It was nine o'clock before matters showed any progress. Then came shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the tread of men's feet in a quick, triumphant march. Then the stalwart figures of the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper was alone in front. And all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude, barbarous sort of chant, repeating it again and again; and the women and children crowded out to meet the men, catching up the refrain in shrill voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. And so martial and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in time with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have tried to put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough, I fear, as the rough original. Here it is: "Ours is the land! Death to the hand That filches the land! Dead is that hand, Ours is the land! Forever we hold it. Dead's he that sold it! Ours is the land. Dead is the hand!" Again and again they hurled forth the defiant words, until they stopped at last opposite the inn, with one final, long-drawn shout of savage triumph. "Well, this is a go!" said Denny, drawing a long breath. "What are the beggars up to?" "What have they been up to?" I asked; for I doubted not that the song we had heard had been chanted over a dead Stefanopoulos two hundred years before. At this age of the world the idea seemed absurd, preposterous, horrible. But there was no law nearer than Rhodes, and there only Turk's law. The only law here was the law of the Stefanopouloi, and if that law lost its force by the crime of the hand that should wield it, why, strange things might happen even to-day in Neopalia. And we were caught like rats in a trap in the inn! "I do not see," remarked old Hogvardt, laying a hand on my shoulders, "any harm in loading our revolvers, my lord." I did not see any harm in it either, and we all followed Hogvardt's advice, and also filled our pockets with cartridges. I was determined--I think we were all determined--not to be bullied by these islanders and their skull-and-crossbones ditty. A quarter of an hour passed, and there came a knock at the door, while the bolts were shot back. "I shall go out," said I, springing to my feet. The door opened, and the face of a lad appeared. "Vlacho, the innkeeper, bids you descend," said he; and then, catching sight, perhaps, of our revolvers, he turned and ran down-stairs again at his best speed. Following him, we came to the door of the inn. It was ringed round with men, and directly opposite to us stood Vlacho. When he saw me, he commanded silence with his hand, and addressed me in the following surprising style: