Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/87

 quarter of an hour, and Mitsos and Maria between them had reduced the whole must to one consistency.

"It is ready now," he said to Mitsos; "raise the sluice."

The must had risen above the ring by which the slnice was raised at the lower end of the press, and Mitsos and Maria groped about for half a minute or so before they found it. Once they tightly grasped each other's fingers, and both exclaimed triumphantly, "I've got it."

Maria found it first; but the wood had swollen with the scouring of the day before and it was stiff, so Mitsos had to raise it himself. Then with a gurgle and a gulp the purple mass of pulp, jnice, stalks, and skins poured riotously out, splashing Constantine, and foaming into the cask with a lusty noise, When it was three-quarters full Mitsos closed the sluice again, for in the process of fermentation the must would swell to the top, and Constantine and Spero took the barrel, clucking as it was moved, off into the veranda out of the sun, and covered it with a cloth.

They all rested for an hour at mid-day, and ate their dinner in the shade of the poplar by the spring, The others had brought their food with them, with the oxception of Maria, who said she was not hungry and did not care to eat. But Mitsos, pausing for a moment in his own meal, saw her sitting close to him looking rather tired and fagged from the morning's work, and fetched her some bread and some fresh cheese, cool and sweet from the cellar, and Maria's want of appetite vanished before these things. After dinner they all lay down and dozed for that hour of fiercest heat, when, as the poet of the South says, "even the cicala is still," some in the veranda, some in the shade of the poplars. Mitsos was the first to wake, and he, under a stern sense of duty,