A large proportion of the officials were, naturally, those connected with the school. They observed morosely that all notices in the pure Greek of Herakleion had already been removed, also the large lithographs of Malteios and other former Presidents, so that the walls of pitch pine--the school buildings were modern, and of wood--were now ornamented only with maps, anatomical diagrams, and some large coloured plates published by some English manufacturing firm for advertisement; there were three children riding a gray donkey, and another child trying on a sun-bonnet before a mirror; but any indication of the relationship of Aphros to Herakleion there was none. 'It is revolution,' the postmaster said gloomily. The guards would not speak. Their natural loquacity was in abeyance before the first fire of their revolutionary ardour. From vine-cultivators they had become soldiers, and the unfamiliarity of the trade filled them with self-awe and importance. Outside, the village was surprisingly quiet; there was no shouting, no excitement; footsteps passed rapidly to and fro, but they seemed to be the footsteps of men bent on ordered business; the Greeks could not but be impressed and disquieted by the sense of organisation. 'Shall we be allowed to go free?' they asked the guards. 'You will know when he comes,' was all the guards would reply. 'Who is he?' 'You will know presently.' 'Has he still not arrived?' 'He has arrived.' 'We heard nothing; he must have arrived during the night.' To this they received no answer, nor any to their next remark,-- 'Why so much mystery? It is, of course, the scatterbrained young Englishman.' The guards silently shrugged their shoulders, as much as to say, that any one, even a prisoner, had a right to his own opinion. The school clock pointed to nine when the first noise of agitation began in the street. It soon became clear that a large concourse of people was assembling in the neighbourhood of the school; a slight excitement betrayed itself by some shouting and laughter, but a voice cried 'Silence!' and silence was immediately produced. Those within the school heard only the whisperings and rustlings of a crowd. They were not extravagantly surprised, knowing the islanders to be an orderly, restrained, and frugal race, their emotions trained into the sole channel of patriotism, which here was making its supreme demand upon their self-devotion. The Greeks threw wondering glances at the rifles of the guards. Ostensibly school-teachers, post and telegraph clerks, and custom-house officers, they were, of course, in reality the spies of the government of Herakleion, and as such should have had knowledge of the presence of such weapons on the island. They reflected that, undesirable as was a prolonged imprisonment in the school-house, at the mercy of a newly-liberated and probably rancorous population, a return to Herakleion might prove a no less undesirable fate at the present juncture.