‘Is it strange to speak to you--to you, my brothers and sisters of our island? I do not know; I love to speak to you all; for, poor as I am and as our island is, I think sometimes that had my lord come here a free man he would have loved me. But his heart was not his own, and the lady he loves waits for him at home, and he will go to her. So wish me joy no more on what cannot be.’ And then, very suddenly, before I or any of them could move or speak, she withdrew inside the threshold, and Kortes’s sister swiftly closed the door. I was on my feet as it shut, and I stood facing it, my back to the islanders. Among them at first there was an amazed silence, but soon voices began to be heard. I turned round and met their gaze. The strong yoke of Mouraki was off them; their fear had gone, and with it their meekness. They were again in the fierce impetuous mood of St Tryphon’s day: they were exasperated at their disappointment, enraged to find the plan which left Phroso to them and relieved them of the threatened advent of a Government nominee brought to nothing. ‘They’ll take her away,’ said one. ‘They’ll send us a rascally Turk,’ cried another. ‘He shall hear the death-chant then,’ menaced a third. Then their anger, seeking an outlet, turned on me. I do not know that I had the right to consider myself an entirely innocent victim. ‘He has won her love by fraud,’ muttered one to another, with evil-disposed glances and ominous frowns. I thought they were going to handle me roughly, and I felt for the revolver which the captain had been kind enough to restore to me. But a new turn was given to their thoughts by a tall fellow, with long hair and flashing eyes, who leapt out from the middle of the throng, crying loudly: ‘Is not Mouraki dead? Why need we fear? Shall we wait idle while our Lady is taken from us? To the shore, islanders! Where is fear since Mouraki is dead?’ His words lit a torch that blazed up furiously. In an instant they were aflame with the mad notion of attacking the soldiers and the gunboat. No voice was raised to point out the hopelessness of such an attempt, the certain death and the heavy penalties which must wait on it. The death-chant broke out again, mingled with exhortations to turn and march against the soldiers, and with encouragements to the tall fellow--Orestes they called him--to put himself at their head. He was not loth. ‘Let us go and get our guns and our knives,’ he cried, ‘and then to the shore!’ ‘And this man?’ called half-a-dozen, pointing at me. ‘When we have driven out the soldiers we will deal with him,’ said Master Orestes. ‘If our Lady desires him for her husband, he shall wed her.’ A shout of approval greeted this arrangement, and they drew together into a sort of rude column, the women making a fringe to it. But I could not let them march on their own destruction without a word of warning. I sprang on to the raised step where Phroso had stood, just outside the door, and cried: