Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/203

 soothe a child. "Drink some more wine, and then stop quiet a while. Go to sleep if you like."

Mitsos drank some wine, shifted to an easier position, and putting his head on Yanni's knee, who was leaning against a tree-trunk just above him, stretched out his great length, and in a couple of minutes was fast asleep. Yanni was not very comfortable, but he sat as still as a stone for fear of waking Mitsos. How odd it was, he thought to himself, that this great cousin of his should have behaved so queerly. He had been so perfectly cool and collected while there was anything to be done, but as soon as the need for doing anything was over he was just a baby. During his struggle with the Turk he remembered seeing Mitsos' face as he threw Krinos, and that mask of fury seemed to bear no resemblance to the cheerful cousin; he was like a wild beast. If anything had been wanting to put the final touch on Yanni's conviction that Mitsos was the king of men, it was that uprising of the wild beast within him.

The sun had come out as they sat there and shone full onto Mitsos' face, and Yanni, as gently as a woman, pushed his cap over his eyes that it should not waken him, and with infinite craft filled his pipe and managed to get a light from his flint and steel. He felt almost jealous of this girl whom Mitsos loved. It was not fit that he should go a-mooning after womankind, who were—so Yanni thought—an altogether inferior breed. It was Mitsos' business to fight, and do the work of fifty men. How splendid he had been one night at Kalamata, when they sat in the café after supper! The keeper of the house had tried to make Mitsos drunk, for the sport of seeing so long a pair of legs in mutiny, and had promised him that if he could drink two okes of wine he should not pay for them. This had suited Mit-