"Oh, well! You do not understand? Return to your camping place and make yourself agreeable. I have furnished you a fine opportunity to get a fortune. If you do not profit by it, you will be foolish, and if you do not put me on the list of your benefactors, you will be an ingrate." I found Mary-Ann and her mother seated near the cascade. While waiting for their waiting-maid, which had been promised them, they were themselves endeavoring to mend their torn habits. The bandits had furnished them with thread, or rather with twine, and some needles suitable for sewing sails. From time to time they stopped their work to look with melancholy gaze upon the houses in Athens. It was hard to see the city so near, and not to be able to go there except at a cost of a hundred thousand francs. I asked them how they had slept. The curtness of their reply, proved to me that they had been discussing our interview. At this moment, I noticed Mary-Ann's hair; she was bare-headed, and after washing it at the brook, she had left it to dry in the sun. I would never have believed that any woman could possess such a profusion of soft, glossy chestnut hair. It fell in masses over her shoulders and down her back. But it did not hang in limp strings like the locks of other women who have just washed them. It fell in perfect waves, like the surface of a little lake rippled by the wind. I had never loved anyone and I ought not to have begun by falling in love with a girl who took me for a thief. But I confess that I wished, at the price of my life, to save those beautiful tresses from the clutches of Hadgi-Stavros. I conceived, while sitting there, a plan of escape, difficult but not impossible. Our apartment (so-called) had two exits, one upon the King's cabinet, or office; the other, over the precipice. To escape by the King's cabinet was absurd! It would be necessary to traverse the camp and pass the second line of defense, guarded by the dogs. There remained the precipice. In looking over into the abyss I saw that the rock, almost perpendicular, offered enough sinuous depression, with tufts of grass, with little saplings, and available shrubs of all kinds to permit one to descend without breaking one's neck. What would render flight dangerous on this side, was the cascade. The brook, which flowed through the place, formed, on the side of the mountain, a horribly glistening sheet. It would, moreover, be difficult to keep one's courage, while descending the side of the mountain safely, with a torrent of water pouring over one's head. But were there no means of turning the course of the stream? Perhaps. In examining more closely the place where we had slept, I saw that, without any doubt, the water had once traversed that spot. Our camping place was, then, only the dry bed of a torrent. I raised a corner of the carpet which was spread under our feet, and I discovered a thick sediment, left by the water. It was