A Shepherd of Arcadia

I

LAMBRO the shepherd had come down from the hills of Poros to the village, as he usually did on Sunday mornings. Under his long frieze cape he carried two little new-born kids, one under each arm. He had been told that a woman near the Rock of the Cross wanted them, and he was on his way to see if it were so. After that, when he should be free of his burden, he could exchange a few words with the men at the coffee-house and buy his provisions for the coming week, before returning to his sheep and goats in the stani high up on the hills, far above Boudouri’s monument.

Lambro was not a Poriote, but he was better known in the village than many a native. Old Louka who has the boats, Petro the hunchback shoemaker, and Kyr Apostoli the baker, all wished him good-day as he limped past, and even Kyr Vangheli the schoolmaster stopped in the midst of an animated political discussion with the doctor, to call out, ‘Health to you, Lambro.’

For twenty years now, ever since he had been a weakly child of seven, lamed long before that by the kick of a mule, Lambro had made the journey backward and forward from Valtetsi, his native village in Arcadia, to Poros, twice a year, with the flocks and the other shepherds.

Other changes might happen in the island, other customs fall into disuse, but from time immemorial the day of Saint Demetrius in October sees the shepherds and their flocks arrive in Poros and on the mainland opposite, for the winter months; and Saint George’s day in April, when Summer is close at hand, sees them start on their return to Arcadia. They come with their flocks, with their big fierce sheepdogs and their strong little horses laden with the long poles for building the winter huts on the top of the hills, and the goat’s-hair cloths which are thrown over the poles to form the roof and the walls; laden also with cocks and hens and chickens, as well as with all the primitive household utensils. They come, old men and young men, with their women and their children, from the big ones who can run and shout and help the dogs to keep the flocks together, to the babes slung in their leathern cradles over their mothers’ shoulders. They come in long straggling procession, some riding, some walking, some laden, some free; old women carrying in their arms newborn lambs which cannot keep up with the rest; young men striding along with their bright colored ’tagaria’; and before the mind’s eye rises unbidden the picture of the patriarchs of old, at the head of their tribe, moving with their tents and their flocks and ‘all their substance’ toward the land of Gilead.

Lambro’s mother had died at his birth, and his father had been accidentally shot before that, so he had never made the journey as an infant, but his uncles brought him along with the rest as soon as he could be of any use, and he remembered his old grandmother carrying him on her back when he was stiff from riding so long on the mule in their six days’ journey from Valtetsi, over the hills and the plains of Arcadia and Argolis.

As he grew older he grew stronger; the simple life always under the open sky, the good air of the hills, the strong race of which he came, all helped him, and by the time he was twelve years old, his uncles found him as useful as any lad of his age, in fact more so, Nature having gifted him with good brains and a good memory. He always limped very perceptibly, and at first the other lads used to tease him mercilessly about his crooked walk, but as time passed, they had thought it wise to leave him alone. If his leg was lame, his arms were strong! Now, at twentyseven, in his short linen kilt, so like the tunic of the ancients, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted round his dark head, long-limbed and broad-shouldered, he was a fine man, though a ‘marked one’ as he would say of himself with bitterness.

He had disposed of his kids, and was crossing the open market-place, when he met a woman in a black gown, with a black kerchief over her head, carrying a bundle of herbs in one hand and a small bottle of retsinato wine in the other. He looked at her, hesitated for a second, and then came to a sudden stop before her.

‘Good-day, Kyra Laskarina.’

‘Good-day, Lambro.’

‘Why in black?’

‘For the old man.’

‘Bah! When?’

‘Last week. We buried him on Tuesday. Did you not see the funeral crossing the Narrow Beach?’

‘I was on the other side of the hills that day. And of what did he die?’

‘Of nothing; of old age.’

‘Was he ill many days?’

‘ Many days! Why, he was quite well, and sat out in the sun all that same day. Only in the evening he would not eat . I cooked him some lappa but he scarcely touched it, and then he would not go to bed. “If I fall,” he said, “I may never rise again.” So he sat all night in his chair. I kept a little fire in the manghali and pulled my mattress there, so as to be near him if he wanted anything. When the day was dawning, he stirred once and said, “Chryssi,”—it was my mother-inlaw’s name you know, — and that was the end. He went out — like a candle. ’

‘Well, well, he had eaten his bread. Life to you, Kyra Laskarina!’

‘I thank you.’

‘Your man is well? — And the children?’

‘They are well. They salute you.’

‘And now that the old man is dead — the girl — your niece —?’

‘Francesca?’ replied the woman a little sharply, ‘She stays with us, of course. Where else should she stay?’

‘Of course — of course,’ assented Lambro hurriedly; then after a second, ‘Now that Easter is past, if you would like any yaourti, Kyra Laskarina, I have plenty.’

