries at intervals. They were stationed just out of range of our only effective long-distance weapon, but it was evident that egress on that side was barred. And the same was the case on the other; Hogvardt had seen men moving in the wood, and had heard their challenges to one another repeated at regular intervals. We were shut off from the sea; we were shut off from the cottage. A blockade would reduce us as surely as an attack. I had nothing to offer except the release of Euphrosyne. And to release Euphrosyne would, in all likelihood, not save us, while it would leave Constantine free to play out his relentless game to its appointed end.

I finished my breakfast in some perplexity of spirit. Then I went and sat in the hall, expecting that Euphrosyne would appear from her room before long. I was alone, for the rest were engaged in various occupations, Hogvardt being particularly busy over a large handful of hunting knives which he had gleaned from the walls; I did not understand what he wanted with them, unless he meant to arm himself in porcupine fashion.

Presently Euphrosyne came, but it was a transformed Euphrosyne. The kilt, knee-breeches, and gaiters were gone; in their place was the white linen garment with flowing sleeves and the loose jacket over it, the national dress of the Greek woman; but Euphrosyne’s was ornamented with a rare profusion of delicate embroidery, and of so fine a texture that it seemed rather some delicate, soft, yielding silk. The change of attire seemed reflected in her altered manner. Defiance was gone, and appeal glistened from her eyes as she stood before me. I sprang up, but she would not sit. She stood there, and, raising her glance to my face, asked simply:

‘Is it true?’

In a business-like way I told her the whole story, starting from the every-day scene at home in the restaurant, ending with the villainous conversation and the wild chase of the night before. When I related how Constantine had called Francesca his wife, Euphrosyne started. While I sketched lightly my encounter with him and Vlacho, she eyed me with a sort of grave curiosity; and at the end she said:

‘I’m glad you weren’t killed.’

It was not an emotional speech, nor delivered with any empressement, but I took it for thanks and made the best of it. Then at last she sat down and rested her head on her hand; her absent reverie allowed me to study her closely, and I was struck by a new beauty which the fantastic boy’s disguise had concealed. Moreover, with the doffing of that, she seemed to have put off her extreme hostility; but perhaps the revelation I had made to her, which showed her the victim of an unscrupulous schemer, had more to do with her softened air. Yet she had borne the story firmly, and a quivering lip was her extreme sign of grief or anger. And her first question was not of herself.

‘Do you mean that they will kill this woman?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid it’s not unlikely that something will happen to her, unless, of course – ’ I paused, but her quick wit supplied the omission.

‘Unless,’ she said, ‘he lets her live now, because I am out of his hands?’

‘Will you stay out of his hands?’ I asked. ‘I mean, as long as I can keep you out of them.’

She looked round with a troubled expression.

‘How can I stay here?’ she said in a low tone.

‘You will be as safe here now as you were in your uncle’s care,’ I answered.

She acknowledged my promise with a movement of her head; but a moment later she cried:

‘But I am not with you – I am with the people! The island is theirs and mine. It’s not yours. I’ll have no part in giving it to you.’

‘I wasn’t proposing to take pay for my hospitality,’ said I. ‘It’ll be hardly handsome enough for that, I’m afraid. But mightn’t we leave the question for the moment?’ And I described briefly to her our present position.

‘So that,’ I concluded, ‘while I maintain my claim to the island, I am at present more interested in keeping a whole skin on myself and my friends.’

‘If you will not give it up, I can do nothing,’ said she. ‘Though they knew Constantine to be all you say, yet they would follow him and not me if I yielded the island. Indeed they would most likely follow him in any case. For the Neopalians like a man to follow, and they like that man to be a Stefanopoulos; so they would shut their eyes to much, in order that Constantine might marry me and become lord.’

She stated all this in a matter-of-fact way, disclosing no great horror of her countrymen’s moral standard. The straightforward barbarousness of it perhaps appealed to her a little; she loathed the man who would rule on those terms, but had some toleration for the people who set the true dynasty above all else. And she spoke of her proposed marriage as though it were a natural arrangement.

‘I shall have to marry him, I expect, in spite of everything,’ she said.

I pushed my chair back violently. My English respectability was appalled.

‘Marry him?’ I cried. ‘Why, he murdered the old lord!’

‘That has happened before among the Stefanopouloi,’ said Euphrosyne, with a calmness dangerously near to pride.

‘And he proposes to murder his wife,’ I added.

‘Perhaps he will get rid of her without that.’ She paused; then came the anger I had looked for before. ‘Ah, but how dared he swear that he had thought of none but me, and loved me passionately? He shall pay for that!’ Again it was injured pride which rang in her voice, as in her first cry. It did not sound like love; and for that I was glad. The courtship probably had been an affair of state rather than of affection. I did not ask how Constantine was to be made to pay, whether before or after marriage. I was struggling between horror and amusement at my guest’s point of view. But I take leave to have a will of my own, even sometimes in matters which are not exactly my concern; and I said now, with a composure that rivalled Euphrosyne’s:

‘It’s out of the question that you should marry him. I’m going to get him hanged; and, anyhow, it would be atrocious.’

She smiled at that; but then she leant forward and asked:

‘How long have you provisions for?’

‘That’s a good retort,’ I admitted. ‘A few days, that’s all. And we can’t get out to procure any more; and we can’t go shooting, because the wood’s infested with these ruff – I beg pardon – with your countrymen.’

‘Then it seems to me,’ said Euphrosyne, ‘that you and your friends are more likely to be hanged.’

Well, on a dispassionate consideration, it did seem more likely; but she need not have said so. She went on with an equally discouraging good sense:

‘There will be a boat from Rhodes in about a month or six weeks. The officer will come then to take the tribute; perhaps the Governor will come. But till then nobody will visit the island, unless it be a few fishermen from Cyprus.’

‘Fishermen? Where do they land? At the harbour?’

‘No; my people do not like them; but the Governor threatens to send troops if we do not let them land. So they come to a little creek at the opposite end of the island, on the other side of the mountain. Ah, what are you thinking of?’

As Euphrosyne perceived, her words had put a new idea in my mind. If I could reach that creek and find the fishermen and persuade them to help me or to carry my party off, that hanging might happen to the right man after all.

‘You’re thinking you can reach them?’ she cried.

‘You don’t seem sure that you want me to,’ I observed.

‘Oh, how can I tell what I want? If I help you I am betraying the island. If I do not – ’

‘You’ll have a death or two at your door, and you’ll marry the biggest scoundrel in Europe,’ said I.

She hung her head and plucked fretfully at the embroidery on the front of her gown.

‘But anyhow you couldn’t reach them,’ she said. ‘You are close prisoners here.’

That, again, seemed true, so that it put me in a very bad temper. Therefore I rose and, leaving her without much ceremony, strolled into the kitchen. Here I found Watkins dressing the cow’s head, Hogvardt surrounded by knives, and Denny lying on a rug on the floor with a small book which he seemed to be reading. He looked up with a smile that he considered knowing.

‘Well, what does the Captive Queen say?’ he asked with levity.

‘She proposes to marry Constantine,’ I answered, and added quickly to Hogvardt:

‘What’s the game with those knives, Hog?’

‘Well, my lord,’ said Hogvardt, surveying his dozen murderous instruments, ‘I thought there was no harm in putting an edge on them, in case we should find a use for them,’ and he fell to grinding one with great energy.

‘I say, Charley, I wonder what this yarn’s about. I can’t construe half of it. It’s in Greek, and it’s something about Neopalia; and there’s a lot about a Stefanopoulos.’

‘Is there? Let’s see,’ and, taking the book, I sat down to look at it. It was a slim old book, bound in calf-skin. The Greek was written in an old-fashioned style; it was verse. I turned to the title page. ‘Hullo, this is rather interesting,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s about the death of old Stefanopoulos – the thing they sing that song about, you know.’

In fact I had got hold of the poem which One-Eyed Alexander composed. Its length was about three hundred lines, exclusive of the refrain which the islanders had chanted, and which was inserted six times, occurring at the end of each fifty lines. The rest was written in rather barbarous iambics; and the sentiments were quite as barbarous as the verse. It told the whole story, and I ran rapidly over it, translating here and there for the benefit of my companions. The arrival of the Baron d’Ezonville recalled our own with curious exactness, except that he came with one servant only. He had been taken to the inn as I had, but he had never escaped from there, and had been turned adrift the morning after his arrival. I took more interest in Stefan, and followed eagerly the story of how the islanders had come to his house and demanded that he should revoke the sale. Stefan, however, was obstinate; it cost the lives of four of his assailants before his door was forced. Thus far I read, and expected to find next an account of a mêlée in the hall. But here the story took a turn unexpected by me, one that might make the reading of the old poem more than a mere pastime.

‘But when they had broken in,’ sang One-Eyed Alexander, ‘behold the hall was empty, and the house empty! And they stood amazed. But the two cousins of the Lord, who had been the hottest in seeking his death, put all the rest to the door, and were themselves alone in the house; for the secret was known to them who were of the blood of the Stefanopouloi. Unto me, the Bard, it is not known. Yet men say they went beneath the earth, and there in the earth found the lord. And certain it is they slew him, for in a space they came forth to the door, bearing his head; this they showed to the people, who answered with a great shout. But the cousins went back, barring the door again; and again, when but a few minutes had passed, they came forth, opening the door, and the elder of them, being now by the traitor’s death become lord, bade the people in, and made a great feast for them. But the head of Stefan none saw again, nor did any see his body; but body and head were gone whither none know, saving the noble blood of the Stefanopouloi; for utterly they disappeared, and the secret was securely kept.’

I read this passage aloud, translating as I went. At the end Denny drew a breath.

‘Well, if there aren’t ghosts in this house there ought to be,’ he remarked. ‘What the deuce did those rascals do with the old gentleman, Charley?’

‘It says they went beneath the earth.’

‘The cellar,’ suggested Hogvardt, who had a prosaic mind.

‘But they wouldn’t leave the body in the cellar,’ I objected; ‘and if, as this fellow says, they were only away a few minutes, they couldn’t have dug a grave for it. And then it says that they “there in the earth found the lord.”’

‘It would have been more interesting,’ said Denny, ‘if they’d told Alexander a bit more about it. However I suppose he consoles himself with his chant again?’

‘He does. It follows immediately on what I’ve read, and so the thing ends.’ And I sat looking at the little yellow volume. ‘Where did you find it, Denny?’ I asked.

‘Oh, on a shelf in the corner of the hall, between the Iliad and a Life of Byron. There’s precious little to read in this house.’

I got up and walked back to the hall. I looked round. Euphrosyne was not there. I inspected the hall door; it was still locked on the inside. I mounted the stairs and called at the door of her room; when no answer came, I pushed it open and took the liberty of glancing round; she was not there. I called again, for I thought she might have passed along the way over the hall and reached the roof, as she had before. This time I called loudly. Silence followed for a moment. Then came an answer, in a hurried, rather apologetic tone, ‘Here I am.’ But then – the answer came not from the direction that I had expected, but from the hall! And, looking over the balustrade, I saw Euphrosyne sitting in the armchair.

‘This,’ said I, going downstairs, ‘taken in conjunction with this’ – and I patted One-Eyed Alexander’s book, which I held in my hand – ‘is certainly curious and suggestive.’

‘Here I am,’ said Euphrosyne, with an air that added, ‘I’ve not moved. What are you shouting for?’

‘Yes, but you weren’t there a minute ago,’ I observed, reaching the hall and walking across to her.

She looked disturbed and embarrassed.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked.

‘Must I give an account of every movement?’ said she, trying to cover her confusion with a show of haughty offence.

The coincidence was really a remarkable one; it was as hard to account for Euphrosyne’s disappearance and reappearance as for the vanished head and body of old Stefan. I had a conviction, based on a sudden intuition, that one explanation must lie at the root of both these curious things, that the secret of which Alexander spoke was a secret still hidden – hidden from my eyes, but known to the girl before me, the daughter of the Stefanopouloi.

‘I won’t ask you where you’ve been, if you don’t wish to tell me,’ said I carelessly.

She bowed her head in recognition of my indulgence.

‘But there is one question I should like to ask you,’ I pursued, ‘if you’ll be so kind as to answer it.’

