They were gone, and Panayota resumed her way. After an hour's walk through gardens and vineyards inclosed in low mud fences overgrown with vines, she came to the foot of a tiny hill. Climbing this, she saw plainly the triangular little village of the lepers, with its suburb of tombs--houses for the dying and the dead. The huts were all neatly whitewashed, and looked very peaceful and pretty against the foreground of green trees and vines. Farther away were the round Turkish mosques, the Christian bell towers of Canea, and the tops of high buildings rising above the gray walls. Two or three thin columns of smoke rose to a great height and bent lazily landwards. Toward noon Panayota came to a mountain stream, beside which grew several fig trees. She climbed into one of these that forked near the ground and succeeded in finding half a dozen purple figs among the cool green leaves. Then she washed her face and hands in the brook and took the bread from the bag. "Poor Aglaia! Poor Aglaia!" she said, shuddering. "Heavenly Virgin comfort her!" She pulled the crust off the bread and threw it away, together with the sack and the cheese. "The first thing I shall do when I get to Uncle Petro's," she resolved, "will be to ask him for some clothes. Then I will burn these--uh!" Much refreshed with the bread and figs and a drink of the cool mountain water, Panayota again set out briskly on her journey, her heart full of hope. Indeed, she seemed to be under the Virgin's special care, for just as she had come to a place where there were two roads, and was in doubt as to which one she ought to take, a venerable priest came trotting around a corner, seated sidewise upon a very small, bluish-gray donkey. "Yes, the road to the right led to Asprochori, about ten miles distant," he replied, removing his tall hat and wiping his brow with a red bandanna handkerchief. "O yes, he knew Kyrios Kurmulidhes very well indeed, a godly and a just man--be quiet there!" The last remark was addressed to a pair of young goats, hung to the saddle in a sack and covered by the father's long black robe. He had already heard of the arrival of the English, and was in hopes, by the grace of God, to, sell them these two kids at twice their value. So he trotted away, bobbing up and down on his little donkey, not looking at all grotesque to Panayota, in his tall hat with eaves, his gray chignon and his long, wind-lifted robe. And as Panayota fared onward, she had ever in her mind that she was coming into the country of the Cretan insurgents, and she muttered again and again: "Perhaps I shall hear something of him. Perhaps he will be there!" In this new, bright world everything seemed possible. CHAPTER XL A TROUBLED MIND