‘I thank you; since you are so good, I will send for some; my man likes it.'

‘Good-day, Kyra Laskarina.’

‘The good hour be with you, Lambro.’

Before he had taken many paces — the heavy lame paces which made the one shoulder dip below the other at each step — a girl holding a black kerchief loosely over her fair hair, ran past, nodding a smiling good-day to him as she went. She joined the woman and disappeared with her under the dark arch leading up to one of the rocky streets behind the market-place. Lambro turned round and followed her with his eyes as long as she was in sight.

It is true, most men in Poros did the same when she passed them; for Francesca, as they said, was as white as though the sun had never looked at her, and smiling always, and sweet-eyed, and her hair gleamed like ripe corn under her white kerchief, and you could look, and look, and never be satisfied. But Lambro frowned a little as he looked. Who was he to be gazing after a pretty maid? A marked man, a man set apart, — not as the others were. Had he not heard it often enough? Had he not grown up with its echo in his ears? He gave his shoulders a little impatient shake and passed on.

He had never been a man of many words, but the men found he had even less than usual, this fine spring morning, as he sat with them outside Sotiro’s coffee-house, before starting back for the hills. ‘Had the lambing season been successful this year?' ‘Not so bad.' ‘He would soon be returning to Arcadia again, would he not?’ ‘On Saint George’s day as usual.’ ‘His uncles had not come with the rest this year?’ ‘No; they were too old for the journey now.’ ‘And he had charge of all their sheep?’ ‘Yes; it was he. Who else? since God had given them no sons.’ ‘ But some of the sheep must be his own surely?’ ‘A few.’

At last, when they considered that they had said enough for good manners, they fell to talking of their own village matters: of Yoryi who was returning to America and taking his eldest son with him this time, of strangers who had come to the island for Easter, of the chances of a good oil year, and of Panayoti who had found trouble because he had begun his charcoal-burning without the written permission.

Lambro finished his black coffee, drank his glass of water, got slowly up from his chair, wished the men goodday and left them. His week’s provisions were soon bought and packed in his tagari, and it was not yet noon when he left the more populous part of the village behind him, and set out along the quay toward the Narrow Beach and the hills.

In the courtyard, set a little back from the sea-wall, he came upon Viola, the daughter of old Stamo, and her husband Mantho, sitting under the big pine that grows among the mulberries, playing with their little one. They called out good-day to him, and Viola asked him in to see the child, and to feel how heavy it was, but he said it was late and with a gruff, ‘May it live to you,’ he limped on, his head bent, and his long crook trailing behind him.

II

Up on the hills, on the afternoon of that same day, Lambro sat carving a new head for his glitsa, his long curved shepherd’s crook. He worked deftly enough, but his imagination did not soar beyond the time-honored design, the head of the very primitivelooking dragon, the scaly body, and the tail curled round and round itself.

His yellow sheep-dog, Mourgo, was stretched on the ground beside him, bruising hosts of tiny spring flowers with his big body and thereby bringing out the aromatic scent of the camomile. The higher slopes, with their velvety, pine-covered outline, rose behind the incline which sheltered the stani. The gray thyme bushes, that constantly recurring leitmotif of the Greek hills, were relieved here and there by the vivid green of the dog-onion, and the pink and mauve of the hill-rose bushes rising at this season out of a thick carpet of yellow brown-hearts, of honey-flowers, and of purple grape-hyacinths. The gray goats walked to and fro, picking and choosing among the fresh green shoots, their bells tinkling as they browsed.

Lambro smiled gravely as he worked, for on the rock beside him, her black kerchief fallen back from her shining hair, her hands clasped loosely on her knees, sat Francesca.

Her aunt had bethought herself of the promised yaourti, and Francesca had been sent up to the stani for it. Though early in April, it was hot climbing while the sun was still so high, and Lambro had advised a rest before she began the descent; so, nothing loth, she was resting.

About them was the silence of the heights, the silence which can be felt, the fragrant pine-scented silence, broken only by the liquid sound of the goat-bells, and now and then by the faint plash of a distant oar. Above them, one solitary little white cloud was resting on the uplifted knees of the Sleeper, and below them, very far below, was the sea.

And, oh, the blue of that island sea! The deep, transparent, liquid, purple blue! The blue that spreads as far as the eye can reach, that never turns gray or misty in the distance, nor mingles with the horizon, but ends in a distinct and yet a soft line. A line beyond which those who have eyes that divine, know that the blue goes on and on till it washes the shores of other islands and turns purple where their rocks dip into it.

‘So you have lost your grandfather?’

‘Yes, it was last week he died.’

‘And you grieved much for him?’

