Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/198

 "Did I not say it would be very good?" he murmured. "Oh, Mitsos, the black devils!"

He sat up and looked round, then pointed at the dead body of the Turk.

"I think I was stunned by the fall," he continued. "I remember falling and hitting my head an awful bang. So you shot him. Where is the other?"

He staggered to his feet and looked round at the millstone; it was streaked and clotted with something dark and oily, and its edges dripped with the same. Krinos's fingers, though he had been dead two minutes at the least, still opened and shut, like seaweed under the suck of a ground-swell, and the nails scratched impotently on the rough-splintered floor.

"We fell—he fell there," said Mitgos. "Come outside, Yanni. It is not good to stop here. Here, let me put my arm round you; you are unsteady yet."

Mitsos looked anxiously round as they got out, but no one was in sight. Yanni's mule had strayed into the field; und, after depositing his cousin against the wall, Mitsos went after it, and, muffling its bell with grass, led it round to the back of the mill, where Yanni was siiting. The latter was quickly recovering, but he felt his head ruefully.

"An awful bang!" he said. "Did he fire at me? My hair is burned."

"Yes," sald Mitsos, "and I at him. Fancy a soldier so bad a shot; but he was made silly at the sight of my pistol, I think. If he hadn't been a fool of a man he would have first fired at me; for, indeed, he had you safe. But I suppose there was no time to think."

"That was well for me," said Yanni.

Mitsos spat thoughtfully.

"Yanni," he said, "we must think very hard what we