"Well," she said, reluctantly, "but I don't wish to lose this chance. There might be an earthquake, for instance." "We are likely to see THEM this morning," said Carlton, as he left the hotel with the ladies and drove towards the Acropolis. "Nolan has been interviewing the English maid, and she tells him they spend the greater part of their time up there on the rock. They are living very simply here, as they did in Paris; that is, for the present. On Wednesday the King gives a dinner and a reception in their honor." "When does your dinner come off?" asked Miss Morris. "Never," said Carlton, grimly. "One of the reasons why I like to come back to Athens so much," said Mrs. Downs, "is because there are so few other tourists here to spoil the local color for you, and there are almost as few guides as tourists, so that you can wander around undisturbed and discover things for yourself. They don't label every fallen column, and place fences around the temples. They seem to put you on your good behavior. Then I always like to go to a place where you are as much of a curiosity to the people as they are to you. It seems to excuse your staring about you." "A curiosity!" exclaimed Carlton; "I should say so! The last time I was here I tried to wear a pair of knickerbockers around the city, and the people stared so that I had to go back to the hotel and change them. I shouldn't have minded it so much in any other country, but I thought men who wore Jaeger underclothing and women's petticoats for a national costume might have excused so slight an eccentricity as knickerbockers. THEY had no right to throw the first stone." The rock upon which the temples of the Acropolis are built is more of a hill than a rock. It is much steeper upon one side than the other, with a sheer fall a hundred yards broad; on the opposite side there are the rooms of the Hospital of Aesculapius and the theatres of Dionysus and Herodes Atticus. The top of the rock holds the Parthenon and the other smaller temples, or what yet remains of them, and its surface is littered with broken marble and stones and pieces of rock. The top is so closely built over that the few tourists who visit it can imagine themselves its sole occupants for a half-hour at a time. When Carlton and his friends arrived, the place appeared quite deserted. They left the carriage at the base of the rock, and climbed up to the entrance on foot. "Now, before I go on to the Parthenon," said Miss Morris, "I want to walk around the sides, and see what is there. I shall begin with that theatre to the left, and I warn you that I mean to take my time about it. So you people who have been here before can run along by yourselves, but I mean to enjoy it leisurely. I am safe by myself here, am I not?" she asked.