‘No,’ said the girl simply, looking up as she spoke, ‘I did not grieve. You see, it is long, now, that he has been as one who is again a child. He sat in the sun and talked to himself all day; often he did not know even us of his house, and you could not tell him anything. Also, my aunt had much work with him when I was out sewing and could not tend him, and sometimes it made the food late; then, when my uncle came, he would get angry; and that made quarrels and loud talk.’

‘Is not your uncle a good man?’

‘He is not bad, but he makes much noise and trouble like all men,’ answered the girl from the wide experience of her nineteen years. ‘Not all, though,’ she added after a moment. ‘My father — God rest his soul — was different.’

‘He was from another place, your father?’

‘Yes; he was from Zante. He came to Athens when he was young, and worked at a printing-office. We lived there when I was a child, but when he died, my mother came back here with me to her own people. But the next year she caught cold, when she was washing at the garden over there,’ — and Francesca pointed to a spot on the mainland where the trees grow down to the seashore, — ‘and in five days — she died!’

‘Life to you,’ said Lambro.

‘I thank you. She had never been ill before. In Athens she was always out washing at the big houses; even to the Palace she went, once! But my father was often ill, and I used to stay at home with him; and though I was but a little maid, he would talk to me, and tell me many things; so many things, that sometimes, now, I fear that I forget them.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Marino Bordoni. He showed me a big book once in which there was much writing; and in it he had also written my name, “My daughter Francesca, born on the seventh day of September, at the half hour after nine in the evening.”’

‘Your father must have been an orderly man.’

‘Yes; he kept all his things himself; and he had much learning; also, he was well born, he came of “a house.” His father, and his grandfather before him, had been lettered men; he knew all their names and those from whom they sprung. In Zante, you see, the Turks have never been, and nothing was destroyed, and all the papers and books were kept, so my father knew everything about his “house.” He told me that a great many years ago, long before the Revolution even, when the Venetians were still in the islands, the first one of his house who came from Venice and settled in Zante was the son of a man who painted beautiful pictures, much more beautiful than those in the churches, and that a king had asked him to go to his palace and paint some for him! My father said our name, Bordoni, was not written as it is now; that it has changed since then, a little.’

Lambro listened in silence. Ancestors, whether celebrated or not, were unknown luxuries in Poros, and in Valtetsi also. Sometimes one knew one’s grandfather’s name if he happened to have lived long, or if one were a first son and had been named after him; more often one did not.

‘My father,’ continued Francesca, ‘often said that if he had had a son, he would have used all the money from the last bit of land which he sold when he left Zante, to give him an education, so that he should bear the name; but I was only a girl; and a little one who died was a girl also. God did not give him a son.’

‘So he left the money of the land to you ? ’

‘He meant it for my dowry; but when my mother’s second brother, my uncle Yanni, went to America, he begged my father to give it to him, saying that he would make it twice as much; but he died there, and we never saw the money again. So now,’ and Francesca heaved a deep sigh, ‘ I have no dowry.’

‘That is a pity,’ said Lambro gravely; ‘your father should not have given the money. If he could help his brother-in-law it was well; but you were his child, and the first duty to womenchildren is to put aside something for their dowry.’

‘He did it that greater gain should come,’ replied Francesca, ‘and he loved me much, did my father; he tried to teach me many things himself, but my mother was always angry and threw away the books, and made me work in the house.’

‘That you should learn to be a good housewife, yes,’ said Lambro, ‘that is always needful; but it was a sin to throw away the books; learning is good, even for a maid. Why did not your father tell her to cease?’

‘My father was as I am; he did not like noise and many words.’

Lambro was silent. He came from Valtetsi, and he could not understand that a man should not be able to impose his will on a woman, nor that he should of his own accord abdicate the place of master in his own house, for the sake of peace.

‘ If my mother had lived longer — God rest her soul — we should have been two to work, and in time we should have put aside something for my dowry; some clothes at least, and perhaps the mattresses, and a chest of drawers; but now there is nothing.’

‘Your uncle—’ began Lambro.

‘My uncle can do nothing. I live with him of course, and there will always be a piece of bread and a mattress to lie on, but he is a poor man and he has his own children. For marriage — no — it will not be possible; I shall die a maid.’

Lambro seemed to have come to a hard knot in the wood; his short-handled knife went over and over the same part of the dragon’s tail, then it slipped from his hand and fell into a lentisk bush at his feet.

‘It is not always needful,’ he said slowly at length, ‘ to have a dowry, when a maid is a joy to look at — ’ He paused and turned away to reach for his knife; then with his face averted he finished the sentence, ‘as you are.’