‘Well, what is it?’ She was still on the defensive.

‘Where was Stefan Stefanopoulos killed, and what became of his body?’

As I put the question I flung One-Eyed Alexander’s book open on the table beside her.

She started visibly, crying, ‘Where did you get that?’

I told her how Denny had found it, and I added:

‘Now, what does “beneath the earth” mean? You’re one of the house and you must know.’

‘Yes, I know, but I must not tell you. We are all bound by the most sacred oath to tell no one.’

‘Who told you?’

‘My uncle. The boys of our house are told when they are fifteen, the girls when they are sixteen. No one else knows.’

‘Why is that?’

She hesitated, fearing, perhaps, that her answer itself would tend to betray the secret.

‘I dare tell you nothing,’ she said. ‘The oath binds me; and it binds every one of my kindred to kill me if I break it.’

‘But you’ve no kindred left except Constantine,’ I objected.

‘He is enough. He would kill me.’

‘Sooner than marry you?’ I suggested rather maliciously.

‘Yes, if I broke the oath.’

‘Hang the oath!’ said I impatiently. ‘The thing might help us. Did they bury Stefan somewhere under the house?’

‘No, he was not buried,’ she answered.

‘Then they brought him up and got rid of his body when the islanders had gone?’

‘You must think what you will.’

‘I’ll find it out,’ said I. ‘If I pull the house down, I’ll find it. Is it a secret door or – ?

She had coloured at the question. I put the latter part in a low eager voice, for hope had come to me.

‘Is it a way out?’ I asked, leaning over to her.

She sat mute, but irresolute, embarrassed and fretful.

‘Heavens,’ I cried impatiently, ‘it may mean life or death to all of us, and you boggle over your oath!’

My rude impatience met with a rebuke that it perhaps deserved. With a glance of the utmost scorn, Euphrosyne asked coldly,

‘What are the lives of all of you to me?’

‘True, I forgot,’ said I, with a bitter politeness. ‘I beg your pardon. I did you all the service I could last night, and now – I and my friends may as well die as live! But, by God, I’ll pull this place to ruins, but I’ll find your secret.’

I was walking up and down now in a state of some excitement. My brain was fired with the thought of stealing a march on Constantine through the discovery of his own family secret.

Suddenly Euphrosyne gave a little soft clap with her hands. It was over in a minute, and she sat blushing, confused, trying to look as if she had not moved at all.

‘What did you do that for?’ I asked, stopping in front of her.

‘Nothing,’ said Euphrosyne.

‘Oh, I don’t believe that,’ said I.

She looked at me. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she said. ‘But can’t you guess why?’

‘There’s too much guessing to be done here,’ said I impatiently; and I started walking again. But presently I heard a voice say softly, and in a tone that seemed to address nobody in particular – me least of all:

‘We Neopalians like a man who can be angry, and I began to think you never would.’

‘I am not the least angry,’ said I with great indignation. I hate being told that I am angry when I am merely showing firmness.

Now at this protest of mine Euphrosyne saw fit to laugh – the most hearty laugh she had given since I had known her. The mirthfulness of it undermined my wrath. I stood still opposite her, biting the end of my moustache.

‘You may laugh,’ said I, ‘but I’m not angry; and I shall pull this house down, or dig it up, in cold blood, in perfectly cold blood.’

‘You are angry,’ said Euphrosyne, ‘and you say you’re not. You are like my father. He would stamp his foot furiously like that, and say, “I am not angry, I am not angry, Phroso.”’

Phroso! I had forgotten that diminutive of my guest’s classical name. It rather pleased me, and I repeated gently after her, ‘Phroso, Phroso!’ and I’m afraid I eyed the little foot that had stamped so bravely.

‘He always called me Phroso. Oh, I wish he were alive! Then Constantine – ’

‘Since he isn’t,’ said I, sitting on the table by Phroso (I must write it, it’s a deal shorter), – by Phroso’s elbow – ‘since he isn’t, I’ll look after Constantine. It would be a pity to spoil the house, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’ve sworn,’ said Phroso.

‘Circumstances alter oaths,’ said I, bending till I was very near Phroso’s ear.

‘Ah,’ said Phroso reproachfully, ‘that’s what lovers say when they find another more beautiful than their old love.’

I shot away from Phroso’s ear with a sudden backward start. Her remark somehow came home to me with a very remarkable force. I got off the table, and stood opposite to her in an awkward and stiff attitude.

‘I am compelled to ask you, for the last time, if you will tell me the secret?’ said I, in the coldest of tones.

She looked up with surprise; my altered manner may well have amazed her. She did not know the reason of it.

‘You asked me kindly and – and pleasantly, and I would not. Now you ask me as if you threatened,’ she said. ‘Is it likely I should tell you now?’

Well, I was angry with myself and with her because she had made me angry with myself; and, the next minute, I became furiously angry with Denny, whom I found standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen with a smile of intense amusement on his face.

‘What are you grinning at?’ I demanded fiercely.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Denny, and his face strove to assume a prudent gravity.

‘Bring a pickaxe,’ said I.

Denny’s eyes wandered towards Phroso. ‘Is she as annoying as that?’ he seemed to ask. ‘A pickaxe?’ he repeated in surprised tones.

‘Yes, two pickaxes. I’m going to have this floor up, and see if I can find out the great Stefanopoulos secret.’ I spoke with an accent of intense scorn.

Again Phroso laughed; her hands beat very softly against one another. Heavens, what did she do that for, when Denny was there, watching everything with those shrewd eyes of his?

‘The pickaxes!’ I roared.

Denny turned and fled; a moment elapsed. I did not know what to do, how to look at Phroso, or how not to look at her. I took refuge in flight. I rushed into the kitchen, on pretence of aiding or hastening Denny’s search. I found him taking up an old pick that stood near the door leading to the compound. I seized it from his hand.

‘Confound you!’ I cried, for Denny laughed openly at me; and I rushed back to the hall. But on the threshold I paused, and said what I will not write.

For, though there came from somewhere the ripple of a mirthful laugh, the hall was empty! Phroso was gone! I flung the pickaxe down with a clatter on the boards, and exclaimed in my haste:

‘I wish to heaven I’d never bought the island!’

But I did not really mean that.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECRET OF THE STEFANOPOULOI

Was this a pantomime? For a moment I declared angrily that it was no better; but the next instant changed the current of my feelings, transforming irritation into alarm and perplexity into the strongest excitement. For Phroso’s laugh ended – ended as a laugh ends that is suddenly cut short in its career of mirth – and there was a second of absolute stillness. Then from the front of the house, and from the back, came the sharp sound of shots – three in rapid succession in front, four behind. Denny rushed out from the kitchen, rifle in hand.

‘They’re at us on both sides!’ he cried, leaping to his perch at the window and cautiously peering round. ‘Hogvardt and Watkins are ready at the back; they’re firing from the wood,’ he went on. Then he fired. ‘Missed, confound it!’ he muttered. ‘Well, they don’t come any nearer, I’ll see to that.’

Denny was a sure defence in front. I turned towards the kitchen, for more shots came from that direction, and although it was difficult to do worse than harass us from there, our perpendicular bank of rock being a difficult obstacle to pass in face of revolver-fire, I wanted to see that all was well and to make the best disposition against this unexpected onset. Yet I did not reach the kitchen; half way to the door which led to it I was arrested by a cry of distress. Phroso’s laugh had gone, but the voice was still hers. ‘Help!’ she cried, ‘help!’ Then came a chuckle from Denny at the window, and a triumphant, ‘Winged him, by Jove!’ And then from Phroso again, ‘Help!’ – and at last an enlightening word, ‘Help! Under the staircase! Help!’

At this summons I left my friends to sustain the attack or the feigned attack; for I began to suspect that it was no more than a diversion, and that the real centre of operations was ‘under the staircase;’ thither I ran. The stairs rose from the centre of the right side of the hall, and led up to the gallery; they rose steeply, and a man could stand upright up to within four feet of the spot where the staircase sprang from the level floor. I was there now; and under me I heard no longer voices, but a kind of scuffle. The pick was in my hand, and I struck savagely again and again at the boards; for I did not doubt now that there was a trap-door, and I was in no mind to spend my time seeking for its cunning machinery. And yet where knowledge failed, chance came to my help; at the fifth or sixth blow I must have happened on the spring, for the boards yawned, leaving a space of about three inches. Dropping the pick, I fell on my knees and seized the edge nearest me. With all my strength I tugged and pulled. My violence was of no avail, the boards moved no more. Impatient yet sobered I sought eagerly for the spring which my pick had found. Ah, here it was! It answered now to a touch light as Phroso’s own. At the slightest pressure the boards rolled away, seeming to curl themselves up under the base of the staircase; and there was revealed to me an aperture four feet long by three broad; beneath lay a flight of stone steps. I seized my pick again, and took a step downwards. I heard nothing except the noise of retreating feet. I went on. Down six steps I went, then the steps ended, and I was on an incline. At that moment I heard again, only a few yards from me, ‘Help!’ I sprang forward. A loud curse rang out, and a shot whistled by me. The open trap-door gave a glimmer of light. I was in a narrow passage, and a man was coming at me. I did not know where Phroso was, but I took the risk. I fired straight at him, having shifted my pick to the left hand. The aim was true, he fell prone on his face before me. I jumped on and over his body, and ran along the dark passage; for I still heard retreating steps. But then came a voice I knew, the voice of Vlacho the innkeeper. ‘Then stay where you are, curse you!’ he cried savagely. There was a thud, as though some one fell heavily to the ground, a cry of pain, and then the rapid running of feet that fled now at full pace and unencumbered. Vlacho the innkeeper had heard my shot and had no stomach for fighting in that rat-run, with a girl in his arms to boot! And I, pursuing, was brought up short by the body of Phroso, which lay, white and plain to see, across the narrow passage.

‘Are you hurt?’ I cried eagerly.

‘He flung me down violently,’ she answered. ‘But I’m not hurt otherwise.’

‘Then I’ll go after him,’ I cried.

‘No, no, you mustn’t. You don’t know the way, you don’t know the dangers; there may be more of them at the other end.’

‘True,’ said I. ‘What happened?’

‘Why, I came down to hide from you, you know. But directly I reached the foot of the steps Vlacho seized me. He was crouching there with Spiro – you know Spiro. And they said, “Ah, she has saved us the trouble!” and began to drag me away. But I would not go, and I called to you. I twisted my feet round Vlacho, so that he couldn’t go fast; then he told Spiro to catch hold of me, and they were just carrying me off when you came. Vlacho kept hold of me while Spiro went to meet you and – ’

‘It seems,’ I interrupted, ‘that Constantine was less scrupulous about that oath than you were. Or how did Vlacho and Spiro come here?’

‘Yes, he must have told them,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘Well, come along, come back; I’m wanted,’ said I; and (without asking leave, I fear) I caught her up in my arms and began to run back. I jumped again over Spiro – friend Spiro had not moved – and regained the hall.

‘Stay there, under the stairs; you’re sheltered there,’ I said hastily to Phroso. Then I called to Denny, ‘What cheer, Denny?’ Denny turned round with a radiant smile. I don’t think he had even noticed my absence.

‘Prime,’ said he. ‘This is a rare gun of old Constantine’s; it carries a good thirty yards farther than any they’ve got, and I can pick ’em off before they get dangerous. I’ve got one and winged another, and the rest have retired a little way to talk it over.’

Seeing that things were all right in that quarter I ran into the kitchen. It was well that I did so. We were indeed in no danger; from that side, at all events, the attack was evidently no more than a feint. There was desultory firing from a safe distance in the wood. I reckoned there must be four or five men hidden behind trees and emerging every now and then to pay us a compliment. But they had not attempted a rush. The mischief was quite different, being just this, that Watkins, who was not well instructed in the range of fire-arms, was cheerfully emptying his revolver into space, and wasting our precious cartridges at the rate of about two a minute. He was so magnificently happy that it went to my heart to stop him, but I was compelled to seize his arm and command him very peremptorily to wait till there was something to fire at.

‘I thought I’d show them that we were ready for them, my lord,’ said he apologetically.

I turned impatiently to Hogvardt.

‘Why did you let him make a fool of himself like that?’ I asked.

‘He would miss, anyhow, wherever the men were,’ observed Hogvardt philosophically. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘I was busy myself.’

‘What were you doing?’ I asked in a scornful tone.

Hogvardt made no answer in words; but he pointed proudly to the table. There I saw a row of five long and strong saplings; to the head of each of these most serviceable lances there was bound strongly, with thick wire wound round again and again, a long, keen, bright knife.

‘I think these may be useful,’ said Hogvardt, rubbing his hands, and rising from his seat with the sigh of a man who had done a good morning’s work.

‘The cartridges would have been more useful still,’ said I severely.

‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘if you would have taken them away from Watkins. But you know you wouldn’t, my lord. You’d be afraid of hurting his feelings. So he might just as well amuse himself while I made the lances.’

I have known Hogvardt for a long while, and I never argue with him. The mischief was done; the cartridges were gone; we had the lances; it was no use wasting more words over it. I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Your lordship will find the lances very useful,’ said Hogvardt, fingering one of them most lovingly.

The attack was dying away now in both front and rear. My impression was amply confirmed. It had been no more than a device for occupying our attention while those two daring rascals, Vlacho and Spiro, armed with the knowledge of the secret way, made a sudden dash upon us, either in the hope of getting a shot at our backs and finding shelter again before we could retaliate, or with the design of carrying off Phroso. Her jest had forestalled the former idea, if it had been in their minds, and they had then endeavoured to carry out the latter. Indeed I found afterwards that it was the latter on which Constantine laid most stress; for a deputation of the islanders had come to him, proposing that he should make terms with me as a means of releasing their Lady. Now since last night Constantine, for reasons which he could not disclose to the deputation, was absolutely precluded from treating with me; he was therefore driven to make an attempt to get Phroso out of my hands in order to satisfy her people. This enterprise I had happily frustrated for the moment. But my mind was far from easy. Provisions would soon be gone; ammunition was scanty; against an attack by day our strong position, aided by Denny’s coolness and marksmanship, seemed to protect us very effectually; but I could feel no confidence as to the result of a grand assault under the protecting shadow of night. And now that Constantine’s hand was being forced by the islanders’ anxiety for Phroso, I was afraid that he would not wait long before attempting a decisive stroke.

‘I wish we were well out of it,’ said I despondently, as I wiped my brow.

All was quiet. Watkins appeared with bread, cheese and wine.

‘Your lordship would not wish to use the cow at luncheon?’ he asked, as he passed me on his way to the hall.

‘Certainly not, Watkins,’ I answered, smiling. ‘We must save the cow.’

‘There is still a goat, but she is a poor thin creature, my lord.’

‘We shall come to her in time, Watkins,’ said I.

But if I were depressed, the other three were very merry over their meal. Danger was an idea which found no hospitality in Denny’s brain; Hogvardt was as cool a hand as the world held; Watkins could not believe that Providence would deal unkindly with a man of my rank. They toasted our recent success, and listened with engrossed interest to my account of the secret of the Stefanopouloi. Phroso sat a little apart, saying nothing, but at last I turned to her and asked, ‘Where does the passage lead to?’

She answered readily enough; the secret was out through Constantine’s fault, not hers, and the seal was removed from her lips.

‘If you follow it to the end, it comes out in a little cave in the rocks on the seashore, near the creek where the Cypriote fishermen come.’

‘Ah,’ I cried, ‘it might help us to get there!’

She shook her head, answering:

‘Constantine is sure to have that end strongly guarded now, because he knows that you have the secret.’

‘We might force our way.’

‘There is no room for more than one man to go at a time; and besides – ’ she paused.

‘Well, what besides?’ I asked.

‘It would be certain death to try to go in the face of an enemy’ she answered.

Denny broke in at this point.

‘By the way, what of the fellow you shot? Are we going to leave him there, or must we get him up?’

Spiro had been in my mind; and now I said to Phroso:

‘What did they do with the body of Stefan Stefanopoulos? There was not time for them to have taken it to the end of the way, was there?’

‘No, they didn’t take it to the end of the way,’ said she. ‘I will show you if you like. Bring a torch; you must keep behind me, and right in the middle of the path.’

I accepted her invitation eagerly, telling Denny to keep guard. He was very anxious to accompany us, but another and more serious attack might be in store, and I would not trust the house to Hogvardt and Watkins alone. So I took a lantern in lieu of a torch and prepared to follow. At the last moment Hogvardt thrust into my hand one of his lances.

‘It will very likely be useful,’ said he. ‘A thing like that is always useful.’

I would not disappoint him, and I took the lance. Phroso signed to me to give her the lantern and preceded me down the flight of stairs.

‘We shall be in earshot of the hall?’ I asked.

‘Yes, for as far as we are going,’ she answered, and she led the way into the passage. I prayed her to let me go first, for it was just possible that some of Constantine’s ruffians might still be there.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘He would tell as few as possible. You see, we have always kept the secret from the islanders. I think that, if you had not killed Spiro, he would not have lived long after knowing it.’

‘The deuce!’ I exclaimed. ‘And Vlacho?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Constantine is very fond of Vlacho. Still, perhaps, some day – ’ The unfinished sentence was expressive enough.

‘What use was the secret?’ I asked, as we groped our way slowly along and edged by the body of Spiro which lay, six feet of dead clay, in the path.

‘In the first place, we could escape by it,’ she answered, ‘if any tumult arose in the island. That was what Stefan tried to do, and would have done, had not his own kindred been against him and overtaken him here in the passage.’

‘And in the second place?’ I asked.

Phroso stopped, turned round, and faced me.

‘In the second place,’ she said, ‘if any one of the islanders became very powerful – too powerful, you know – then the ruling lord would show him great favour; and, as a crowning mark of his confidence, he would bid him come by night and learn the great secret; and they two would come together down this passage. But the lord would return alone.’

‘And the other?’

‘The body of the other would be found two, three, four days, or a week later, tossing on the shores of the island,’ answered Phroso. ‘For look!’ and she held the lantern high above her head so that its light was projected in front of us, and I could see fifteen or twenty yards ahead.

‘When they reached here, Stefanopoulos and the other,’ she went on, ‘Stefanopoulos would stumble, and feign to twist his foot, and he would pray the other to let him lean a little on his shoulder. Thus they would go on, the other a pace in front, the lord leaning on his shoulder; and the lord would hold the torch, but he would not hold it up, as I hold the lantern, but down to the ground, so that it should light no more than a pace or two ahead. And when they came there – do you see, my lord – there?’

‘I see,’ said I, and I believe I shivered a bit.

‘When they came there the torch would suddenly show the change, so suddenly that the other would start and be for an instant alarmed, and turn his head round to the lord to ask what it meant.’

Phroso paused in her recital of the savage, simple, sufficient old trick.

‘Yes?’ said I. ‘And at that moment – ’

‘The lord’s hand on his shoulder,’ she answered, ‘which had rested lightly before, would grow heavy as lead and with a great sudden impulse the other would be hurled forward, and the lord would be alone again with the secret, and alone the holder of power in Neopalia.’

This was certainly a pretty secret of empire, and none the less although the empire it protected was but nine miles long and five broad. I took the lantern from Phroso’s hand, saying, ‘Let’s have a look.’

I stepped a pace or two forward, prodding the ground with Hogvardt’s lance before I moved my feet: and thus I came to the spot where the Stefanopoulos used with a sudden great impulse to propel his enemy down. For here the rocks, which hitherto had narrowly edged and confined the path, bayed out on either side. The path ran on, a flat rock track about a couple of feet wide, forming the top of an upstanding cliff; but on either side there was an interval of seven or eight feet between the path and the walls of rock, and the path was unfenced. Even had the Stefanopoulos held his hand and given no treacherous impulse, it would have needed a cool-headed man to walk that path by the dim glimmer of a torch. For, kneeling down and peering over the side, I saw before me, some seventy feet down as I judged, the dark gleam of water, and I heard the low moan of its wash. And Phroso said:

‘If the man escaped the sharp rocks he would fall into the water; and then, if he could not swim, he would sink at once; but if he could swim he would swim round, and round, and round, like a fish in a bowl, till he grew weary, unless he chanced to find the only opening; and if he found that and passed through, he would come to a rapid, where the water runs swiftly, and he would be dashed on the rocks. Only by a miracle could he escape death by one or other of these ways. So I was told when I was of age to know the secret. And it is certain that no man who fell into the water has escaped alive, although their bodies came out.’

‘Did Stefan’s body come out?’ I asked, peering at the dark water with a fascinated gaze.

‘No, because they tied weights to it before they threw it down, and so with the head. Stefan is there at the bottom. Perhaps another Stefanopoulos is there also; for his body was never found. He was caught by the man he threw down, and the two fell together.’

‘Well, I’m glad of it,’ said I with emphasis, as I rose to my feet. ‘I wish the same thing had always happened.’

‘Then,’ remarked Phroso with a smile, ‘I should not be here to tell you about it.’

‘Hum,’ said I. ‘At all events I wish it had generally happened. For a more villainous contrivance I never heard of in all my life. We English are not accustomed to this sort of thing.’

Phroso looked at me for a moment with a strange expression of eagerness, hesitation and fear. Then she suddenly put out her hand, and laid it on my arm.

‘I will not go back to my cousin who has wronged me, if – if I may stay with you,’ she said.

‘If you may stay!’ I exclaimed with a nervous laugh.

‘But will you protect me? Will you stand by me? Will you swear not to leave me here alone on the island? If you will, I will tell you another thing – a thing that would certainly bring me death if it were known I had told.’

‘Whether you tell me or whether you don’t,’ said I, ‘I’ll do what you ask.’

‘Then you are not the first Englishman who has been here. Seventy years ago there came an Englishman here, a daring man, a lover of our people, and a friend of the great Byron. Orestes Stefanopoulos, who ruled here then, loved him very much, and brought him here, and showed him the path and the water under it. And he, the Englishman, came next day with a rope, and fixed the rope at the top, and let himself down. Somehow, I do not know how, he came safe out to the sea, past the rocks and the rapids. But, alas, he boasted of it! Then, when the thing became known, all the family came to Orestes and asked him what he had done. And he said:

‘“Sup with me this night, and I will tell you.” For he saw that what he had done was known.

‘So they all supped together, and Orestes told them what he had done, and how he did it for love of the Englishman. They said nothing, but looked sad; for they loved Orestes. But he did not wait for them to kill him, as they were bound to do; but he took a great flagon of wine, and poured into it the contents of a small flask. And his kindred said: “Well done, Lord Orestes!” And they all rose to their feet, and drank to him. And he drained the flagon to their good fortune, and went and lay down on his bed, and turned his face to the wall and died.’

I paid less attention to this new episode in the family history of the Stefanopouloi than it perhaps deserved: my thoughts were with the Englishman, not with his too generous friend. Yet the thing was handsomely done – on both sides handsomely done.

‘If the Englishman got out!’ I cried, gazing at Phroso’s face.

‘Yes, I mean that,’ said she simply. ‘But it must be dangerous.’

‘It’s not exactly safe where we are,’ I said, smiling; ‘and Constantine will be guarding the proper path. By Jove, we’ll try it!’

‘But I must come with you; for if you go that way and escape, Constantine will kill me.’

‘You’ve just as good a right to kill Constantine.’

‘Still he will kill me. You’ll take me with you?’

‘To be sure I will,’ said I.

Now when a man pledges his word, he ought, to my thinking, to look straight and honestly in the eyes of the woman to whom he is promising. Yet I did not look into Phroso’s eyes, but stared awkwardly over her head at the walls of rock. Then, without any more words, we turned back and went towards the secret door. But I stopped at Spiro’s body, and said to Phroso:

‘Will you send Denny to me?’

She went, and when Denny came we took Spiro’s body and carried it to where the walls bayed, and we flung it down into the dark water below. And I told Denny of the Englishman who had come alive through the perils of the hidden chasm. He listened with eager attention, nodding his head at every point of the story.

‘There lies our road, Denny,’ said I, pointing with my finger. ‘We’ll go along it to-night.’

Denny looked down, shook his head and smiled.

‘And the girl?’ he asked suddenly.

‘She comes too,’ said I.

