In the Greek lines much cheerfulness and nonchalant good-humor prevailed. During April the Turks had made two sorties, which were repulsed with but little loss to the besiegers and at a heavy price to the besieged, and the latter now seemed inclined to wait for relief, trusting to the admirable fortifications which defended them and a certain growing slackness on the part of the besiegers, rather than make another attempt. Hypsilantes, an excellent field-marshal when there was nothing to do, treated the chiefs with a courtly condescension, and frequently entertained them at dinner; while Kolocotrones, with his new brass helmet and a hearty raucous voice, went hither and thither, often leaving the camp for a week at a time on some private raid, and swelled and strutted already with the anticipation of a plentiful plunder. For the Greeks considered their own ships as adequate to stop any fleet the Sultan might send from Constantinople, and thought it impossible that the garrison would hold out until the coming of the army. Mitsos, the truant aide-de-camp, chiefly conspicuous hitherto by his absence, reported himself the morning after his return to Prince Hypsilantes, who, taking into consideration what he and the Capsina had done, was pleased to accept his lack of excuses and poverty of invention with graciousness, and further gave him furlough for a week, on the granting of which the lad posted back to Suleima and the silkworms. And that evening, when the child was gone to bed and Father Andréa had charged himself to see that nothing caught fire, and that no changeling fairy--a vague phantom terror dreaded and abhorred of Suleima's soul--malignantly visited the cradle of the littlest, the two went off for old sake's sake in the boat, Mitsos with the fishing spear and resin, to visit the dark, dear places of the bay. The land-breeze was steady, and the moon already swung high among the stars, and from afar they could see the white wall that both knew. As they passed it, Suleima clung the closer to Mitsos. "How strange it all seems," she said, "to think that I was there year after year, not knowing of any but old Abdul and the eunuch--oh, a pig of the pit!--and Zuleika and the others. And now they are where?" "In hell," said Mitsos, promptly, and with all the cheerfulness of unutterable and welcome conviction. "Yanni sent Abdul there himself at Tripoli. Oh, a fat man. His cheeks were of red jelly, you would say, forever wobbling. I pray I may never be a jelly-man." Suleima laughed. "Yet there were good things even in Abdul, though not of his intention, but his age rather," she said; "for instance, he was very calm and lazy, and he let us do as we liked, and never troubled us. Indeed, I think he hardly spoke to me six times. Yet had I been there a year longer, who knows? For latterly he used to look at me with his mole's eyes." Mitsos frowned.