Francesca laughed a little. ‘That is good to hear; but men always want a dowry as well. There is a girl who is staying at Kyra Sophoula’s, next door to us; she is a cousin of Yoryi the carpenter, Maroussa’s husband; and she came here from Piræus because she has been ill for a long time, to see if she would be better in the island. Well, she is whiter of skin than I am, and her hair is much fairer; but, for all that, she is to have five thousand drachmæ when she marries, besides all her clothes.’

Lambro was a simple man of the hills, and certainly knew nothing of the far-famed ‘Venetian gold’ which Francesca had inherited from her remote ancestors, but he was a Greek and certain comparisons came naturally to him.

‘Her hair may be fairer,’ he said, his head still bent over his work, ‘ but yours is golden as the sun when it is setting.’

Before she could answer, he laid aside the half-finished crook and rose to his feet. ‘Will you not eat?’ he added hurriedly. ‘It is a long way up here, and the bread is fresh; my cousin’s wife in the next stani baked it yesterday.’

Francesca nodded assent .

‘It is strange,’ she said, ‘but I am always hungry.’

‘That is a good thing,’ approved Lambro; and he laid before her the big black loaf, and yaourti heaped on a cracked plate; not the ordinary yaourti of the towns, which is sold in bowls, but the thick creamy yaourti of the shepherds, which is hung to drip in bags. He cast a glance at her clean cotton frock, and fetched from his hut an old newspaper which he spread awkwardly enough on her knees, under the plate.

‘You have newspapers up here?’ she asked with astonishment.

‘ I get one on Sundays always when I go to the village, and,’ he added, with conscious pride in his voice, ‘I have also three books in there; of those little ones which are the color of a brick, and cost forty lepta each; they teach you many things.’

‘Then you also have learning?’ said Francesca, as she broke off a piece of the black bread.

‘Not much; but the little I have,’touching the leg which was shorter than the other, ‘is the only good thing which I owe to this misfortune.’

Francesca dipped her bread into the creamy mass of the yaourti, and looked up at him with inquiring eyes.

‘You see,’he continued, ‘I was not as other boys were. Now,—glory be to God,— though I always remain a marked man, still I am strong; I walk crooked, but I walk far, and without, weariness. On the first day of the long journey, when we leave Valtetsi in the early dawn, and reach Yéress, where we sleep, at the setting of the sun, some of the others are often weary, for months have passed since they have walked for so many hours; but I am not weary; and when at the close of the fifth day of journeying, we come to the foot of the mountain of Ortholithi over there,’ and Lambro pointed to the West, ‘I am glad to lie down and sleep, — yes, — but weariness has not overpowered me. But when I was a child, I could not walk and run and climb rocks like the other lads, and they mocked at me.’

Francesca flushed hotly.

‘They were bad!’ she exclaimed.

‘Was it your fault that you could not run ? ’

‘It was not my fault, but it is so with boys always. We had an old schoolmaster in Valtetsi; he was a very old man; he had been a youth in the Revolution; he could scarcely see to read, but he was a good man, and they did not put a younger master in his place. It was always he who carried the flag going and coming from the Doxology on the twenty-fifth of March. Well, this master, Kyr Lazaros they called him, was good to me; he kept me by him when the other lads would not have me, and he taught me many things that they did not have time to learn. I have not much learning — no — but I can read easily, and sometimes up here it is a good thing.’

Francesca stood up and shook the bread crumbs from her dress, then she laid the empty plate on a flat stone beside her. Lambro went on dreamily, his eyes fixed on the hills of the mainland opposite, —

‘Sometimes I think that we of Valtetsi know more of those times of the Revolution than others, because of Kyr Lazaros. You see, he did not read about them; he remembered. When he talked we all understood what it meant to have been born in those days, and that those were real troubles, not our childish ones! He talked to us of fleeing from the Turks across the mountains for days and days, of hunger, of wounds, of fear, of women who had to throw their infants over precipices, so that their cries might not betray the hiding-place of all the others.’

Francesca shivered. ‘Ah, the unfortunate ones!'

‘He made us see what men those were; those who with Kanaris had thought nothing of giving up their lives, and not in fair fight, — for even a Turkish sword can make short work sometimes, — but with the risk of being blown to little bits by a bourlotto, and their fragments strewn to the four winds. Sometimes after school, I remember, the fathers would gather round Kyr Lazaros in the coffee-house, and ask him about those times, and he would answer, “Why need I tell these things? Open the first history book, and you will see it all better than I can say it!” But they did not care for the books, and they would listen to him for hours.’

‘Some day,’ said Francesca, ‘I will come up here again and you will tell me more of the old schoolmaster and of those times. Now I must go down. See, the sun is getting close to the knees of the Sleeper!’ And she pointed to where the mountain rose out of a sea which was already taking a golden tint, broken up by long quivering lines of dark green where the pines of the towering rocks above were reflected in it. She tied her kerchief over her hair and looked up at him.

