If they do get mysterious illnesses they will attribute them to supernatural causes, saying a Nereid or a sprite has struck them, and never suspect the damp. Nature’s own pupils they are. Their only medical suggestion is that all illnesses are worms in the body, which have been distributed by God’s agents, the mysterious and invisible inhabitants of the air, to those whose sin requires chastising, or whose days are numbered. Such is the simple _bacillus_ theory prevalent in the Greek islands. Who knows but what they are right? “Never was a poor fellow in such perplexity as I was,” continued Nikola, “the possessor of a marble woman whose value I could not learn, and about whom I did not care one straw, whilst I yearned after a woman whose value I knew to be a thousand drachmas, and whom I could not buy. My hope, too, was rendered more acute by the vague idea that perhaps my treasure might prove to be as valuable as Kallirhoe, and I smiled to think of the folly of the man who would be likely to prefer the cold marble statue to my plump, warm Kallirhoe. But they tell me that you cold Northerners have hearts of marble, so I prayed to the Panagía and all the saints to send some one who would take the statue away, and give me enough money to buy Kallirhoe. “I was much more lively now; my father and brothers had no cause to scold me any longer, for I had hope; every evening now I went to the _café_ to talk, and all the energy of my existence was devoted to one object, namely, to get the Demarch to tell me all he knew about the chances of selling treasures in that big world where the steamer went, without letting him know that I had found anything. After many fruitless efforts, one day the Demarch told me how, in the old Turkish days, before he was born, a peasant of Melos had found a statue of a woman called Aphrodite, just as I had found mine, in a heap of stones; that the peasant had got next to nothing for it, but that Mr. Brest, the French consul, had made a fortune out of it, and that now the statue was the wonder of the Western world. By degrees I learnt how relentless foreigners like you, Effendi, do swoop down from time to time on these islands and carry home what is worth thousands of drachmas, after giving next to nothing for them. A week or two later, I learnt from the Demarch’s lips how strict the Greek Government is, that no marble should leave the country, and that they never give anything like the value for the things themselves, but that sometimes by dealing with a foreign _effendi_ in Athens good prices have been got and the Government eluded. “Poor me! in those days my hopes grew very very small indeed. How could I, an ignorant peasant, hope to get any money from anybody? So I thought less and less about my statue, and more and more about Kallirhoe, until my face looked haggard again, and my mother sighed.