Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/165



August Nicholas had been travelling about the Peloponnesus, being received everywhere with a sober, secret welcome as one of the accredited leaders of the revolution. The Turks, through whose Kismet the truth of the ever-increasing rumors had begun to break, had long held him in indotent suspicion, but had taken no steps to counteract the report of his death, for they hoped—if Turks can be said to hope—somewhat ingeniously, but wholly mistakenly, that such news would prove to be a cooling dranght to this ill-defined fever of revolution. The Greeks, however, as Germanos had said, knew "that Nicholas was not the sort of man who died," and Turkish ingenuity went strangely wide of its aim. In fact, it enabled Nicholas to move about more freely, and to take liberal advantage of the fact that he was supposed to be beyond the reach of war and rumor of war, Indeed, in October, finding himself back at Corinth, where he had business with one of his fellow-workers, he had filled an idle afternoon with carving a little wooden cross on which he painted his name, and below, with a two-handed meaning, the text, "The trnmpet sball sound, and the dead shall be raised." He was to leave Corinth that night, and after the dark had fallen he and his host went to the Greek cemetery and planted this eloquent