Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/240

 pose. If so, it could be worked from Andritsaena, and the priest there, at whose house Mitsos would find a warm welcome if he stayed for the night, would certainly undertake it.

Mitsos went off again the next day, with the solemn blessing of the archbishop in his ears and the tonch of kindly hands in his, and reached Megaspelaion in two days. Here he had news of Maria's safe arrival. "And a brave lass she is," said Father Priketes. The business of the beacons was soon explaincd, and next morning Father Priketes himself accompanied Mitsos on his journey to the top of the pass above the monastery, in order to satisfy himself that from there both the points fixed upon—that on the spur of Helmos, and also that towards Patras——were visible.

Their way lay through the pine-woods where Maria had come three days before, and a hundred little streams ran bubbling down through the glens, and the thick lush grass of the spring-time was starred with primroscs and sweet-smelling violets. Above that lay an upland valley, all in cultivation, and beyond a large, bleak plateau of rock, on the top of which the beacon was to burn. Another half-hour's climb saw them there, a strange, unfriendly place, with long parallel strata of gray rock, tipped by some primeval convulsion onto their side, and lying like a row of razors. In the hollows of the rocks the snow was still lying, but the place was alive with the whisper of new-born streams. A few pine-trees only were scattered over these gaunt surfaces, but in the shelter of them sprang scarlet wind-flowers and harebells, which shivered on their springlike stalks.

A few minutes' inspection was enough to show that the place was well chosen—to the south rose the great mass of Helios, and they could clearly see a sugarcone