[Illustration: "BY AN EFFORT HE RAISED HIMSELF ON HIS ELBOW"] Then suddenly he sprang to his feet. "Shout, shout," he cried, "for the freedom of Greece! Ah, Catharine, I am coming; I am coming very quickly." On the word a great shout arose from the men crowded into the room, and in the glory of that triumphant cry, standing there in the dawn of the newly-risen day, he fell forward, and his strong soul went forth free from the death that had no terror for him. They took his body up to the Turkish mosque which crowned the citadel, and at the east erected a tall, rough, wooden cross, and there he lay all day, and the clan came and looked their last on the man they had loved. The hawklike, eager eyes were closed, the eager nostrils were still, and the dignity of death gave the face a wonderful sweet seriousness, and a tranquillity which it had seldom worn in life. The prince and Germanos arrived before noon, knowing only that Tripoli was taken, and Petrobey, to whom Mitsos had told what Nicholas had said, found words which were a humbling and an awe to that proud man, and together the two went to where he lay. Then said Germanos: "I never did him honor, God forgive me, in life; but you will let me do him honor, now?" The funeral was fixed for sunset, and he was to be buried just outside the mosque on the highest ground of the citadel. The first part of the service would be in the mosque, the remainder at the grave, and Mitsos, returning just before sunset from his finished and hopeless quest, went straight there. All day, first in the town and then in that valley of death behind Trikorpha, he had sought among the heaps of the dead, longing rather to know and see the worst, to look once more on her face, than to carry about with him this load of torturing uncertainty. He prayed that he might find her undisfigured, that her face might be quiet and calm like Nicholas's, for he felt that it would be a thing of consolation to know she had died quickly. One thought only sustained him through those terrible hours, and that the remembrance of the words Nicholas had spoken. He had bargained to sacrifice himself and all that he held dear for that which was already won, and in the very flush and presence of victory he would not give way to the desolation and despair which beset him. All day beneath a burning and malignant sun he moved among the heaps of the slain, turning over body after body, only to find more beneath. The kites and preying hawks chid shrilly over his head, but he heeded not and worked on, and a little before sunset only had he finished, and sat down on the hill-side for a moment to eat, for he remembered that he had not eaten that day, and he felt suddenly faint with hunger. Then rising he went back to the town and up to the mosque.