Two days' march, or rather tramp, brought them to Megalopolis, a sparkle in the centre of the green Arcadian plain. They found the town in the hands of the insurgent Greeks, a body of whom, consisting of about two hundred men, enrolled themselves under Nicholas. Here, too, they heard the same tale of slaughter and pillage of the Turk; but already the selfish evil which was to do such harm to the Greek cause generally--namely, the personal greed for plunder--had crept in, and the insurgents were wrangling over the distribution of the booty. But Nicholas, with a fine indignation which shamed them into obedience, though amid murmurs of suppressed grumbling, was hot with reproach. Was it for a few piastres, he said, that they were up in arms? Was the liberty of the nation to be weighed against a cask of wine or a Turkish slave? And taking the whole matter into his own hands, he reserved half the booty captured for the expenses of the war, and half he divided as fairly as might be among the claimants. From Megalopolis Karitaena was only a four hours' march, and he was anxious to force the pace so as to reach it early next morning, before rumor of their approach should have gone abroad. The Megalopolis men were as untrained as his own, but they knew the country better, and he organized out of them a corps of skirmishers, who should go in advance and intercept any fugitives who might carry the news of the march into Karitaena. The only chance of taking it was if he could find it unprepared, like Kalamata, creep up to it at night, and either make a night assault or draw beleaguering lines round it before he could be attacked. Like Kalamata, the town was pregnable only from one side, but on this the road ran steeply up to the gate parallel with the citadel wall, thus exposing the attacking party to a broadside fire if the besieged were prepared. They were, in fact, more than prepared; they were wishfully expectant, and Nicholas fell into a very neatly baited trap.