We walked back together, Denny being unusually silent and serious. I thought that even his audacious courage was a little dashed by the sight and the associations of that grim place, so I said:

‘Cheer up. If that other fellow got through the rocks, we can.’

‘Oh, hang the rocks!’ said Denny scornfully. ‘I wasn’t thinking of them.’

‘Then what are you so glum about?’

‘I was wondering,’ said Denny, freeing himself from my arm, ‘how Beatrice Hipgrave would get on with Euphrosyne.’

I looked at Denny. I tried to feel angry, or even, if I failed in that, to appear angry. But it was no use. Denny was imperturbable. I took his arm again.

‘Thanks, old man,’ said I. ‘I’ll remember.’

For when I considered the very emphatic assertions which I had made to Denny before we left England, I could not honestly deny that he was justified in his little reminder.

CHAPTER VIII

A KNIFE AT A ROPE

Some modern thinkers, I believe – or perhaps, to be quite safe, I had better say some modern talkers – profess to estimate the value of life by reference to the number of distinct sensations which it enables them to experience. Judged by a similar standard, my island had been, up to the present time, a brilliant success; it was certainly fulfilling the function, which Mrs Kennett Hipgrave had appropriated to it, of whiling away the time that must elapse before my marriage with her daughter and providing occupation for my thoughts during this weary interval. The difficulty was that the island seemed disinclined to restrict itself to this modest sphere of usefulness; it threatened to monopolise me, and to leave very little of me or my friends, by the time that it had finished with us. For, although we maintained our cheerfulness, our position was not encouraging. Had matters been anything short of desperate above ground it would have been madness to plunge into that watery hole, whose egress was unknown to us, and to take such a step on the off-chance of finding at the other end the Cypriote fishermen, and of obtaining from them either an alliance, or, if that failed, the means of flight. Yet we none of us doubted that to take the plunge was the wiser course. I did not believe in the extreme peril of the passage, for, on further questioning, Phroso told us that the Englishman had come through, not only alive and well, but also dry. Therefore there was a path, and along a path that one man can go four men can go; and Phroso, again attired, at my suggestion, in her serviceable boy’s suit, was the equal of any of us. So we left considering whether, and fell to the more profitable work of asking how, to go. Hogvardt and Watkins went off at once to the point of departure, armed with a pick, a mallet, some stout pegs, and a long length of rope. All save the last were ready on the premises, and that last formed always part of Hogvardt’s own equipment; he wore it round his waist, and, I believe, slept in it, like a mediæval ascetic. Meanwhile Denny and I kept watch, and Phroso, who seemed out of humour, disappeared into her own room.

Our idea was to reach the other end of the journey somewhere about eight or nine o’clock in the evening. Phroso told us that this hour was the most favourable for finding the fishermen; they would then be taking a meal before launching their boats for the fishing-grounds. Three hours seemed ample time to allow for the journey, for the way could hardly, however rich it were in windings, be more than three or four miles long. We determined, therefore, to start at five. At four Hogvardt and Watkins returned from the underground passage; they had driven three stout pegs into excavations in the rocky path, and built them in securely with stones and earth. The rope was tied fast and firm round the pegs, and the moistness of its end showed the length to be sufficient. I wished to descend first, but I was at once overruled; Denny was to lead, Watkins was to follow; then came Hogvardt, then Phroso, and lastly myself. We arranged all this as we ate a good meal; then each man stowed away a portion of goat – the goat had died the death that morning – and tied a flask of wine about him. It was a quarter to five, and Denny rose to his feet, flinging away his cigarette.

‘That’s my last!’ said he, regretfully regarding his empty case.

His words sounded ominous, but the spirit of action was on us, and we would not be discouraged. I went to the hall door and fired a shot, and then did the like at the back. Having thus spent two cartridges on advertising our presence to the pickets we made without delay for the passage. With my own hand I closed the door behind us. The secret of the Stefanopouloi would thus be hidden from profane eyes in the very likely event of the islanders finding their way into the house in the course of the next few hours.

I persuaded Phroso to sit down some little way from the chasm and wait till we were ready for her; we four went on. Denny was a delightful boy to deal with on such occasions. He wasted no time in preliminaries. He gave one hard pull at the rope; it stood the test; he cast a rapid eye over the wedges; they were strong and strongly imbedded in the rock. He laid hold of the rope.

‘Don’t come after me till I shout,’ said he, and he was over the side. The lantern showed me his descending figure, while Hogvardt and Watkins held the rope ready to haul him up in case of need. There was one moment of suspense; then his voice came, distant and cavernous.

‘All right! There’s a broad ledge – a foot and a half broad – twenty feet above the water, and I can see a glimmer of light that looks like the way out.’

‘This is almost disappointingly simple,’ said I.

‘Would your lordship desire me to go next?’ asked Watkins.

‘Yes, fire away, Watkins,’ said I, now in high good humour.

‘Stand from under, sir,’ called Watkins to Denny, and over he went.

A shout announced his safe arrival. I laid down the lantern and took hold of the rope.

‘I must hang on to you, Hog,’ said I. ‘You carry flesh, you see.’

Hogvardt was calm, smiling and leisurely.

‘When I’m down, my lord,’ he said, ‘I’ll stand ready to catch the young lady. Give me a call before you start her off.’

‘All right,’ I answered. ‘I’ll go and fetch her directly.’

Over went old Hogvardt. He groaned once; I suppose he grazed against the wall; but he descended with perfect safety. Denny called: ‘Now we’re ready for her, Charley. Lower away!’ And I, turning, began to walk back to where I had left Phroso.

My island – I can hardly resist personifying it in the image of some charming girl, full of tricks and surprises, yet all the while enchanting – had now behaved well for two hours. The limit of its endurance seemed to be reached. In another five minutes Phroso and I would have been safely down the rope and the party re-united at the bottom, with a fair hope of carrying out prosperously at least the first part of the enterprise. But it was not to be. My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and when I went back I left the lantern standing by the rope. Suddenly, when I was still a few yards from Phroso, I heard a curious noise, a sort of shuffling sound, rather like the noise made by a rug or carpet drawn along the floor. I stood still and listened, turning my my head round to the chasm. The noise continued for a minute. I took a step in the direction of it. Then I seemed to see a curious thing. The lantern appeared to get up, raise itself a foot or so in the air, keeping its light towards me, and throw itself over the chasm. At the same instant there was a rasp. Heavens, it was a knife on the rope! A cry came from far down in the chasm. I darted forward. I rushed to where the walls bayed and the chasm opened. The shuffling sound had begun again; and in the middle of the isolated path I saw a dark object. It must be the figure of a man, a man who had watched our proceedings, unobserved by us, and seized this chance of separating our party. For a moment – a fatal moment – I stood aghast, doing nothing. Then I drew my revolver and fired once – twice – thrice. The bullets whistled along the path, but the dark figure was no longer to be seen there. But in an instant there came an answering shot from across the bridge of rock. Denny shouted wildly to me from below. I fired again; there was a groan, but two shots flashed at the very same moment. There were two men there, perhaps more. I stood again for a moment undecided; but I could do no good where I was. I turned and ran fairly and fast.

‘Come, come,’ I cried, when I had reached Phroso. ‘Come back, come back! They’ve cut the rope and they’ll be on us directly.’

In spite of her amazement she rose as I bade her. We heard feet running along the passage. They would be across the bridge now. Would they stop and fire down the chasm? No, they were coming on. We also went on; a touch of Phroso’s practised fingers opened the door for us; I turned, and in wrath gave the pursuers one more shot. Then I ran up the stairs and shut the door behind us. We were in the hall again – but Phroso and I alone.

A hurried story told her all that had happened. Her breath came quick and her cheek flushed.

‘The cowards!’ she said. ‘They dared not attack us when we were all together!’

‘They will attack us before very long now,’ said I, ‘and we can’t possibly hold the house against them. Why, they may open that trap-door any moment.’

Phroso stepped quickly towards it, and, stooping for a instant, examined it. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they may. I can’t fasten it. You spoilt the fastening with your pick.’

Hearing this, I stepped close up to the door, reloading my revolver as I went, and I called out, ‘The first man who looks out is a dead man.’

No sound came from below. Either they were too hurt to attempt the attack, or, more probably, they preferred the safer and surer way of surrounding and overwhelming us by numbers from outside. Indeed we were at our last gasp now; I flung myself despondently into a chair; but I kept my finger on my weapon and my eye on the trap-door.

‘They cannot get back – our friends – and we cannot get to them,’ said Phroso.

‘No,’ said I. Her simple statement was terribly true.

‘And we cannot stay here!’ she pursued.

‘They’ll be at us in an hour or two at most, I’ll warrant. Those fellows will carry back the news that we are alone here.’

‘And if they come?’ she said, fixing her eyes on me.

‘They won’t hurt you, will they?’

‘I don’t know what Constantine would do; but I don’t think the people will let him hurt me, unless – ’

‘Well, unless what?’

She hesitated, looked at me, looked away again. I believe that my eyes were now guilty of neglecting the trap-door which I ought to have watched.

‘Unless what?’ I said again. But Phroso grew red and did not answer.

‘Unless you’re so foolish as to try to protect me, you mean?’ I asked. ‘Unless you refuse to give them back what Constantine offers to win for them – the island?’

‘They will not let you have the island,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I dare not face them and tell them it is yours.’

‘Do you admit it’s mine?’ I asked eagerly.

A slow smile dawned on Phroso’s face, and she held out her hand to me. Ah, Denny, my conscience, why were you at the bottom of the chasm? I seized her hand and kissed it.

‘Between friends,’ she said softly, ‘there is no thine nor mine.’

Ah, Denny, where were you? I kissed her hand again – and dropped it like a red-hot coal.

‘But I can’t say that to my islanders,’ said Phroso, smiling.

Charming as it was, I wished she had not said it to me. I wished that she would not speak as she spoke, or look as she looked, or be what she was. I forgot all about the trap-door. The island was piling sensations on me.

At last I got up and went to the table. I found there a scrap of paper, on which Denny had drawn a fancy sketch of Constantine (to whom, by the way, he attributed hoofs and a tail). I turned the blank side uppermost, and took my pencil out of my pocket. I was determined to put the thing on a business-like footing; so I began: ‘Whereas’ – which has a cold, legal, business-like sound:

‘Whereas,’ I wrote in English, ‘this island of Neopalia is mine, I hereby fully, freely, and absolutely give it to the Lady Euphrosyne, niece of Stefan Georgios Stefanopoulos, lately Lord of the said island – Wheatley.’ And I made a copy underneath in Greek, and, walking across to Phroso, handed the paper to her, remarking in a rather disagreeable tone, ‘There you are; that’ll put it all straight, I hope.’ And I sat down again, feeling out of humour. I did not like giving up my island, even to Phroso. Moreover I had the strongest doubt whether my surrender would be of the least use in saving my skin.

I do not know that I need relate what Phroso did when I gave her back her island. These southern races have picturesque but extravagant ways. I did not know where to look while she was thanking me, and it was as much as I could do not to call out, ‘Do stop!’ However presently she did stop, but not because I asked her. She was stayed by a sudden thought which had been in my mind all the while, but now flashed suddenly into hers.

‘But Constantine?’ she said. ‘You know his – his secrets. Won’t he still try to kill you?’

Of course he would if he valued his own neck. For I had sworn to see him hanged for one murder, and I knew that he meditated another.

‘Oh, don’t you bother about that!’ said I. ‘I expect I can manage Constantine.’

‘Do you think I’m going to desert you?’ she asked in superb indignation.

‘No, no; of course not,’ I protested, rather in a fright. ‘I shouldn’t think of accusing you of such a thing.’

‘You know that’s what you meant,’ said Phroso, a world of reproach in her voice.

‘My dear lady,’ said I, ‘getting you into trouble won’t get me out of it, and getting you out may get me out. Take that paper in your hand, and go back to your people. Say nothing about Constantine just now; play with him. You know what I’ve told you, and you won’t be deluded by him. Don’t let him see that you know anything of the woman at the cottage. It won’t help you, it may hurt me, and it will certainly bring her into greater danger; for, if nothing has happened to her already, yet something may if his suspicions are aroused.’

