Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/224

 safety or what not, why the feast, as my cousin Petroboy says, will be ready."

Nicholas sat silent a moment.

"Little Mitsos," he said, at length, "but you are no fool. I was one to say so."

Mitsos langhed.

"Will it do then?"

"It is of the best," said Nicholas,

The more Nicholas thought it over, the more incomparable did Mitsos' scheme appear. It was amazingly simple, and, as far as he could see, without a flaw. It seemed to solve every difficulty, and made the whole action of the primates as planned inevitable, It would be impossible for them to go to Tripoli, and by the time the demand for safety had reached Mehemet Salik, and been granted, they would have dispersed.

The second piece of business was to let them know at the monastery that their arms and men would not be needed, as Nicholas had expected, in the south, but fora simnitaneous ontbreak in the north; and there was also to be arranged some code of signals that could travel in an hour or two from ene end of the Peloponnesus to the other. The simplest system, that of beacon-fires, seemed to be the best, and was peculiarly well suited to a country like the Peloponnesus, where there were several ranges of mountains which overtopped the long intervening tracts of hills and valleys, and were clearly visible from one another. From Taygetus three intermediate beacons could probably carry news to the hills above Megaspelaion, and two beacons more to Patras.

There were, then, two messages to be conveyed to Megaspelaion—the first, that their arms would be required in the north, so that there was no need of their beginning to make depots of them southward, as Nicholas