"Then we will not talk of that," he said, and sat himself down by the bed. "How goes it? Why, you look alive again now. In a few days, if you will, you will be going Turk-shooting with the rest of us. Ah, but the devils, the devils!" he cried, as he saw the cruel wounds in the hands; "but before God, lad, we have done something already to revenge you and Him they blasphemed, and we will do more. How do they call you?" The boy was sitting with teeth tight clinched to prevent his crying out at the painful dressing of the wounds, but at this he looked up suddenly, seeming to forget the hurt. "Christos is my name," he said. "That is why they crucified me. Oh, Mitsos, do you know what they said? They looked at me--you know how Turks can look when they play with flesh and blood--when I told them my name, and one said, 'Then we will see if you can die patiently as that God of yours did.'" The lad laughed suddenly, and his eyes blazed. "And though I wince," he said, "and could cry like a woman at this little pain, yet, before God, I could have laughed then when they nailed me to the cross, and set me up above the altar. I cannot tell you what strange joy was in my heart. Was it not curious? Those infidel men crucified me because my name was Christos. Surely they could have had no better reason." Kanaris had finished the dressing of the wounds, and the boy thanked him, and went on: "So I did not struggle nor cry at all; indeed, I did not want to. Then soon after, it was not long I think, hanging as I did, the blood seemed to sing and grow heavy in my ears, and my head dropped; once or twice I raised it, to take breath, but before long I grew unconscious, supposing at the end that I was dying, and glorying in it, for I knew that the Greeks would come again and find me there, and the thought that I should be found thus, with head drooped like the wooden Christ, was sweet to me. And they came--you came--" and the lad broke off, smiling at the two. Mitsos's throat seemed to him small and burning, and he choked in trying to speak. So for answer he rose and kissed the boy on the forehead, and was silent till again he had possession of his voice. "Christos," he said, and involuntarily, with a curious confusion of thought, he crossed himself--"Christos, it is even as you say. For it seems to me that somehow that was a great honor, that which they did to you, though to them only a blasphemous cruelty." Mitsos paused a moment, and all the dimly understood superstitious beliefs of his upbringing and his people surged into his mind. The half-pagan teaching which suspected spirits in the wind, and saw gods and fairies in the forest, strangely blended with a child-like faith which had never conceived it possible to doubt the truths of his creed, combined to turn this boy into something more than human, to endow him with the attributes of a type. He knelt down by the bed, strangely moved.