Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/25

 After the untimely death of Marco Bozaris at Karpenissi, my grand-uncle fought under other great leaders, until in turn, in the last three years of the revolution, he himself became a leader.

Of his own exploits he never spoke. He entrusted this task to posterity. It was of this and that other leader he loved to speak, and as his narrative progressed all the names which have immortalized the modern history of Greece passed before me—passed before me not as names from a book, but as men of flesh and blood, in their everyday aspects as well as in their heroic moments.

And I, seated on my little stool, with the big book I had brought him to read me still unopened on my lap, would listen enthralled, wishing that I might have lived when my uncle had, and might with him have kneeled in front of Marco Bozaris, to kiss the Greek flag, and to swear that I would do or die.

One day when he was more violent than usual against the Turks—when he almost wept at the thought of living under the Turkish yoke—an inspiration came to me.

"Uncle!" I cried, "why do we live here? Why don't we go to live where the Greek flag flies?"

Abruptly he stopped in his walk before me, his tall, thin figure erect, his eyes aflame.

"Go away from here?" he cried. "Go away