Kostakes came back to his home; came back covered with Christian blood, and longing, like a Turk, for the Christian maiden whom he had locked up in his harem; came back cursing the Mother of God and gloating over the deed which he had resolved to do. But he found his house rent in twain, and his garden filled with a great heap of smoking rubbish. He looked into the cleft rooms as spectators at a theater behold the interior of a house, and there was no sign of any live thing save himself in all the street. There was Panayota's room, with the bed standing in the corner and her Cretan jacket hanging to a nail in the wall. But she was gone. Then a great fear seized Kostakes, and his mother's blood awoke in his heart and surged through his veins again. Trembling in every limb, and with pale face, from which the flush of passion had fled, he unconsciously crossed himself, muttering hoarsely: "It is the vengeance of the Virgin! I am accursed!" CHAPTER XXXVI AN INTERRUPTED RESCUE "Ah, the shade is so delicious!" said the Turkish Major, stepping under a pine and removing his fez. Lindbohm dragged the handkerchief, tied turban-fashion, from his brow, and wiped his face with it. The cloth was black with powder-smoke and grimy with dust from previous contact with his features. "It is always cool in the shade in this country," he observed, running his fingers through his damp pompadour, "no matter how white hot it is in the sun." They were following a path that wound like the thread of a screw athwart the face of a hill that had been terraced with infinite pains and labor. Plateaus, from four to twenty feet in width, supported by walls of cobblestones, rose one above the other like steps of a wide stairway. After the terraces came a forest of small pines, cool and fragrant. It was now nearing the middle of the afternoon and the locusts were at work, plying their sleepy rasps, infinitely numerous and monotonous. They emerged from the grove into a narrow path on the edge of a steep incline. The soldiers ran to a point a little farther on, where a pear tree, growing close by the side of a precipice, served as a ladder. They scrambled down its branches into the garden that surrounded a farmhouse not far distant. "Was this a Turkish or a Christian house?" asked Lindbohm. The windows and doors were broken, and a pile of smashed furniture lay in the middle of the floor. A clematis vine, that had once carried its fragrant snow up to the tiny balcony, lay upon the ground, among the ruins of its trellis. The Major shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows?" he replied. "Whichever it was, the results are the same. If we look around, perhaps we may find a body somewhere." "No, no," said the Swede; "I have no curiosity. Let us be going."