‘You sleep in the little hut there?’ ‘Yes.’

‘And the rest? Your cousins and the other shepherds and their wives, where are their huts?’

‘Not two gun-shots from here.’

‘And you never fear aught at night all alone?'

‘What should I fear? It is only in deep winter, when there is great cold, that a wolf ever ventures so low as this; and,’ he added, laying his hand on the big head of the dog, who had risen when he rose and stood beside him, ‘if he did, Mourgo here would have two words to say to him!’

‘I did not think of wolves.’

‘Of what, then?’

‘They say there are terrible things sometimes at nights; last summer at the big beach where the fig trees grow, they said there was a tall black figure, and sometimes it looked like a man and sometimes it looked like a dog, but always its eyes shone like fire. Heracles saw it once, and though he made his cross and repeated over and over again, “Holy Virgin be close to me! Christ help me the sinner!” till it disappeared, still when he reached his house he fell on his mattress and was ill for many days. After that, no one would go there when darkness had fallen, and the people who lived near used to scratch the Pentalfa outside their doors at night, so that the black thing should not get in. Some said it was a vampire. Do I know?’

‘All those are fables; some one was too lazy to guard his figs after dark, and brought out the tale to frighten away the thieves. You know, “It is fear guards the lonely places.”’

‘It may be,’ she said, ‘you have more learning; you know better.’ Then, stooping, she lifted the little wooden pail, the vethoura of yaourti in her hand. ‘Now, I go — Addio, Lambro!’

‘The good hour be with you!’ he answered, leaning on his crook and looking after her as she slowly began the descent between the lentisk bushes.

He stood there motionless till she was hidden from his sight far below by the pine wood of the red house; and even then he waited till he could distinguish a tiny figure that came out, beyond the wall, on the sea road below.

That night Lambro did not sleep much. He laid himself down in his hut, wrapped up in his cape, as soon as it was quite dark, after the habit of the shepherds, but he was soon afoot again, long before it was time to turn out the sheep for their midnight meal. From the higher slopes of the hills, the night breeze came laden with the aromatic odor of wild herbs, of thyme, of wild mint, of the lavender which grows tall like heather; and nothing broke the stillness but the silent little noises of the night, among the pine trees below. There was no moon, but the starshine gave almost as much light. It was one of those nights all dark blue and gold, with stars thickly sown over both sky and sea. Many of the larger and brighter planets, with their long shimmering reflections in the silent bay, looked like little moons, and Lambro fell to thinking of what Metro, the one who had studied many things and was now abroad in foreign countries, had once told him of their size: that they were larger than the whole of Greece, some of them even larger than all Europe and America together, and that wise men had said that there were mountains and plains and seas and rivers in them, and even perhaps people. But as he pondered, he shook his head, then spoke his thought out loud to Mourgo for company’s sake.

‘And even were they large enough, would not their plains and their trees and their people, too, burn up in yonder great light? Eh, Mourgo, my old one? It seems that the learned also have their fables!’

Mourgo shook himself, and probably finding the remark needed acknowledgment, laid his big head on Lambro’s knee. Unconsciously the man let his hand fall on the dog’s short ears.

‘And yet, there are some folk, Mourgo, as far from a poor marked man, as though they lived up there in the stars!’

Mourgo, not being accustomed to caresses, moved his head luxuriously under his master’s touch and woo — oo — oof — ed.

And they sat there, under the stars, for a long time, the man and the beast.

III

On the following Sunday, when Lambro went down to the village, he did not see Francesca. She had been ailing, some one said in his hearing, and he loitered about after buying his provisions, in the hope of hearing something further. Twice he went into the small shop which modestly calls itself ‘A Little of Everything,’ for something which he had forgotten, once into the chemist’s for some quinine for his cousin’s child in the next stani. He walked up to the fine new school-house with the white columns, and exchanged a few words with Kyr Vangheli who was standing on the steps. Then he returned to the quay and admired a big fish which had just been caught, and which a boy was carrying up to the red house on the hill, by a bulrush strung through its gills. It was said that they were expecting strangers there, from Athens, and were likely to buy it.

Suddenly old Kyra Sophoula who was sitting on the ledge of the fountain, waiting for her pitcher to fill, called out to him, —

‘Health to you, Lambro! Why may you be roaming about like an unjust curse this morning?’

He remembered, then, that she lived next door to Francesca; also that she talked less than other old women, and he made up his mind to inquire of her. She looked up at him with a little smile among her many wrinkles. Some old women forget that they have ever been young, but Kyra Sophoula had a good memory. It was nothing serious at all that ailed the girl, she assured him, just a little fever; who did not have a little fever now and then? It was not as if Francesca had it every day, like Yoryi’s cousin, the poor girl from Piræus.

