And while they were standing about and watching, a big yellow sheep dog had rushed down the hill, and though at first he had contented himself harmlessly enough with sniffing at ropes and the nets, Deko who, it is true, was always very impertinent to big dogs, had provoked him. Chryseis snatched Deko up in her arms, and Andromache seizing Philos screamed for help, for the sheep dog was ready to spring at them. Then the two boys rushing down to the rescue from the top of the hill, instead of finding Pavlo standing in front of the girls, found him behind the trunk of a mimosa tree, staring horror-struck at the big snarling yellow brute, whom they drove howling away with two well-directed stones. Then Iason had turned fiercely on Pavlo:-- "You may be a Zamana as much as you like; you are a coward all the same!" and even Nikias had echoed jeeringly:-- "Coward! Coward!" And then Pavlo had fled blindly to the shelter of the dark little wood. He longed, as he lay there sobbing, that it might be possible never to see any of them again. For he had found out from the first that for the Four the great rule was, "Never be afraid, and if you are, mind you hide it!" Of course they knew that Nikias shirked being dipped far down, or being held long under water. That was a family misfortune, never mentioned before strangers, but on the other hand even Nikias had only two days ago boldly attacked a long snake when it glided out of a thick bush, round which Philos had been sniffing for so long. He had struck at it with all his might on its flat head, and while Anneza, the Andriote serving maid, had picked up her skirts knee-high and fled down the hillside shrieking loud enough to be heard over at Galata, he had followed, his little long face flushed with triumph, his socks hanging over his shoes, and the corpse of the victim dangling horribly at the end of a long stick. "Were you not afraid, you little one?" his father had asked; and Nikias answered that he had been just a little afraid when it raised its head and hissed, but that Chryseis was so stupid that he knew she would never sit comfortably under the big pine again with her book, if she felt there were a snake, however harmless, wriggling about in the bushes beside her, so that he had to kill it all the same; did they not understand? And the mother of the Four had looked rather proud, and the father had said:-- "Of course I understand." And Nikias was not yet eight years old, and he, Pavlo, was over eleven!