‘I am to do all this. And what will you do, my lord?’

‘I say, don’t call me “my lord”; we say “Lord Wheatley.” What am I going to do? I’m going to make a run for it.’

‘But they’ll kill you!’

‘Then shall I stay here?’

‘Yes, stay here.’

‘But Constantine’s fellows will be here before long.’

‘You must give yourself up to them, and tell them to bring you to me. They couldn’t hurt you then.’

Well, I wasn’t sure of that, but I pretended to believe it. The truth is that I dared not tell Phroso what I had actually resolved to do. It was a risky job, but it was a chance; and it was more than a chance. It was very like an obligation that a man had no right to shrink from discharging. Here was I, planning to make Phroso comfortable; that was right enough. And here was I planning to keep my own skin whole; well, a man does no wrong in doing that. But what of that unlucky woman on the hill? I knew friend Constantine would take care that Phroso should not come within speaking distance of her. Was nobody to set her on her guard? Was I to leave her to her blind trust of the ruffian whom she was unfortunate enough to call husband, and of his tool Vlacho? Now I came to think of it, now that I was separated from my friends and had no lingering hope of being able to beat Constantine in fair fight, that seemed hardly the right thing, hardly a thing I should care to talk about or think about, if I did save my own precious skin. Would not Constantine teach his wife the secret of the Stefanopouloi? Urged by these reflections, I made up my mind to play a little trick on Phroso, and feigned to accept her suggestion that I should rely on her to save me. Evidently she had great confidence in her influence now that she held that piece of paper. I had less confidence in it, for it was clear that Constantine wielded immense power over these unruly islanders, and I thought it likely enough that they would demand from Phroso a promise to marry him as the price of obeying her; then, whether Constantine did or did not promise me my life, I felt sure that he would do his best to rob me of it.

Well, time pressed. I rose and unbolted the door of the house. Phroso sat still. I looked along the road. I saw nobody, but I heard the blast of the horn which had fallen on my ears once before and had proved the forerunner of an attack. Phroso also heard it, for she sat up, saying, ‘Hark, they are summoning all the men to the town! That means they are coming here.’

But it meant something else also to me; if the men were summoned to the town there would be fewer for me to elude in the wood.

‘Will they all go?’ I asked, as though in mere curiosity.

‘All who are not on some duty,’ she answered.

I had to hope for the best; but Phroso went on in distress:

‘It means that they are coming here – here, to take you.’

‘Then you must lose no time in going,’ said I, and I took her hand and gently raised her to her feet. She stood there for a moment, looking at me. I had let go her hand, but she took mine again now, and she said with a sudden vehemence, and a rush of rich deep red on her cheeks:

‘If they kill you, they shall kill me too.’

The words gushed impetuously from her, but at the end there was a choke in her throat.

‘No, no, nonsense,’ said I. ‘You’ve got the island now. You mustn’t talk like that.’

‘I don’t care – ’ she began; and stopped short.

‘Besides, I shall pull through,’ said I.

She dropped my hand, but she kept her eyes on mine.

‘And if you get away?’ she asked. ‘What will you do? If you get to Rhodes, what will you do?’

‘All I shall do is to lay an information against your cousin and the innkeeper. The rest are ignorant fellows, and I bear them no malice. Besides, they are your men now.’

‘And when you’ve done that?’ she asked gravely.

‘Well, that’ll be all there is to do,’ said I, with an attempt at playful gaiety. It was not a very happy attempt.

‘Then you’ll go home to your own people?’

‘I shall go home; I’ve got no people in particular.’

‘Shall you ever come to Neopalia again?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, if you invite me.’

She regarded me intently for a full minute. She seemed to have forgotten the blast of the horn that summoned the islanders. I also had forgotten it; I saw nothing but the perfect oval face, crowned with clustering hair and framing deep liquid eyes. Then she drew a ring from her finger.

‘You have fought for me,’ she said. ‘You have risked your life for me. Will you take this ring from me? Once I tried to stab you. Do you remember, my lord?’

I bowed my head, and Phroso set the ring on my finger.

‘Wear it till a woman you love gives you one to wear instead,’ said Phroso with a little smile. ‘Then go to the edge of your island – you are an islander too, are you not? so we are brethren – go to the edge of your island and throw it into the sea; and perhaps, my dear friend, the sea will bring it back, a message from you to me. For I think you will never again come to Neopalia.’

I made no answer: we walked together to the door of the house, and paused again for a moment on the threshold.

‘See the blue sea!’ said Phroso. ‘Is it not – is not your island – a beautiful island? If God brings you safe to your own land, my lord, as I will pray Him to do on my knees, think kindly of your island, and of one who dwells there.’

The blast of the horn had died away. The setting sun was turning blue to gold on the quiet water. The evening was very still, as we stood looking from the threshold of the door, under the portal of the house that had seen such strange wild doings, and had so swiftly made for itself a place for ever in my life and memory.

I glanced at Phroso’s face. Her eyes were set on the sea, her cheeks had turned pale again, and her lip was quivering. Suddenly came a loud sharp note on the horn.

‘It is the signal for the start,’ said she. ‘I must go, or they will be here in heat and anger, and I shall not be able to stop them. And they will kill my lord. No, I will say “my lord.”’

She moved to leave me. I had answered nothing to all she had said. What was there that an honourable man could say? Was there one thing? I told myself (too eager to tell myself) that I had no right to presume to say that. And anything else I would not say.

‘God bless you,’ I said, as she moved away; I caught her hand and again lightly kissed it. ‘My homage to the Lady of the Island,’ I whispered.

Her hand dwelt in mine a moment, briefer than our divisions of time can reckon, fuller than is often the longest of them. Then, with one last look, questioning, appealing, excusing, protesting, confessing, ay, and (for my sins) hoping, she left me, and stepped along the rocky road in the grace and glory of her youthful beauty. I stood watching her, forgetting the woman at the cottage, forgetting my own danger, forgetting even the peril she ran whom I watched, forgetting everything save the old that bound me and the new that called me. So I stood till she vanished from my sight; and still I stood, for she was there, though the road hid her. And I was roused at last only by a great cry of surprise, of fierce joy and triumph, that rent the still air of the evening, and echoed back in rumblings from the hill. The Neopalians were greeting their rescued Lady.

Then I turned, snatched up Hogvardt’s lance again, and fled through the house to do my errand. For I would save that woman, if I could; and my own life was not mine to lose any more than it was mine to give to whom I would. And I recollect that, as I ran through the kitchen and across the compound, making for the steps in the bank of rocks, I said, ‘God forgive me!’

CHAPTER IX

HATS OFF TO ST TRYPHON!

A man’s mind can move on more than one line; even the most engrossing selfish care may fail entirely to occupy it or to shut out intruding rivals. Not only should I have been wise, but I should have chosen, in that risky walk of mine through the wood that covered the hill-slope, to think of nothing but its risk. Yet countless other things exacted a share of my thoughts and figured amongst my brain’s images. Sometimes I was with Denny and his faithful followers, threading dark and devious ways in the bowels of the earth, avoiding deep waters on the one side, sheer falls on the other, losing the track, finding it again, deluded by deceptive glimmers of light, finding at last the true outlet; now received hospitably by the Cypriote fishermen, now fiercely assailed by them, again finding none of them; now making allies of them, now carried prisoners by them to Constantine, again scouring the sea with vain eagerness for a sight of their sails. Then I was off, far away, to England, to my friends there, to the gaiety of London now in its full rushing tide, to Mrs Hipgrave’s exclusive receptions, to Beatrice’s gay talk and pretty insolence, to Hamlyn’s gilded dulness, in rapid survey of all the panorama that I knew so well. Then I would turn back to the scene I had left, and again bid my farewell under the quiet sky, in prospect of the sea that turned to gold. So I passed back and forward till I seemed myself hardly a thinking man, but rather a piece of blank glass, across which the myriad mites of the kaleidoscope chased one another, covering it with varying colours, but none of them imparting their hue to it. Yet all this time, by the strange division of mental activity of which I have spoken, I was crawling cautiously but quickly up the mountain side, with eyes keen to pierce the dusk that now fell, with ears apt to find an enemy in every rustling leaf and a hostile step in every woodland sound. Of real foes I had as yet seen none. Ah! Hush! I dropped on my knees. Away there on the right – what was it leaning against that tree-trunk? It was a tall lean man; his arms rested on a long gun, and his face was towards the old grey house. Would he see me? I crouched lower. Would he hear me? I was as still as dead Spiro had lain in the passage. But then I felt stealthily for the butt of my revolver, and a recollection so startling came to me that I nearly betrayed myself by some sudden movement. In the distribution of burdens for our proposed journey, Denny had taken the case containing the spare cartridges which remained after we had all reloaded. Now I had one barrel only loaded, one shot only left. That one shot and Hogvardt’s lance were all my resources. I crouched yet lower. But the man was motionless, and presently I ventured to move on my hands and knees, sorely inconvenienced by the long lance, but determined not to leave it behind me. I passed another sentry a hundred yards or so away on the left; his head was sunk on his breast and he took no notice of me. I breathed a little more freely as I came within fifty feet of the cottage.

Immediately about the house nobody was in sight. This however, in Neopalia, did not always mean that nobody was near, and I abated none of my caution. But the last step had to be taken; I crawled out from the shelter of the trees, and crouched on one knee on the level space in front of the cottage. The cottage door was open. I listened but heard nothing. Well, I meant to go in; my entrance would be none the easier for waiting. A quick dart was safest; in a couple of bounds I was across, in the verandah, through the entrance, in the house. I closed the door noiselessly behind me, and stood there, Hogvardt’s lance ready for the first man I saw; but I saw none. I was in a narrow passage; there were doors on either side of me. Listening again, I heard no sound from right or left. I opened the door to the right. I saw a small square room: the table was spread for a meal, three places being laid, but the room was empty. I turned to the other door and opened it. This room was darker, for heavy curtains, drawn, no doubt, earlier in the day to keep out the sun, had not been drawn back, and the light was very dim. For a while I could make out little, but, my eyes growing more accustomed to the darkness, I soon perceived that I was in a sitting-room, sparsely and rather meanly furnished. Then my eyes fell on a couch which stood against the wall opposite me. On the couch lay a figure. It was the figure of a woman. I heard now the slight but regular sound of her breath. She was asleep. This must be the woman I sought. But was she a sensible woman? Or would she scream when I waked her, and bring those tall fellows out of the wood? In hesitation I stood still and watched her. She slept like one who was weary, but not at peace: restless movements and, now and again, broken incoherent exclamations witnessed to her disquiet. Presently her broken sleep passed into half-wakeful consciousness, and she sat up, looking round her with a dazed glance.

‘Is that you, Constantine?’ she asked, rubbing her hands across her eyes. ‘Or is it Vlacho?’

With a swift step I was by her.

‘Neither. Not a word!’ I said, laying my hand on her shoulder.

I was, I daresay, an alarming figure, with the butt of my revolver peeping out of my pocket and Hogvardt’s lance in my right hand. But she did not cry out.

‘I am Wheatley. I have escaped from the house there,’ I went on; ‘and I have come here because there’s something I must tell you. You remember our last meeting?’

She looked at me still in amazed surprise, but with a gleam of recollection.

‘Yes, yes. You were – we went to watch you – yes, at the restaurant.’

‘You went to watch and to listen? Yes, I supposed so. But I’ve been near you since then. Do you remember the man who was on your verandah?’

‘That was you?’ she asked quickly.

‘Yes, it was. And while I was there I heard – ’

‘But what are you doing here? This house is watched. Constantine may be here any moment, or Vlacho.’

‘I’m as safe here as I was down the hill. Now listen. Are you this man’s wife, as he called you that night?’

‘Am I his wife? Of course I’m his wife. How else should I be here?’ The indignation expressed in her answer was the best guarantee of its truth, and became her well. And she held her hand up to me, as she had to the man himself in the restaurant, adding, ‘There is his ring.’

‘Then listen to me, and don’t interrupt,’ said I brusquely. ‘Time’s valuable to me, and even more, I fear, to you.’

Her eyes were alarmed now, but she listened in silence as I bade her. I told her briefly what had happened to me, and then I set before her more fully the conversation between Constantine and Vlacho which I had overheard. She clutched the cushions of the sofa in her clenched hand; her breathing came quick and fast; her eyes gleamed at me even in the gloom of the curtained room. I do not believe that in her heart she was surprised at what she heard. She had mistrusted the man; her manner, even on our first encounter, had gone far to prove that. She received my story rather as a confirmation of her own suspicions than as a new or startling revelation. She was fearful, excited, strung to a high pitch; but astonished she was not, if I read her right. And when I ended, it was not astonishment that clenched her lips and brought to her eyes a look which I think Constantine himself would have shrunk from meeting. I had paused at the end of my narrative, but I recollected one thing more. I must warn her about the secret passage; for that offered her husband too ready and easy a way of relieving himself of his burden. But now she interrupted me.

‘This girl?’ she said. ‘I have not seen her. What is she like?’

‘She is very beautiful,’ said I simply. ‘She knows what I have told you, and she is on her guard. You need fear nothing from her. It is your husband whom you have to fear.’

‘He would kill me?’ she asked, with a questioning glance.

‘You’ve heard what he said,’ I returned. ‘Put your own meaning on it.’

She sprang to her feet.

‘I can’t stay here; I can’t stay here. Merciful heaven, they may come any moment! Where are you going? How are you going to escape? You are in as much danger as I am.’

‘I believe in even greater,’ said I. ‘I was going straight from here down to the sea. If I can find my friends, we’ll go through with the thing together. If I don’t find them, I shall hunt for a boat. If I don’t find a boat – well, I’m a good swimmer, and I shall live as long in the water as in Neopalia, and die easier, I fancy.’

She was standing now, facing me, and she laid her hand on my arm.

‘You stand by women, you Englishmen,’ she said. ‘You won’t leave me to be murdered?’

‘You see I am here. Doesn’t that answer your question?’

‘My God, he’s a fiend! Will you take me with you?’

What could I do? Her coming gave little chance to her and robbed me of almost all prospect of escape. But of course I could not leave her.

‘You must come if you can see no other way,’ said I.

‘Why, what other is there? If I avoid him he will see I suspect him. If I appear to trust him, I must put myself in his power.’

‘Then we must go,’ said I. ‘But it’s a thousand to one that we don’t get through.’

I had hardly spoken when a voice outside said, ‘Is all well?’ and a heavy step echoed in the verandah.

‘Vlacho!’ she hissed in a whisper. ‘Vlacho! Are you armed?’

‘In a way,’ said I, with a shrug. ‘But there are at least two besides him. I saw them in the wood.’

‘Yes, yes, true. There are four generally. It would be death. Here, hide behind the curtains. I’ll try to put him off for the moment. Quick, quick!’

She was hurried and eager, but I saw that her wits were clear. I stepped behind the curtains and she drew them close. I heard her fling herself again on the couch. Then came the innkeeper’s voice, its roughness softened in deferential greeting.

At the same time a strong smell of eau de Cologne pervaded the room.

‘Am I well?’ said Madame Stefanopoulos fretfully. ‘My good Vlacho, I am very ill. Should I sit in a dark room and bathe my head with this stuff if I were well?’

‘My lady’s sickness grieves me beyond expression,’ said Vlacho politely. ‘And the more so because I am come from my Lord Constantine with a message for you.’

‘It is easier for him to send messages than to come himself,’ she remarked, with an admirable pretence of resentment.

‘Think how occupied he has been with this pestilent Englishman!’ said the plausible Vlacho. ‘We have had no peace. But at last I hope our troubles are over. The house is ours again.’

‘Ah, you have driven them out?’

‘They fled themselves,’ said Vlacho. ‘But they are separated and we shall catch them. Oh, yes, we know where to look for most of them.’

‘Then you’ve not caught any of them yet? How stupid you are!’

‘My lady is severe. No, we have caught none yet.’

‘Not even Wheatley himself?’ she asked. ‘Has he shown you a clean pair of heels?’

Vlacho’s voice betrayed irritation as he answered:

‘We shall find him also in time, though heaven knows where the rascal has hidden himself.’

‘You’re really very stupid,’ said Francesca. I heard her sniff her perfume. ‘And the girl?’ she went on.

‘Oh, we have her safe and sound,’ laughed Vlacho. ‘She’ll give no more trouble.’

‘Why, what will you do with her?’

‘You must ask my lord that,’ said Vlacho. ‘If she will give up the island, perhaps nothing.’

‘Ah, well, I take very little interest in her. Isn’t my husband coming to supper, Vlacho?’

‘To supper here, my lady? Surely no. The great house is ready now. That is a more fitting place for my lady than this dog-hole. I am here to escort you there. There my lord will sup with you. Oh, it’s a grand house!’

‘A grand house!’ she echoed scornfully. ‘Why, what is there to see in it?’

‘Oh, many things,’ said Vlacho. ‘Yes, secrets, my lady! And my lord bids me say that from love to you he will show you to-night the great secret of his house. He desires to show his love and trust in you, and will therefore reveal to you all his secrets.’

When I, behind the curtain, heard the ruffian say this, I laid firmer hold on my lance. But the lady was equal to Vlacho.

‘You’re very melodramatic with your secrets,’ she said contemptuously. ‘I am tired, and my head aches. Your secrets will wait; and if my husband will not come and sup with me, I’ll sup alone here. Tell him I can’t come, please, Vlacho.’

‘But my lord was most urgent that you should come,’ said Vlacho.

‘I would come if I were well,’ said she.

‘But I could help you. If you would permit, I and my men would carry you down all the way on your couch.’

‘My good Vlacho, you are very tedious, you and your men. And my husband is tedious also, if he sent all these long messages. I am ill and I will not come. Is that enough?’

‘My lord will be very angry if I return alone,’ pleaded Vlacho humbly.

‘I’ll write a certificate that you did your best to persuade me,’ she said with a scornful laugh.

I heard the innkeeper’s heavy feet move a step or two across the floor. He was coming nearer to where she lay on the couch.

‘I daren’t return without you,’ said he.

‘Then you must stay here and sup with me.’

‘My lord does not love to be opposed.’

‘Then, my good Vlacho, he should not have married me,’ she retorted.

She played the game gallantly, fencing and parrying with admirable tact, and with a coolness wonderful for a woman in such peril. My heart went out to her, and I said to myself that she should not want any help that I could give.

She had raised her voice on the last words, and her defiant taunt rang out clear and loud. It seemed to alarm Vlacho.

‘Hush, not so loud!’ he said hastily. There was the hint of a threat in his voice.

‘Not so loud!’ she echoed. ‘And why not so loud? Is there harm in what I say?’

I wondered at Vlacho’s sudden fright. The idea shot into my head – and the idea was no pleasant one – that there must be people within earshot, perhaps people who had not been trusted with Constantine’s secrets, and would, for that reason, do his bidding better.

‘Harm! No, no harm; but no need to let every one hear,’ said Vlacho, confusedly and with evident embarrassment.

‘Every one? Who is here, then?’

‘I have brought one or two men to escort my lady,’ said he. ‘With these cut-throat Englishmen about’ (Bravo, bravo, Vlacho!) ‘one must be careful.’

A scornful laugh proclaimed her opinion of his subterfuge, and she met him with a skilful thrust.

‘But if they don’t know – yes, and aren’t to know that I am the wife of Constantine, how can I go to the house and stay with him?’ she asked.

‘Oh,’ said he, ready again with his plausible half-truths, ‘that is one of the secrets. Must I tell my lady part of it? There is an excellent hiding-place in the house, where my lord can bestow you most comfortably. You will want for nothing, and nobody will know that you are there, except the few faithful men who have guarded you here.’

‘Indeed, if I am still to be a stowaway, I’ll stay here,’ said she. ‘If my lord will announce me publicly to all the island as his wife, then I will come and take my place at the head of his house; but without that I will not come.’

‘Surely you will be able to persuade him to that yourself,’ said Vlacho. ‘But dare I make conditions with my lord?’

‘You will make them in my name,’ she answered. ‘Go and tell him what I say.’

A pause followed. Then Vlacho said in sullen obstinate tones:

‘I’ll not go without you. I was ordered to bring you, and I will. Come.’

I heard the sudden rustle of her dress as she drew back; then a little cry: ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘You must come,’ said Vlacho. ‘I shall call my men and carry you.’

‘I will not come,’ she said in a low voice, resolute and fierce.

Vlacho laughed. ‘We’ll see about that,’ said he, and his heavy steps sounded on the floor.

‘What are you going to the window for?’ she cried.

‘To call Demetri and Kortes to help me,’ said he; ‘or will you come?’

I drew back a pace, resting against the windowsill. Hogvardt’s lance was protruded before me. At that moment I asked nothing better than to bury its point in the fat innkeeper’s flesh.

‘You’ll repent it if you do what you say,’ said she.

‘I shall repent it more if I don’t obey my lord,’ said Vlacho. ‘See, my hand is on the curtains. Will you come, my lady?’

‘I will not come,’ said she.

There was one last short interval. I heard them both breathing, and I held my own breath. My revolver rested in my pocket; the noise of a shot would be fatal. With God’s help I would drive the lance home with one silent sufficient thrust. There would be a rogue less in the world and another chance for her and me.

‘As you will, then,’ said the innkeeper.

The curtain-rings rattled along the rod; the heavy hangings gave back. The moon, which was newly risen, streamed full in Vlacho’s eyes and on the pale strained face behind him. He saw me; he uttered one low exclamation: ‘Christ!’ His hand flew to his belt. He drew a pistol out and raised it; but I was too quick for him. I drove the great hunting-knife on the end of the sapling full and straight into his breast. With a groan he flung his arms over his head and fell sideways, half-supported by the curtain till the fabric was rent away from the rings and fell over his body, enveloping him in a thick pall. I drew my lance back. The force of the blow had overstrained Hogvardt’s wire fastenings; the blade was bent to an angle with the shaft and shook loosely from side to side. Vlacho’s blood began to curl in a meandering trickle from beneath the curtain. Madame Stefanopoulos glared at me, speechless. But my eyes fell from her to the floor; for there I saw two long black shadows. A sudden and desperate inspiration seized me. She was my ally, I hers. If both were held guilty of this act we could render no service to each other. If she were still unsuspected – and nobody except myself had heard her talk with Vlacho – she might yet help herself and me.

‘Throw me over,’ I whispered in English. ‘Cry for help.’

‘What?’

‘Cry. The men are there. You may help me afterwards.’

‘What, pretend – ?’

‘Yes. Quick.’

‘But they’ll – ’

‘No, no. Quick, for God’s sake, quick!’

‘God help us,’ she whispered. Then she cried loudly, ‘Help! help! help!’

I sprang towards her. There was the crash of a man leaping through the open window. I turned. Behind him I saw Demetri standing in the moonlight. Other figures hurried up; feet pattered on the hard ground. The man who had leaped in – a very tall, handsome and athletic fellow, whom I had not seen before – held to my head a long old-fashioned pistol. I let my hands drop to my side and faced him with a smile on my lips. It must be death to resist – death to me and death to my new friend; surrender might open a narrow way of safety.

‘I yield,’ said I.

‘Who are you?’ he cried.

‘I am Lord Wheatley,’ I answered.

‘But did you not fly to the – ?’ He stopped.

‘To the passage?’ said I. ‘No, I came here. I was trying to escape. I came in while Madame here was asleep and hid behind the curtain.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said she. ‘It is so, Kortes, it is as he says; and then Vlacho came – ’

‘And,’ said I, ‘when the lady had agreed to go with Vlacho, Vlacho came to the window to call you; and by misadventure, sir, he came on me behind the curtain. And – won’t you see whether he’s dead?’

‘Kill him, Kortes, kill him!’ cried Demetri, fiercely and suddenly, from the window.

Kortes turned round.

‘Peace!’ said he. ‘The man has yielded. Do I kill men who have yielded? The Lady of the island and my Lord Constantine must decide his fate; it is not my office. Are you armed, sir?’

It went to my heart to give up that last treasured shot of mine. But he was treating me as an honourable man. I handed him my revolver with a bow, saying:

‘I depend on you to protect me from that fellow and the rest till you deliver me to those you speak of.’

‘In my charge you are safe,’ said Kortes, and he stooped down and lifted the curtain from Vlacho’s face. The innkeeper stirred and groaned. He was not dead yet. Kortes turned round to Demetri.

‘Stay here and tend him. Do what you can for him. When I am able, I will send aid to him; but I don’t think he will live.’

Demetri scowled. He seemed not to like the part assigned to him.

‘Are you going to take this man to my Lord Constantine?’ he asked. ‘Leave another with Vlacho, and let me come with you to my lord.’

‘Who should better stay with Vlacho than his nephew Demetri?’ asked Kortes with a smile. (This relationship was a new light to me.) ‘I am going to do what my duty is. Come, no questioning. Do not I command, now Vlacho is wounded?’

‘And the lady here?’ asked Demetri.

‘I am not ordered to lay a finger on the lady,’ answered Kortes. ‘Indeed I don’t know who she is.’

Francesca interposed with great dignity:

‘I will come with you,’ said she. ‘I have my story to tell when this gentleman is put on his trial. Who I am you will know soon.’

Demetri had climbed in at the window. He passed me with a savage scowl, and I noticed that one side of his head was bound with a bloodstained bandage. He saw me looking at it.

‘Aye,’ he growled, ‘I owe you the loss of half an ear.’

‘In the passage?’ I hazarded, much pleased.

‘I shall pay the debt,’ said he, ‘or see it paid handsomely for me by my lord.’

‘Come,’ said Kortes, ‘let us go.’

Fully believing that the fact of Kortes being in command instead of Demetri had saved me from instant death, I was not inclined to dispute his orders. I walked out of the house and took the place he indicated to me in the middle of a line of islanders, some ten or twelve in number. Kortes placed himself by my side, and Madame Stefanopoulos walked on his other hand. The islanders maintained absolute silence. I followed their example, but my heart (I must confess) beat as I waited to see in what direction our column was to march. We started down the hill towards the house. If we were going to the house I had perhaps twenty minutes to live, and the lady who was with us would not long survive me. In vain I scanned Kortes’s comely grave features. He marched with the impassive regularity of a grenadier and displayed much the same expressionless steadiness of face. Nearer to the fatal house we came; but my heart gave a sudden leap of hope and excitement, for Kortes cried softly, ‘To the right.’ We turned down the path that led up from the town, leaving the house on the left. We were not going straight to death then, and every respite was pregnant with unforeseen chances of escape. I touched Kortes on the shoulder.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘To the town,’ he answered.

Again in silence we pursued our way down the hillside. The path broadened and the incline became less steep; a few lights twinkled from the sea, which now spread before us. Still we went on. Then I heard the bell of a church strike twelve. The strokes ended, but another bell began to ring. Our escort stopped with one accord. They took off their caps and signed the cross on their breasts. Kortes did the same as the rest. I looked at him in question, but he said nothing till the caps were replaced and we were on our way again. Then he said:

‘To-day is the feast of St Tryphon. Didn’t you know?’

‘No,’ said I. ‘St Tryphon I know, but his feast is not kept always on this day.’

‘Always on this day in Neopalia,’ he answered, and he seemed to look at me as though he were asking me some unspoken question.

The feast of St Tryphon might have interested me very much at any ordinary time, but just now my study of the customs of the islanders had been diverted into another channel, and I did not pursue the subject. Kortes walked in silence some little way farther. We had now reached the main road and were descending rapidly towards the town. I saw again the steep narrow street, empty and still in the moonlight. We held on our way till we came to a rather large square building, which stood back from the road and had thus escaped my notice when we passed it on the evening of our arrival. Before this Kortes halted. ‘Here you must lodge with me,’ said he. ‘Concerning the lady I have no orders.’

Madame Stefanopoulos caught my arm.

‘I must stay too,’ said she. ‘I can’t go back to my house.’

‘It is well,’ said Kortes calmly. ‘There are two rooms.’

The escort ranged themselves outside the building, which appeared to be either a sort of barrack or a place of confinement. We three entered. At a sign from Kortes, Madame Stefanopoulos passed into a large room on the right. I followed him into a smaller room, scantily furnished, and flung myself in exhaustion on a wooden bench that ran along the wall. For an instant Kortes stood regarding me. His face seemed to express hesitation, but the look in his eyes was not unfriendly. The bell, which had continued to ring till now, ceased. Then Kortes said to me in a low voice:

‘Take courage, my lord. For a day you are safe. Nor even Constantine would dare to kill a man on the feast of St Tryphon.’

Before I could answer he was gone. I heard the bolt of the door run home. I was a prisoner.

Yet I took courage as he bade me. Four-and-twenty hours’ life was more than I had been able to count on for some time past. So I also doffed my hat in honour of the holy St Tryphon. And presently I lifted my legs on to the bench, took off my coat and made a pillow of it, and went to sleep.

CHAPTER X

THE JUSTICE OF THE ISLAND

Helplessness brings its own peculiar consolation. After a week’s planning and scheming what you will do to the enemy, it is a kind of relief to sit with hands in pockets and wonder what the enemy may be pleased to do with you. This relaxation was vouchsafed to my brain when I awoke in the morning and found the sun streaming into the whitewashed cell-like room. It was the feast of St Tryphon, all praise to him! Kortes said that I could not be executed that day. I doubted Constantine’s scruples; yet probably he would not venture to outrage the popular sentiment of Neopalia. But nothing forbade my execution to-morrow. Well, to-morrow is to-morrow, and to-day is to-day, and there will be that difference between them so long as the world lasts. I stretched myself and yawned luxuriously. I was, strangely enough, in a hopeful frame of mind. I made sure that Denny had found his way safely, and that the Cypriote fishermen had been benevolent. I proved to myself that with Constantine’s exposure his power would end. I plumed myself on having put Vlacho hors de combat. I believe I said to myself that villainy would not triumph, that honest men would come by their own, and that unprotected beauty would find help from heaven: convictions which showed that relics of youth hung about me, and (I am afraid it depends on this rather) that I was feeling very well after my refreshing sleep.

Alas, my soothing reveries were rudely interrupted.

 

‘At a touch sweet pleasure melteth,

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth!’

 

And at the sound of a gruff voice outside my dreams melted: harsh reality was pressing hard on me again, crushing hope into resignation, buoyancy into a grim resolve to take what came with courage.

‘Bring him out,’ cried the voice.

‘It’s that brute Demetri,’ said I to myself, wondering what had become of my friendly gaoler, Kortes.

A moment later half-a-dozen men filed into the room, Demetri at their head. I asked him what he wanted. He answered only with a command that I should get up. ‘Bring him along,’ he added to his men; and we walked out into the street.

Evidently Neopalia was en fête. The houses were decked with flags; several windows exhibited pictures of the Saint. Women in their gay and spotlessly clean holiday attire strolled along the road, holding their children by the hand. Everybody made way for our procession, many whispers and pointed fingers proving the interest and curiosity which it was my unwilling privilege to arouse. For about a quarter of a mile we mounted the road, then we turned suddenly down to the left and began to descend again towards the sea. Soon now we arrived at the little church whose bell I had heard. Here we halted; and presently another procession appeared from the building. An old white-bearded man headed it, carrying a large picture of St. Tryphon. The old man’s dress was little different from that of the rest of the islanders, but he wore the gown and cap of a priest. He was followed by some attendants; the women and children fell in behind him, three or four cripples brought up the rear, praying as they went, and stretching out their hands towards the sacred picture which the old man carried. At a sign from Demetri we also put ourselves in motion again, and the whole body of us thus made for the seashore. But some three hundred yards short of the water I perceived a broad level space, covered with short rough turf and surrounded for about half its circuit by a crescent-shaped bank two or three feet high. On this bank sat some twenty people, and crowded in front of it was the same ragged picturesque company of armed peasants that I had seen gather in the street on the occasion of our arrival. The old man with the picture made his way to the centre of the level ground. Thrice he raised the picture towards the sky, every one uncovering his head and kneeling down the while. He began to pray, but I did not listen to what he said; for by this time my attention had wandered from him and was fixed intently on a small group which occupied the centre of the raised bank. There, sitting side by side, with the space of a foot or so between them, were Phroso and her cousin Constantine. On a rude hurdle, covered with a rug, at Constantine’s feet lay Vlacho, his face pale and his eyes closed. Behind Phroso stood my new acquaintance, Kortes, with one hand on the knife in his girdle and the other holding a long gun, which rested on the ground. One figure I missed. I looked round for Constantine’s wife, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then I looked again at Phroso. She was dressed in rich fine garments of white, profusely embroidered, but her face was paler even than Vlacho’s, and when I sought her eyes she would not meet mine, but kept her gaze persistently lowered. Constantine sat motionless, with a frown on his brow but a slight smile on his lips, as he waited with an obviously forced patience through the long rigmarole of the old man’s prayer.

Evidently important business was to be transacted; yet nobody seemed to be in a hurry to arrive at it. When the old priest had finished his prayers the cripples came and prostrated themselves before the sacred picture. No miracle, however, followed; and the priest took up the tale again, pouring forth a copious harangue, in which I detected frequent references to ‘the barbarians’ – a term he used to denote my friends, myself, and all the world apparently, except the islanders of Neopalia. Then he seated himself between Phroso and Constantine, who made room for him. I was surprised to see him assume so much dignity, but I presumed that he was treated with exceptional honour on the feast day. When he had taken his place, about twenty of the men came into the middle of the ring and began to dance, arranging themselves in a semicircle, moving at first in slow rhythmical steps, and gradually quickening their motions till they ended with a wonderful display of activity. During this performance Phroso and Constantine sat still and impassive, while Vlacho’s lifeless face was scorched by the growing heat of the sun. The men who had been told off to watch me leaned on their long guns, and I wondered wearily when my part in this strangely mixed ceremony was to begin.

At last it came. The dance ended, the performers flung themselves fatigued on the turf, there was a hush of expectation, and the surrounding crowd of women and children drew closer in towards where the rest of the men had taken up their position in ranks on either side of the central seats. ‘Step forward,’ said one of my guards, and I, obeying him, lifted my hat and bowed to Phroso. Then replacing my hat, I stood waiting the pleasure of the assembly. All eyes were fixed on Constantine, who remained seated and silent yet a little while longer. Then he rose slowly to his feet, bowed to Phroso, and pointed in a melodramatic fashion at Vlacho’s body. But I was not in the least inclined to listen to an oration in the manner of Mark Antony over the body of Cæsar, and just as Constantine was opening his mouth I observed loudly:

‘Yes, I killed him, and the reason no man knows better than Constantine Stefanopoulos.’

Constantine glared at me, and, ignoring the bearing of my remark, launched out on an eulogium of the dead innkeeper. It was coldly received. Vlacho’s virtues were not recognised by any outburst of grief or indignation; indeed there was a smothered laugh or two when Constantine called him ‘a brave true man.’ The orator detected his failure and shifted his ground dexterously, passing on, in rapid transition, to ask in what quarrel Vlacho had died. Now he was gripping his audience. They drew closer; they became very still; angry and threatening glances were bent on me. Constantine lashed himself to fury as he cried, ‘He died for our island, which this barbarian claims as his!’

‘He died – ’ I began; but a heavy hand on my shoulder and the menace of a knife cut short my protest. Demetri had come and taken his stand by me, and I knew that Demetri would jump at the first excuse to make my silence perpetual. So I held my peace, and the men caught up Constantine’s last point, crying angrily, ‘Ay, he takes our island from us.’

‘Yes,’ said Constantine, ‘he has taken our island, and he claims it for his. He has killed our brethren and put our Lady out of her inheritance. What shall he suffer? For although we may not kill on St Tryphon’s day, we may judge on it, and the sentence may be performed at daybreak to-morrow. What shall this man suffer? Is he not worthy of death?’

It was what lawyers call a leading question, and it found its expected answer in a deep fierce growl, of ‘Death, death!’ Clearly the island was the thing, Vlacho’s death merely an incidental affair of no great importance. I suppose that Phroso understood this as well as I, for now she rose suddenly. Constantine seemed disinclined to suffer the interruption; but she stood her ground firmly, though her face was very pale, and I saw her hands tremble. At last he sank back on to the bank.