Lambro had not a bad heart, but just then he did not care at all whether the girl from Piræus had fever every day or not, if only Francesca might keep well. However, he was forced to extract the best, consolation he could from the old woman’s words, and return to the hills.

Sunday came round once more, and he was down at the Colonna, where the little tables surround the broken shaft left standing from ancient days, before any of the usual frequenters of the place had come; but ill luck attended his endeavors, for though he spoke to well-nigh all the people he knew, he could learn nothing, and though he lingered round the fountain till the women assembled there stared at him curiously, Kyra Sophoula did not appear. Of course a visit to the house where Francesca lived, or a direct inquiry, would have been totally against the Poros code of etiquette in such matters; and though he cudgeled his brains for a plausible errand that might take him to her uncle’s, Arcadian wits are slow and he could find nothing.

So, once more he turned his face to the hills. But he walked very slowly, and the clock of the Naval School struck the hour of noon as he reached the wall of the red house on the hill.

The master of the house, who was standing at his gate which opens on the sea road, stopped Lambro to ask if he could bring them some yaourti the next day.

‘We are expecting strangers from Athens, by the afternoon steamer,’ he said, ‘and as we want them to fare well, we must have some of your yaourti for the evening; there is no other like it.'

Lambro smiled, well pleased, and promised that he would bring the yaourti himself before sunset.

‘Will you do me the favor,’ added the master, ‘to tell me exactly how you make it? I want to have the recipe for when we are in Athens, and we cannot get yours.’

‘At your orders,’ answered Lambro, and proceeded to give the intricate roundabout directions of his class, which the master wrote down in a little red note-book. Beside him, under a mimosa tree, in the full glory of its yellow bloom, stood a young girl playing with a little white dog, and Lambro smiled gravely to see it seize hold of the hem of her skirt between its teeth and shake it vigorously. Her hair, he noticed, was something like Francesca’s, only Francesca’s was brighter.

When he had duly dictated all the directions, he renewed his promise for the morrow, saluted, and began the climb up the path between the aloes and the low wall which marks the boundary of the pine wood behind the red house. He was tired, and dragged his lame leg heavily behind the other, and the master remarked to his daughter that poor Lambro seemed lamer than ever this year.

It rained that afternoon, and Lambro sat for a long time inside his hut, listening to the drops pattering on the bushes outside. One of the three little books of which he was so proud lay open on his knees, but he did not turn the leaves. The clouds cleared away before night, and the stars came out, but perhaps because he had sat for so long under cover that day, Lambro did not sleep much. He walked to and fro between the gray rocks and the lentisk bushes, and talked to Mourgo, who whined sympathetically but never interrupted. IV

In the early afternoon of the next day, he put his yaourti in its bag to drip, and sat idly looking over the bay dotted with white and red-sailed fisher-boats. Everywhere was the clean washed look and the strangely vivid coloring of the day after the rain. There was the soft golden-green mass of the pines up the nearer slopes, the dark brown-green of the hollows, the gray-green of the trees in the middle distance, and the blue-green of the farthest ones along the Monastery road, where they mingled with the red earth and dipped their roots into the sea.

Lambro’s knife and the unfinished crook-head lay on the stone beside him, but he did not take them in his hands. The tolling of a bell came up to him clearly from the village below, and the gun-shots of the sailors’ practice from the Naval School. Along the strip of the Narrow Beach moved a line of black dots which he knew must be a funeral procession slowly wending its way toward the walled-in cemetery beyond, and so pure was the atmosphere that he could plainly distinguish the reflections of the priests and the people in the sea below.

Later on in the day, he threw his frieze cape over his shoulders, as the air was fresher after the rain, took up his crook in one hand and the large bag of yaourti in the other and set off on his errand to the red house. But as soon as he got down to the lower slopes he flung off his cape, for the sun was burning his back. ‘It will rain again,’ he muttered; ‘the sun burns too hotly for April.’ The sudden heat had parched his throat and he made up his mind to stop at the little house above the lemon orchard and ask Varba Miltiadi to let him drink; but when he reached the first pines, he saw that the hollowed stones placed at the foot of the bigger ones for the resin were filled with rain water; so he stooped and drank from them, making a cup of the palm of his hand. Then he rose and went on again, but as he came in sight of the little door, between two tall aloes, in the wall at the back of the red house, he noticed a man, a stranger to him, making his way slowly and hesitatingly over the slope.

When this man caught sight of Lambro coming down the hill above him, he stopped short and waited.

‘Will you not tell me, brother,’ he called out as soon as the shepherd was within hailing distance, ‘am I going the right way for the lighthouse?’

Lambro limped over the ground which divided them and came close down to the wall, looking at the man curiously. He was a tall stout man, wearing the full blue breeches swinging between his legs, and the cross-over vest of the older islanders. Lambro had never seen him before.

‘You are going rightly,’ he answered, ‘but it is a long way from here; do you come from the village?’

‘I come from there now, but I am from Hydra; I arrived in the steamer this morning. My cousin keeps the lighthouse and I am going to see him. A hundred times have I promised to do so, and only to-day do I succeed!’

‘Ah!’ said Lambro, ‘You are a cousin of Andrea; I know him well; he is a good man.’

‘Is the road hard to find to the lighthouse?’

‘It is not hard, no; you must go up past that big olive tree with the twisted trunk, which you see there, then over the hill by the footpath behind Boudouri’s Monument —’

‘Boudouri? That is a name from our parts! Who was this one?’

‘It was before my time,’ replied Lambro. ‘They say he was a director of the Arsenal which was here then, and they promoted others who deserved it less, before him, so his pride suffered, and he killed himself, and they buried him there on the hill over the sea.’

The stranger nodded his head approvingly.

‘That is how we are in Hydra; we have much pride.’

Lambro continued his directions, —

‘After you pass the Monument, you go down through the trees till you come out on to the Beach of the Little Pines; after that you mount again and keep straight on over the hills till you see the lighthouse. Keep the sea always in sight on your left hand, and that will guide you.’

‘I thank you; there was one who would have come with me; he knew the way; but his wife went to a funeral, and he could not leave his shop.’

‘Yes, true,’ said Lambro carelessly; ‘I heard the bell toll, and I saw the people passing over the Narrow Beach when I was up at the stani.’

‘A girl died last night,’ said the stout man, bending with difficulty to fasten the long narrow garter, which had come untied, under the knee. ‘The poor one had not closed her twenty years, so they told me. I saw her in her coffin when they brought her out of a house beyond that dark arch behind the market-place. She had yellow hair which shone like gold in the sun. It is a sin that. Charon should have taken her so young! The unfortunate one!’

The stranger from Hydra received no answer. He finished tying his garter and stood upright again, very red in the face from his exertions.

Lambro was not looking at him; he was staring fixedly at the wall opposite them. By some mischance the bag of yaourti must have fallen from his hand, for it had burst open on a stone and the thick creamy substance was slowly spreading itself over the red earth.

The stout man thought that this shepherd must be more than ordinarily slow-witted.

‘Why brother! Look there!’ he cried, ‘Your yaourti is all spilt! A pity, all that good milk! How came it to fall?’

Lambro continued staring at nothing.

‘Was it perhaps I, who pushed you with my elbow as I stooped?’

‘No,’ said Lambro at length very slowly, still keeping his eyes fixed on the blank wall, ‘no, — you did not push me; it does not matter.’

‘It is certainly a pity, but —’ and the stranger spread out his hands and laughed a little — ‘what is to be done? It cannot be picked up with a spoon!

Well — good-night to you, and thank you!’

‘Good-night!’

V

Lambro was up again at the stani before dark, but he never quite remembered afterwards which path he had taken. He dismissed his cousin’s lad who had been minding the sheep and goats in his absence, watered the flocks, and closed them in the fold for the night. When all necessary work was over, darkness had fallen on the hills, and Lambro limped slowly across the thyme and lentisk bushes which separated the fold from his hut.

Suddenly, before he reached it, he threw up his arms and stood so for a few seconds, his hands outstretched to the dark sky, every line of the figure one hopeless appeal to the cruel Powers above. Then he threw himself down at full length and dug his fingers into the red earth.

At first there was a long silence, then little choking cries, —

‘My God! —My God! —What is this thing which Fate had written for me? Oh, my golden one! My soul! Why did Charon take you?’ Then once more! ‘My God! — My God! — My God!’ And as though every repetition of the word brought revolt in its train, ‘Is this a God, to commit such a crime?’

Mourgo sniffed and whined over the figure lying prone before him, and attempted to thrust his nose under the clenched hand, but his master lay there under the stars as one utterly strange to him. He was beyond comfort from any near presence save one.

When the earliest tints of dawn showed over the Monastery hills, he crept away to his hut for the sake of the greater darkness there. He fell asleep at last, for he was young and had walked much the previous day; also it was the first time he had tasted of grief, and every fibre of his body was exhausted.

The sun was high in the sky when he awoke, half dazed and faint from lack of food. He cut big slices of black bread, and of the white touloumi cheese, and ate them ravenously. Mourgo, satisfied that his master was himself again, careered clumsily around, giving vent now and then to a contented ‘woof.’

