Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/91

 Constantine cut all the grapes from the remaining vine. These he placed in the bowl and left in the middle of the vineyard for the birds to eat.

For the next two days the must required no attention, though the fermentation, owing to the heat of the weather, was going on very rapidly, and by the end of the second day the thin acrid smell mingled strongly with the garden scents. Once or twice Constantine raised the cloths which coyered the casks to see what progress it made, or drew a little from the tap at the bottom. But the stuff was still thick, and had not cleared sufficientiy to be disturbed yet.

On the second day Mitsos went off to get fresh resin for the wine. The ordinary pine resin was generally used by Greeks for this, but Constantine always preferred the resin from the dwarf pine, which was less bitter and finer in quality. The sides of Mount Elias were plentiful with the common pine, but the dwarf pine only grew on the hills round Epidaurus, a five hours' journey. Mitsos took his gun with him on the chance of sighting and slaying game, and started off on his pony before dawn, for the way wound over low, unsheltered hills, a daylong target for the sun; but before he reached the shoulder of mountain in which was cut the old grass-grown theatre, about which the dwarf pines grow, the sun, already high, had drawn up the heavy dews of the night before, and the air was quivering with heat like a man in an ague fit. The growth of these pines was that of bushes rather than trees, some of them covering a space of ten yards sqnare, gnarl-trunked, and sprawling along the ground. On some dozen of them he selected a place near the root and cut off a piece of bark a few inches square in order that the resin might ooze from the lips of the wounded trunk, placing below each a flat