Inside, a hardy sufficiency was the note. The soldiers' huts, though small, would stand a good deal of rough weather; they were built squarely in rows, camp-wise, and the floors were shingled with gravel from a quarry close by. Two houses only had been kept, in one of which were stored the arms, in the other the ammunition, Petrobey and Nicholas, as before, occupying huts exactly like those tenanted by the common soldiers. The mules and herds of sheep and goats were driven out every morning under an armed escort to pasture on the hills near, and penned to the south of the camp for the night. Food was plentiful, and the men seemed well content, for the booty already taken was very considerable. In ten days more, before the end of April, the walls were complete, and Petrobey, following out the plan he had formed from the first, sent out daily and nightly skirmishing expeditions, who made unlooked-for raids on the villages scattered on the plain about Tripoli, the inhabitants of which, feeling secure in their neighborhood to the fortress, had not yet sought refuge within its walls. Men, women, and children alike were slain, the valuables seized, the flocks and herds driven up to the camp, and the villages burned. In such operations, inglorious and bloody it is to be feared, but a necessary part of the programme of extermination, which the Greeks believed, not without cause, to be their only chance of freedom, their losses were almost to be numbered on the fingers; once or twice some house defended by a few men inside resisted the attack and fired upon them, in which case the assailants did not scruple to set light to the place; and in ten days more only heaps of smoking ruins remained of the little white villages, which had been dotted among the vineyards like flocks of feeding sheep.