After he had eaten, Lambro put some more yaourti to drip for the people of the red house, and, as he did so, he thought of the fair-haired young girl and the little dog that tugged at her skirt, and smiled at the recollection. When had he seen them? He could not remember; but it must have been many days ago, he thought.

Then he gathered his flock together and sat down on a big rock, mechanically taking up his carving.

The mountains at that hour were a faint blue against a fainter blue sky, reflected in a shimmering blue sea. Except the white of the houses down below, and the green of the pines, all things were blue. Lambro lifted up his eyes from his work, and as they fell on the familiar outlines of the hills and the reflections in the bay beneath them, it came over him with a sudden irresistible force of finality that this was a new world to which he had awakened,—a world in which the sun shone and warmed the body, but brought no warmth to the heart! A world in which good bread would taste bitter on his lips! A world in which he might live many years still, if so it was written for him, but where nothing would ever matter any more.

He thought of the return journey to Arcadia, and the length and monotony of it wearied him unspeakably, in advance. Should he ever undertake it, he wondered? But yes; naturally he would. What else was there to do? Had he not always started on Saint George’s Day? And when they reached Valtetsi, he and the others, what then? There would be his uncles to greet him, his cousins, the people he had known all his life long; there would be much talk of the winter and all it had brought. Already he shrank in fancy from it all: from the talk and questions, and the village news, and the laughing of the young girls, and the familiar faces and voices. And afterwards? A long hot summer, and in autumn, back again to Poros; to a Poros quite empty — horribly empty!

Was it possible that he had always led this life? Like the shuttle of a woman’s loom, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards? And was it written that it should continue so for many years? How did other men live who were not shepherds? The fishermen, the boatmen, the husbandmen, those who kept shops in the towns and villages? But he only knew how to tend his sheep and goats, and how to make his cheeses and yaourti. And even were it otherwise, the sea, the boats, the ships, the lives spent under roofs in houses, all seemed equally black and barren.

The unfinished crook and the knife slipped to the ground, and he sat with his arms across his knees and his fingers empty. God! What was wrong with the world? Could one yellow-haired slip of a girl, who had gone out of it never to return, make all this unspeakable difference?

Mourgo, who was lying in the sun, lifted his big head off his paws and listened. Suddenly he rose and bounded to the edge of the little plateau; there he leaped upon a gray rock which overlooked the slope, and barked loudly and continuously.

Some one as yet out of sight was coming up.

Lambro did not even raise his eyes; he did not want speech of any human being. Mourgo barked again, and the echoes of the surrounding hills repeated the bark in a diminishing scale of sound. Then, from below the rock, a voice arose, clear and piercing.

‘La — a — a — mbro! La — a — a — mbro! ’

But Lambro did not stir; only as he sat there, his eyes opened very wide, and a great shiver ran through him.

’La — mbro! Are you there?’

This time he sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing with a wild intensity, his lips apart, and both hands at his breast.

Good God! What hellish likeness of voice! Who — what — was coming over the edge of the plateau?

Over the gray rock there was the shadow of a black gown, a flash of sunlight on bright hair, and Francesca stood before him.

‘You are here, then?’ she cried, ‘I thought — ’

But in one bound the man was beside her. He seized her almost fiercely, and holding her very tightly in his arms, let his head drop on her breast.

‘My little heart! My soul! You are not dead then! Not dead! Not dead!’

Francesca neither started nor struggled to free herself. She stood very still and a light came into her eyes.

’The girl who was buried yesterday, — the girl from town, who was ill so long, —did they tell you it was I?’

Lambro bent his head.

‘And you —?’

‘The world had finished for me when I heard.’

She freed one hand and raised his head, till her eyes looked into his.

‘And now—?’

“Now I have you, and though I be twenty times a marked man, no one shall take you from me!’

Over her face there swept a look of great tenderness, and there was a break in her voice, as she answered, — ‘My poor blind one! Have you not seen that though both your legs were lame, and you lacked both arms, yet it is you I would choose before the strongest and the finest man in all the world! ’ ’Francesca! — My Francesca! —’ Lambro had no words, but his eyes spoke for him, and she bent her head over his, and gave him her lips.

Later on, when they were sitting hand in hand on the flat rock, with nothing to disturb the warm thymescented silence about them but the tinkling of the goat-bells, Francesca turned to him despairingly: —

‘But, oh, my Lambro! What will they say in your country? What is this bride you are bringing to them? Not one lepton have I of my own! Not a pot nor a pan, not a chair nor a table, nor even a mattress! No black silk dress for Church on the first Sunday! Nothing! Oh, what will they say ?’ ‘Neither do I know! neither do I care! One thing only I know well: that you are my golden love, and my life, and my soul! and that nothing else matters in the world!’