Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/375

Rh with me. On mentioning this project to one of the highly respectable gentlemen who had recommended him to me, he let out that Manoli could not go quite where he liked about the Turkish empire; that, in fact, having been concerned in a little affair of vendetta some years ago at Cos, he was an outlaw. On making further inquiries, I learnt the particulars of the crime for which he had been so outlawed.

It happened that travelling in Cos about a year ago I slept one night at a wayside house, which stands near the sea-shore at some distance from any village. My host was a lonely old man, no companion but a daughter about nineteen years old. I asked if he had no other family, when he told me how, some years ago, while he was absent at Constantinople, two Calymniotes, one of whom had been his servant, landed at Cos suddenly in the night, and murdered his wife and all his children, except the daughter, who being then about nine years old hid herself under a rug. The murderers being alarmed at the approach of some neighbours, tried to make off before they had time to plunder the house; and, whether by design or accident, in the confusion of their flight one of them shot his accomplice and then escaped. "And what became of him?" I asked, and was told that he got back to Calymnos, that when the Turkish police came to arrest him, he concealed himself in the mountains with the connivance of the local authorities; and that he had remained at Calymnos ever since.

I little thought, when I listened to this tale of horror, that one of the perpetrators of the deed