Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/181



was a morning to make the blood go blithely. There had been a slight frost during the night, und the rongh grass in the ditches was stiff and sprinkled with the powdered cold, and the air was brisk in the nostrils. To the right the ground fell away sheerly to the outlying hills bordering the plain, which lay unrolled beneath them like a colored map, with extraordinary clearness, in counties of yellow-green, where the corn was already springing, alternating with territories of good red earth, showing where the leafless vineyards stood. Beyond again lay the dim, dark blue of the sea, and across that, more guessed at than seen, the stencilled shapes of the hills beyond the gulf. Their path, a cobbled Turkish road, ascended steadily, skirting about the edges of the deep ravines, and making detours round the acuter slopes which rose above them to the top of the mountain ridge; and the mules ambled slowly along with their panniers of oranges on either side, while Mitsos and Yanni walked behind, dressed in their roughest peasant clothes, talking of the thonsand things of which boys talk. It took them nearly three hours to reach the foot of the last slope on which the village stood, and here they halted for half an hour to eat and drink, in order that they might pass straight through without waiting after giving the message.