I was asked then, as the reader may ask now, why I did not take her away when I found that she was failing. I had not the means to pay my passage to any other country. I was myself nearly prostrated mentally and physically, and unfit for anything but my photography. I was in debt so deeply that I could not honestly borrow, and my brother was dead. The American government pays no traveling expenses for its consuls, and I had not an article that I could sell for a dollar, for the furniture of the little house we lived in had been provided by the Cretan committee. The Greek government was hostile to me until Laura's death stirred the public feeling so profoundly, but even then the king was bitterly opposed to me. I was physically and financially a wreck on a foreign strand, with neither hope nor the prospect of relief. I struggled along as best I could, Mrs. Dickson taking charge of my children, and I made my home with the Dicksons. In June I had to go back to Crete to make consignment of the consulate to my successor. I found the island materially as I had left it, but almost deserted and quite desolate, and the local administration in the hands of the spies and the traitors of the insurrection; all the brave men in exile and the gloom of death over everything; villages still unrebuilt, and the only sign of activity the building in the most accessible districts of military roads and blockhouses. As my successor delayed, I, to pass the time, went to Omalos to carry out the ancient plan which could no longer be postponed if it was to be carried out, for I never intended to see Crete again. The new governor-general--Mehmet Ali, the Prussian (in subsequent years murdered in Albania)--was an amiable, just, and intelligent man, who would have saved the position if he had been there in the beginning, but now there was nothing to be done. When he learned that I intended to go to Omalos he decided, with a more friendly impulse than any governor of Crete had ever shown towards me, to join me there and make the visit pleasant for me. He preceded me, in fact, and I found the posts all warned to show me the customary honors, and when I reached the plain I found his tent ready to entertain me. The most sumptuous dinner his resources afforded was served in his audience tent; we had a grand acrobatic and dramatic entertainment of the soldiers and a torchlight _retraite_, and he gave me rugs to cover me, without which I must have suffered severely, for, though in June, it was bitterly cold at Omalos, and I had brought only one rug to sleep on. We returned together next day after I had visited the great ravine of Agios Rumeli, the most magnificent gorge I have ever seen, never taken from the Cretans by an enemy until this betrayal; and, as we went back, we discussed the condition of the island. I told him freely what I thought of the situation, and he so far agreed with me that he begged me to go to Constantinople and lay my ideas before A'ali Pasha,