the path shouted out to the other. The next moment they were in pursuit.
As he pushed through the trees that seemed to stretch out fingers to clutch him, Mitsos felt in his belt for the knife he always carried with him, but to his wondering dismay found it had gone. Never in his life could he remember being without it; but this was no season to waste time, and knowing that his only chance lay in running he plunged along through the bushes in order to get back to the path and match his speed against theirs. But his pursuers were close behind him, and in jumping, or trying to jump, a small thicket which closed his path, he caught his foot and fell.
Then came cold fear with a clutch. Before he had time to recover himself they had seized him. Once he let out with his right hand at the face of one of the men, who just avoided the blow, and then both wrists were seized. They whipped a cord round his legs, tied his hands behind his back, and carried him off straight to the tree from which the end of the rope and its ghastly legend were still hanging.
A third Turk was sitting there on the ground in the shadow smoking, and as the others came up he said a word to them in Turkish which Mitsos did not understand. Then one of his captors turned to him, and speaking in Greek, "Tell us where Nicholas Vidalis is," he said, "and we will let you go."
Silence.
"We know who you are. You are Mitsos Codones, the son of Constantine, from Nauplia, and he is your uncle."
Mitsos looked up.
"That is so. But I have not seen him for a year – more than a year," he said.
One of the men laughed.
"Tell us where he is," he said, "and we will let you go, and this for your information, for you were seen with him yesterday in Nauplia," and he held out a handful of piastres.
This time Mitsos laughed, though laughing was not in his thoughts, and the sound was strange to his own ears.
"That is a lie," he said; "he has not been at Nauplia for a year. As for your piastres, if you think I am telling you a lie, do you suppose that I should speak differently for the sake of them? Be damned to your piastres," and he laughed again.
"I will give you one minute," said the other, "and then you will hang from that tree if you do not tell us. One of your countrymen, I see, has cut the rope, but there will be enough for a tall boy like you."
They strolled away towards where the third man was sitting, leaving him there bound.
"Perhaps the end of the rope might help him to speak," said one. But the third man shook his head.
What Mitsos thought of during these few seconds he never clearly knew, and as far as he wished for anything, he wished them to be quick. He noticed that the edge of the moon was free of the clouds again, and it would soon be lighter. He felt a breeze come up from the east, which fluttered the rag of tunic hanging from the rope, and once a small bird, clucking and frightened, flew out of a thicket near. Then the two men came up and pulled him under the tree. The end of the piece of tunic flapped against his forehead.
They untied the rope, and the one made a noose in it, while the other turned back the collar of his coat. Then the rope was passed round his throat and tightened till he felt the knot behind, just where the hair grows short on the neck.
"One more chance," said the man. "Will you tell us?"
Mitsos had shut his eyes, and he clinched his teeth to help himself not to speak. For a moment they all waited, quite still.
"Then up with him," said the man.
He waited for the choking tension of the rope, still silent, still with clinched teeth and eyelids. But instead of that he felt two hands on his shoulders, and fingers at the knot behind, and he opened his eyes. The third man, who had been silent, was standing in front of him.
"Mitsos," he said, "my great little Mitsos."
For a moment the world spun dizzily round him, and he half fell, half staggered against Nicholas.
"You!" he said.
"Yes, I. Mitsos, will you forgive me? I ought to have been certain of you, and indeed in my heart I was; but I wanted to test you to the full, to put the fear of death before you, for it was needful that I should give convincing proof to others. My poor boy, don't tremble so; it was necessary, believe me. By the Virgin, Mitsos, if you had hit one hundredth part of a second sooner one of these men would have gone home with no nose and fewer teeth. You hit straight from the shoulder, with your weight in your fist. And that double you made up the hill was splendid. Mitsos, speak to me!"
But the boy, pale and trembling, had sunk down on the ground with bent head, and said nothing.
"Here, spirits," said Nicholas, and he made Mitsos drink.
He sat down by him, and with almost womanly tenderness was stroking his hair.
"You were as firm as a rock," he said, "when you stood there, and I saw the muscle of your jaw clinch."
Mitsos, to whom spirit was a new thing, recovered himself quickly with a little choking.
"I wasn't frightened at the moment," he said; "I was only frightened before, when I knew I was caught."
Then, as his boyish spirits began to reassert themselves, "Did I – did I behave all right, Uncle Nicholas?"
"I wish to see no better behavior. It is even as your father told me, that you were fit for the keeping of secrets."
Mitsos flushed with pleasure.
"Then I don't mind if it has made you think that, though, by the Virgin, my stomach was cold. But if I had had my knife there would have been blood let. I cannot think how I lost it."
Nicholas laughed.
"Here it is," he said. "It was even I who took it away from you while you were dozing as you rode. I thought it might be dangerous in your barbarous young hands."
Mitsos put it back in his belt.
"I am ready now. I shall start off again."
Nicholas rose, too.
"I will come with you as far as the plain, and then my road is forward. The piastres were a poor trick, eh?"
"Very poor indeed, I thought," said Mitsos, grinning.
The uncle and nephew walked on together, and the other two men strolled more slowly after them. Nicholas could have shouted aloud for joy. He had found what he had sought with such fastidiousness – some one whom he could trust unreservedly, and over whom he had influence. To do him justice, the cruelty of what he had done made his stomach turn against himself; but he was associated with men who rightly mistrusted everybody, except on convincing proof of their trustworthiness. Mitsos had stood the severest test that could be devised without flinching. He was one of ten thousand.
At the end of the woods they parted. Mitsos' nerve had come back to him, and the knowledge that he had won Nicholas's trust, combined with the fascination the man exercised over him, quite overscored any grudge he might have felt, for Nicholas's last words to him were words to be remembered.
"And now, good-bye," he said. "You have behaved in a way I scarce dared to hope you could, though I think I believed you would. You have been through a man's test, the test of a strong, faithful man. Others will soon know of it, and know you