‘Why this turmoil?’ she asked. ‘The stranger did not know our customs. He thought that the island was his by right, and when he was attacked he defended himself. I pray you may all fight as bravely as he has fought.’

‘But the island, the island!’ they cried.

‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I also love the island. Well, he has given back the island to me. Behold his writing!’ She held up the paper which I had given to her and read the writing aloud in a clear voice. ‘What have you against him now?’ she asked. ‘His people have loved the Hellenes. He has given back the island. Why shall he not depart in peace?’

The effect was great. The old priest seized the paper and scanned it eagerly: it was snatched from him and passed rapidly from hand to hand, greeted with surprised murmurs and intense excitement. Phroso stood watching its progress. Constantine sat with a heavy scowl on his face, and the frown grew yet deeper when I smiled at him with pleasant urbanity.

‘It is true,’ said the priest, with a sigh of relief. ‘He has given back the island. He need not die.’

Phroso sat down; a sudden faintness seemed to follow on the strain, and I saw Kortes support her with his arm. But Constantine was not beaten yet. He sprang up and cried in bitterly scornful tones:

‘Ay, let him go – let him go to Rhodes and tell the Governor that you sought to slay him and his friends, and that you extorted the paper from him by threat of death, and that he gave it in fear, but did not mean it, and that you are turbulent murderous men who deserve great punishment. How guileless you are, O Neopalians! But this man is not guileless. He can delude a girl. He can delude you also, it seems. Ay, let him go with his story to the Governor at Rhodes, and do you hide in the rocks when the Governor comes with his soldiers. Hide yourselves, and hide your women, when the soldiers come to set this man over your island and to punish you! Do you not remember when the Governor came before? Is not the mark of his anger branded on your hearts?’

Hesitation and suspicion were aroused again by this appeal. Phroso seemed bewildered at it and gazed at her cousin with parted lips. Angry glances were again fixed on me. But the old priest rose and stretched out his hand for silence.

‘Let the man speak for himself,’ he said. ‘Let him tell us what he will do if we set him free. It may be that he will give us an oath not to harm us, but to go away peaceably to his own land and leave us our island. Speak, sir. We will listen.’

I was never much of a hand at a speech, and I did not enjoy being faced with the necessity of making one which might have such important results this way or that. But I was quite clear in my own mind what I wanted to say; so I took a step forward and began:

‘I bear you Neopalians no malice,’ said I. ‘You’ve not succeeded in hurting me, and I suppose you’ve not caught my friends, or they would be here, prisoners as I am a prisoner. Now I have killed two good men of yours, Vlacho there, and Spiro. I am content with that. I’ll cry you quits. I have given back the island to the Lady Euphrosyne; and what I give to a woman – ay, or to a man – I do not ask again either of a Governor or of anybody else. Therefore your island is safe, and I will swear to that by what oath you will. And, so far as I have power, no man or woman of all who stand round me shall come to any harm by reason of what has been done; and to that also I will swear.’

They had heard me intently, and they nodded in assent and approbation when the old priest, true to his part of peacemaker, looking round, said:

‘He speaks well. He will not do what my lord feared. He will give us an oath. Why should he not depart in peace?’

Phroso’s eyes sought mine, and she smiled sadly. Constantine was gnawing his finger nails and looking as sour as a man could look. It went to my heart to go on, for I knew that what I had to say next would give him another chance against me; but I preferred that risk to the only alternative.

‘Wait,’ said I. ‘An oath is a sacred thing, and I swore an oath when I was there in the house of the Stefanopouloi. There is a man here who has done murder on an old man his kinsman, who has contrived murder against a woman, who has foully deceived a girl. With that man I’ll not cry quits; for I swore that I would not rest till he paid the penalty of his crimes. By that oath I stand. Therefore, when I go from here, I shall, as Constantine Stefanopoulos has said, go to Rhodes and to the Governor, and I shall pray him to send here to Neopalia, and take that one man and hang him on the highest tree in the island. And I will come with the Governor’s men and see that thing done. Then I will go peaceably to my own land.’

There was a pause of surprise. Constantine lifted his lids and looked at me; I saw his hand move towards a pocket. I suspected what lay in that pocket. I heard low eager whisperings and questions. At last the old priest asked in a timid hesitating voice:

‘Who is this man of whom you speak?’

‘There he is,’ said I. ‘There – Constantine Stefanopoulos.’

The words were hardly out when Demetri clapped a large hairy hand across my mouth, whispering fiercely, ‘Hold your tongue.’ I drew back a step and struck him fairly between the eyes. He went down. A hoarse cry rose from the crowd; but in an instant Kortes had leapt from where he stood behind Phroso and was by my side. I had some adherents also among the bystanders; for I had been bidden to speak freely, and Demetri had no authority to silence me.

‘Yes, Constantine Stefanopoulos,’ I cried. ‘Did he not stab the old man after he had yielded? Did he not – ’

‘The old man sold the island,’ growled a dozen low fierce voices; but the priest’s rose high above them.

‘We are not here to judge my Lord Constantine,’ said he, ‘but this man here.’

‘We all had a hand in the business of the old man,’ said Demetri, who had picked himself up and was looking very vicious.

‘You lie, and you know it,’ said I hotly. ‘He had yielded, and the rest had left off attacking him; but Constantine stabbed him. Why did he stab him?’

There came no answer, and Constantine caught at this advantage.

‘Yes,’ he cried. ‘Why? Why should I stab him? He was stabbed by some one who did not know that he had yielded.’ Then I saw his eye fall suddenly on Vlacho. Dead men tell no tales and deny no accusations.

‘Since Vlacho is dead,’ Constantine went on with wonderful readiness, ‘my tongue is loosed. It was Vlacho who, in his hasty zeal, stabbed the old man.’

He had gained a point by this clever lie, and he made haste to press it to the full against me.

‘This man,’ he exclaimed, ‘will go to Rhodes and denounce me! But did I kill the old man alone? Did I besiege the Englishman alone? Will the Governor be content with one victim? Is it not one head in ten when he comes to punish? Men of the island, it is your lives and my life against this man’s life!’

They were with him again, and many shouted:

‘Let him die! Let him die!’

Then suddenly, before I could speak, Phroso rose, and, stretching out her hands towards me, said:

‘Promise what they ask, my lord. Save your own life, my lord. If my cousin be guilty, heaven will punish him.’

But I did not listen even to her. With a sudden leap I was free from those who held me; for, in the ranks of listening women, I saw that old woman whom we had found watching by the dying lord of the island. I seized her by the wrist and dragged her into the middle, crying to her:

‘As God’s above you, tell the truth. Who stabbed the old lord? Whose name did he utter in reproach when he lay dying?’

She stood shivering and trembling in the centre of the throng. The surprise of my sudden action held them all silent and motionless.

‘Did he not say “Constantine! You, Constantine”?’ I asked, ‘just before he died?’

The old woman’s lips moved, but no sound came; she was half dead with fear and fastened fascinated eyes on Constantine. He surveyed her with a rigid smile on his pale face.

‘Speak the truth, woman,’ I cried. ‘Speak the truth.’

‘Yes, speak the truth,’ said Constantine, his eyes gleaming in triumph as he turned a glance of hatred on me. ‘Tell us truly who killed my uncle.’

My witness failed me. The terror of Constantine, which had locked her tongue when I questioned her at the house, lay on her still: the single word that came from her trembling lips was ‘Vlacho.’ Constantine gave a cry of triumph, Demetri a wild shout; the islanders drew together. My chance looked black. Even St Tryphon would hardly save me from immediate death. But I made another effort.

‘Swear her on the sacred picture,’ I cried. ‘Swear her on the picture. If she swears by the picture, and then says it was Vlacho, I am content to die as a false accuser, and to die here and now.’

My bold challenge won me a respite: it appealed to their rude sense of justice and their strong leaven of superstition.

‘Yes, let her swear on the sacred picture,’ cried several. ‘Then we shall know.’

The priest brought the picture to her and swore her on it with great solemnity. She shook her head feebly and fell to choked weeping. But the men round her were resolute, one of them menacing even Constantine himself when he began to ask whether her first testimony were not enough.

‘Now you are sworn, speak,’ said the priest solemnly.

A hush fell on us all. If she answered ‘Constantine,’ my life still hung by a thread; but by saying ‘Vlacho’ she would cut the thread. She looked at me, at Constantine, then up to the sky, while her lips moved in rapid whispered prayers.

‘Speak,’ said the priest to her gently.

Then she spoke in low fearful tones.

‘Vlacho was there, and his knife was ready. But my lord yielded, and cried that he would not sell the island. When they heard that they drew back, Vlacho with the rest. But my Lord Constantine struck; and when my lord lay dying it was the name of Constantine that he uttered in reproach.’ And the old woman reeled and would have fallen, and then flung herself on the ground at Constantine’s feet, crying, ‘Pardon, my lord, pardon! I could not swear falsely on the picture. Ah, my lord, mercy, mercy!’

But Constantine, though he had, as I do not doubt, a good memory for offences, could not afford to think of the old woman now. One instant he sat still, then he sprang to his feet, crying:

‘Let my friends come round me! Yes, if you will, I killed the old man. Was not the deed done? Was not the island sold? Was he not bound to this man here? The half of the money had been paid! If he had lived, and if this man had lived, they would have brought soldiers and constrained us. So I slew him, and therefore I have sought to kill the stranger also. Who blames me? If there be any, let him stand now by the stranger, and let my friends stand by me. Have we not had enough talk? Is it not time to act? Who loves Neopalia? Who loves me?’

While he spoke many had been gathering round him. With every fresh appeal more flocked to him. There were but three or four left now, wavering between him and me, and Kortes alone stood by my side.

‘Are you children, that you shrink from me because I struck a blow for our country? Was the old man to escape and live to help this man to take our island? Yes, I, Constantine Stefanopoulos, though I was blood of his blood – I killed him. Who blames me? Shall we not finish the work? There the stranger stands! Men of the island, shall we not finish the work?’

‘Well, it’s come at last,’ thought I to myself. St. Tryphon would not stop it now. ‘It’s no use,’ I said to Kortes. ‘Don’t get yourself into trouble!’ Then I folded my arms and waited. But I do not mean to say that I did not turn a little pale. Perhaps I did. At any rate I contrived to show no fear except in that.

The islanders looked at one another and then at Constantine. Friend Constantine had been ready with his stirring words, but he did not rush first to the attack. Besides myself there was Kortes, who had not left his place by me, in spite of my invitation to him. And Kortes looked as though he could give an account of one or two. But the hesitation among Constantine’s followers did not last long. Demetri was no coward at all events, although he was as big a scoundrel as I have known. He carried a great sword which he must have got from the collection on the walls of the hall; he brandished it now over his head and rushed straight at me. It seemed to be all over, and I thought that the best I could do was to take it quietly; so I stood still. But on a sudden I was pulled back by a powerful arm. Kortes flung me behind him and stood between me and Demetri’s rush. An instant later ten or more of them were round Kortes. He struck at them, but they dodged him. One cried, ‘Don’t hurt Kortes,’ and another, running agilely round, caught his arms from behind, and, all gathering about him, they wrested his weapons from him. My last champion was disarmed; he had but protracted the bitterness of death for me by his gallant attempt. I fixed my eyes steadily on the horizon and waited. The time of my waiting must have been infinitesimal, yet I seemed to wait some little while. Then Demetri’s great sword flashed suddenly between me and the sky. But it did not fall. Another flash came – the flash of white, darting across between me and the grim figure of my assailant – and Phroso, pale, breathless, trembling in every limb, yet holding her head bravely, and with anger gleaming in her dark eyes, cried:

‘If you kill him you must kill me; I will not live if he dies.’

Even Demetri paused; the rest gave back. I saw Constantine’s hatchet-face peering in gloomy wrath and trembling excitement from behind the protecting backs of his stout adherents. But Demetri, holding his sword poised for the stroke, growled angrily:

‘What is his life to you, Lady?’

Phroso drew herself up. Her face was away from me, but as she spoke I saw a sudden rush of red spread over her neck; yet she spoke steadily and boldly in a voice that all could hear:

‘His life is my life; for I love him as I love my life – ah, and God knows, more, more, more!’