Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/158

 nearer, aud the two rose and moved a score of yards farther down the beach, for a footpath round the head of the buy to Nauplia led across the top of it. Then across the sound of the bell they could hear the pattering footsteps of the mule, and in a few minutes more it and its rider emerged from the path which lay through the vineyards onto the open ground at the head of the beach. Just then the rider checked his beast, dismounted, and tied some grass round the tongue of the bell in order to muffle it, and struck a light with a flint and steel which he caught in tinder, and blew it gently till it sufficed to light his short chibouk. His face was towards them, and in the glow of the kindled tobacco it stood out vividly from the dark. It was Nicholas.

He mounted again and rode on, but Mitsos sat still, breathing hard and vacantly, and seeing only Nicholas's face standing out like a ghost in the darkness. Suleima touched him gently on the arm.

"Who was it?" she said. "He did not see us."

"It was my uncle," said Mitsos, in a dry voice. "No, he did not see us."

Then his self-control gave way, and he flung himself back on the gronnd,

"I am afraid," he said—"I do not know what is going to happen. He has come for me. I know it."

"For you?" asked Suleima. "What do you mean?"

"I shall have to go," said Mitsos. "Holy Virgin, but I cannot. I know nothing about what he wants me to do. I only know that I may—that I shall have to go away; that I shall have to leave you and perhaps never see you aguin. Oh," he cried, "I cannot, I cannot!"

Suleima was frightened.

"Mitsos, do not talk like that," she said, half sobbing; "do not be so unkind."