"I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask." Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was "far down," therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the "boya's" cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run. He must get there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! "As clever as a Christian," as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand. "The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil." After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague. "Somewhere down there," they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him. "What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!" Aleko remembered that his father used to say:-- "By asking one can find the way to Constantinople." And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the "boya's" place, to the "room that killed" he went on asking. At last an old woman directed him. "Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place." Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall. A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time! As he stood there, on the coarse down-trodden grass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket. The boy had said, "They pay him a drachma for each dog--perhaps if you were to give him more...." And Aleko, thinking of the dog's master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment. Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The "boya" was coming. Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.