THE CAPSINA _An Historical Novel._ By E. F. Benson _Author of_ _"The Vintage" "Limitations" "Dodo"_ _"The Judgment Books" etc._ _With Illustrations by G. P. Jacomb-Hood_ HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1899 [Frontispiece: "HE RAISED THE MUSKET TO HIS SHOULDER"] ILLUSTRATIONS "HE RAISED THE MUSKET TO HIS SHOULDER" "UP THE STEPS CAME THE SINGER, FROM THE SEA AND THE SUN" "THE SPIRIT OF THE STILLNESS TOUCHED THE CAPSINA'S SOUL" "HALF A DOZEN MEN BURST INTO THE CUSTOM-HOUSE" CHAPTER I The little town of Hydra, white-walled and trailing its skirts in the Ægean, climbs steeply up the northeastern side of the island from which it is named, and looks towards the hills of Argolis on the mainland and the setting of the sun. Its harbor sheltered from the northern and southern winds, and only open towards the west, where the sea is too narrow ever to be lashed into fury by gales of that quarter, was defended in the year 1819 by a very creditable pier and a good deal of swift and rakish shipping. The inhabitants lived a life somewhat sequestered from their oppressed and down-trodden countrymen, supporting themselves by enterprises of fishing and the humble sort of commerce, and the hand of the Turk, then as now lustful, cruel, and intolerable, lay but lightly on them, for the chief products of the island itself were only stones and cold water, untaxable goods. But something of the spirit of stones and cold water, something of the spirit, too, of that quickly roused sea, soon made furious, soon appeased, but always alive, had gone to the making of the men of Hydra; and they were people frugal and hardy, resourceful and industrious, men of the wave and the mountain. Of its various clans--and its regime was highly feudal--that of Capsas was the wealthiest and most influential; but just now, a tragic prologue to this tale, a blow so direful had fallen on those much-esteemed men, and in particular on Christos Capsas, a youth of about two and twenty, that the clan generally, and Christos in particular, were in a state of paralyzed inaction strange to such busy folk. It had happened thus: