‘And there is,’ I said, returning his smile, ‘as we know by now, a particularly sudden and fatal form of fever in the island.’ ‘Certainly you may chance to find that out,’ said he. ‘But is there no antidote?’ I asked, and I showed him the butt of my revolver in the pocket of my coat. ‘It may keep it off for a day or two--not longer. You have the bottle there, but most of the drug is with your luggage at the inn.’ His parable was true enough; we had only two or three dozen cartridges apiece. ‘But there’s plenty of food for Constantine’s rifle,’ said I, pointing to the muzzle of it, which protruded from the window. He suddenly became impatient. ‘Your answer, sir?’ he demanded peremptorily. ‘Here it is,’ said I. ‘I’ll keep the island and I’ll see Constantine hanged.’ ‘So be it, so be it,’ he cried. ‘You are warned; so be it!’ Without another word he turned his pony and trotted rapidly off down the road. And I went back to the house feeling, I must confess, not in the best of spirits. But when my friends heard all that had passed, they applauded me, and we made up our minds to ‘see it through,’ as Denny said. The day passed quietly. At noon we carried the old lord out of his house, having wrapped him in a sheet; we dug for him as good a grave as we could in a little patch of ground that lay outside the windows of his own chapel, a small erection at the west end of the house. There he must lie for the present. This sad work done, we came back and--so swift are life’s changes--killed a goat for dinner, and watched Watkins dress it. Thus the afternoon wore away, and when evening came we ate our goat-flesh and Hogvardt milked our cows; then we sat down to consider the position of the garrison. But the evening was hot and we adjourned out of doors, grouping ourselves on the broad marble pavement in front of the door. Hogvardt had just begun to expound a very elaborate scheme of escape, depending, so far as I could make out, on our reaching the other side of the island and finding there a boat which we had no reason to suppose would be there, when Denny raised his hand, saying ‘Hark!’ From the direction of the village and the harbour came the sound of a horn, blowing long and shrill and echoed back in strange protracted shrieks and groans from the hillside behind us. And following on the blast we heard, low in the distance and indistinct, yet rising and falling and rising again in savage defiance and exultation, the death-chant that One-Eyed Alexander the Bard had made on the death of Stefan Stefanopoulos two hundred years ago. For a few minutes we sat listening; I do not think that any of us felt very comfortable. Then I rose to my feet, saying: ‘Hogvardt, old fellow, I fancy that scheme of yours must wait a little. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re going to have a lively evening.’