Once more I was among pine-trees. They thronged the almost park-like slopes under Ægaleos. They crowded toward the little Byzantine church, which stands on the left of the road on the site of a vanished temple of Apollo, with remains of its once strongly fortified walls about it. Lonely, but smiling, as though with a radiant satisfaction at its own shining peace, is the country in whose bosom the church lies. A few sheep, small, with shaggy coats of brown and white, were grazing near it; a dog lay stretched out in the sun; and some lean, long-tailed horses were standing with bowed heads, as if drowsing. An ancient and very deep well was close by. In the marble well-head the friction of many drawn cords has cut grooves, some of them nearly an inch in depth. The court of the convent is roughly paved and is inclosed within rough walls. In it are a few trees, an acacia or two, a wild pepper-tree, and one gigantic cypress. From a branch near the entrance a big bell hung by a chain. But the only sound of bells came to me from without the walls, where some hidden goats were moving to pasture. Fragments of broken columns and two or three sarcophagi lay on the hot ground at my feet. To my right, close to the church, a flight of very old marble steps led to a rustic loggia with wooden supports, full of red geraniums and the flowers of a plant like a very small convolvulus. From the loggia, which fronted her abiding-place, a cheerful, kindly faced woman came down and let me into the church, where she left me with two companions, a black kitten playing with a bee under the gilded cupola. The church, like almost all the Byzantine churches I saw in Greece, is very small, but it is tremendously solid and has a tall belfry. The exterior, stained by weather, is now a sort of earthy yellow; the cupola is covered with red tiles. The interior walls look very ancient, and are blackened in many places by the fingers of Time. Made more than eight hundred years ago, the remains of the Byzantine mosaics are very curious and interesting. In the cupola, on a gold ground, is a very large head of a Christ (“Christos Pantokrator”), which looks as though it were just finished. The face is sinister and repellent, but expressive. There are several other mosaics, of the apostles, of episodes in the life of the Virgin, and of angels. None of them seemed to me beautiful, though perhaps not one looks so wicked as the Christos, which dominates the whole church. Until comparatively recent times there were monks attached to this convent, but now they are gone.