Time brought the answer. While his enemies were still afar off, the Suliotes arose, under the leadership of a girl among the mountains of Bracori, where one of Ali's grandsons, Zaid, was recruiting soldiers, and massacred Ali's men to the very last one. The last one, however, they suffered to escape and convey to Ali Zaid's severed head, at the same time informing him that it was sent by that girl the head of whose betrothed he had cut off before her very eyes, and she meant to send him still more. This was the Greek's declaration of war. There at Janina, under his very nose, the Greek captain, Zunga, deserted the Albanian camp, and when the Grand Signior's army reached Trikala, and Gaskho Bey's herald galloped between the two armies with the imperial firman hanging round his neck, and summoned the vassals to take up arms against the Pasha, the whole camp went over to Gaskho Bey. Alone, without the smallest escort, Sulaiman, Ali Pasha's youngest son, fled without having had the opportunity of testing his father's sword, and they captured him on the road. Still he had the other two. Mukhtar Bey, with a powerful fleet, lay in the Gulf of Durazzo, and Vely Bey, wroth though he might be with his father, was a valiant warrior, and his son was in Lepanto, and save him he must and would. But not only his son, some one else was there also. On that cruel, murderous day when Ali Pasha drowned the harems of his sons in the lake, one person among so many escaped, and this was Xelianthé. The damsel loved Vely as much as he loved her, and contrived to let him know that she was alive. Vely Bey sent her to Lepanto, and kept her in hiding there with his little son in order that she might be far from his father. And now the bey himself hastened to Lepanto, arrived at night in the neighborhood of the town, and perceived already from afar that the citadel in which he had concealed his darlings was in flames. What if he had arrived too late! With the fury of a savage wild tiger he flung himself upon the besieging Pehliván, and in a midnight battle routed him beneath the walls of Lepanto, the Albanians fighting desperately by the side of their leader. But what was the use of it? The fortress was saved, indeed, but it was already in flames. Vely, roaring with grief and pain, flung himself on the gate, scarcely recognizing again the place he had quitted so short a time ago. He reached the pavilion where he had concealed his wife and child. It was built entirely of wood, except the roof, which was of copper. A curious mass of molten dark-red metal gleamed among the fire-brands. Vely rushed bellowing to the spot, and his soldiers, tearing aside the charred beams and rafters, came upon two skeletons burned to cinders. A coral necklace lying there, which the fire had been unable to calcine, told him that these were the remains of his wife and son.