"That's the trouble with a foreign tongue," mused Curtis. "You can talk to them all right, but they talk so fast that you can't understand what they say to you. Now, I said it correctly," and he repeated the sentence. After about half an hour the old man returned, bringing some bread, cheese, _halva_ and a glass of dark wine. Curtis repeated the Greek word for "thank you" half a dozen times, and then fell upon the food voraciously. "The more I see of these people, the better I like them," he muttered. "Now, I call that thoughtful of the old man." After he had finished eating he tried his foot, bearing his weight on it until he could endure the pain no longer. "I believe it's better," he soliloquized, and then cried inconsequentially: "By Jove! I wonder if that old blockhead thought I was asking for something to eat? Panayota would have understood me in a minute. Why, she and I get along all right together in Greek. But then, I mustn't judge the rest of these people by her." He wound up his watch at ten o'clock, and lay down upon the divan. "There's going to be no fight to-night," he muttered. "And, at any rate, it wouldn't be my fight if there was." He fell asleep, and dreamed of Panayota, gigantic in size, standing on a cliff by a wan, heaving sea. She was hurling jagged pieces of rock down at a line of ant-like Turks, crawling far below. The wind was blowing her hair straight out from her forehead, and he could only see her mouth and chin, but he knew it was Panayota. He ran to help her, when the demarch seized him to hold him back. He awoke, and found that an old man was shaking his arm and crying excitedly in Greek, "Fire! fire!" Curtis' first thought was that the house was burning. He put his hand on the old man's shoulder and jumped over to the door. Half a dozen people were standing in the moonlight, pointing toward the hills. Two women, one holding a very young babe in her arms, were crossing themselves hysterically and calling on the name of the Virgin. An old man of eighty, whom Curtis had frequently seen bent nearly double and walking with a cane, now stood erect, fingering the trigger of a rifle. A stripling of twelve was shaking his fist toward a red eye of flame that glowed among the rocks, high up and far away. CHAPTER X WAR IN EARNEST That was one of Lindbohm's bonfires, sure enough. Perhaps a battle was going on at that moment. "Mother of God, save my man!" cried the woman with the baby. "Save him, save him!" "Mother of God, save my boy, my cypress tree, my Petro!" groaned the old man. "Curse the Turks! May their fathers roast in hell!" shrieked the lad. "Give me a gun, I'm old enough to shoot." For three hours they stood watching the fire, as though they could actually see what was taking place there. At times they stood silent for many minutes together, listening, listening for the sound of guns; but they could hear nothing. At last a shout was heard in the distance: "Oo-hoo!"