440 THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP.

old stag. His eyes were heavy with tears; he wept blue and even
red tears; and there came a roebuck by, and said, ‘ What ails
thee, that thou weepest those blue and red tears?’ And the stag
answered, ‘The Turk has come to our city: he has wild dogs for
the chase, a goodly pack.’ ‘I will drive them away across the
islands,’ cried the young roebuck, ‘I will drive them away across
the islands into the deep sea!’ But before evening sank down
the roebuck was slain, and before night the stag was hunted and
dead.” And when my mother sang thus, her eyes became moist,
and on the long eyelashes hung a tear; but she hid it, and baked
our black bread in the ashes. Then I would clinch my fist and
cry, “We will kill the Turks!”

But she repeated from the song the words,

“I will drive them across the islands into the deep sea.’ But
before evening sank down the roebuck was slain, and before the
night came the stag was hunted and dead.”

For several days and nights we had been lonely in our hut, when
my father came home. 1 knew he would bring me shells from
the Gulf of Lepanto, or perhaps even a bright gleaming knife.
This time he brought us a child, a little half-naked girl, that he
carried under his sheep-skin cloak. It was wrapped in a fur, and
all that the little creature possessed when this was taken off, and
she lay in my mother’s lap, were three silver coins, fastened in her
dark hair. My father told us that the Turks had killed the child’s
parents; and he told us so much about them that I dreamed of
the Turks all night. He himself had been wounded, and my
mother bound up his arm, The wound was deep, and the thick
sheep-skin was stiff with frozen blood. The little maiden was to
be my sister. How radiantly beautiful she looked! Even my
mother’s eyes were not more gentle than hers. Anastasia, as she
was called, was to be my sister, because her father had been
united to mine by the old custom which we still keep. They had
sworn brotherhood in their youth, and chosen the most beautiful
and virtuous girl in the neighbourhood to consecrate their bond
of friendship. I often heard of the strange good custom,

So now the little girl ‘was my sister. She sat in my lap, and I
brought her flowers and the feathers of the mountain birds: we
drank together of the waters of Parnassus, and dwelt together for
many a year under the laurel roof of the hut, while my mother
sang winter after winter of the stag who wept red tears. But as
yet I did not understand that it was my own countrymen whose
many sorrows were mirrored in those tears.

One day there came three Frankish men. Their dress was
different from ours. They had tents and beds with them on their
horses, and more than twenty Turks, all armed with swords and
muskets, accompanied them ; for they were friends of the pasha,
and had letters from him commanding an escort for them. They
only came to see our mountains, to ascend Parnassus amid the