"Ah, a good race," said the older man. "One of our best." IV The next day, early in the afternoon, Aleko duly took the Embros to the little street off the Kolonaki Square, where the old, blind schoolmaster sat waiting for him, just inside his door. The boy sat down on the doorstep and read out all the news to him. Then he told him all about his boxing lesson, and left only when it was time for the evening newspapers to come out. And after that, the afternoon readings became a regular thing. Sometimes the boy was tired after the long, hot, hard-working morning, and would have willingly thrown himself down on his mattress for an hour or two, but he never failed the old man. Of course the readings were frequently interrupted by questions, for Aleko soon discovered that Kyr Themistocli was of those who "knew things when you asked them." "What is an 'agonistes'?" he asked one day, after reading of the death of an old veteran. "An 'agonistes' is one who fights; but now it has come to mean one who has fought in the Revolution of 1821. My father was one." The newspaper fluttered down on the doorstep and Aleko was on his knees beside the old man, his eyes eagerly fixed on the sightless ones above him. "Your father! Did he kill Turks himself? Did he blow up a Turkish ship? Did he come down from Souli[7] with Marcos Botzaris? Did he see Kanaris and Miaoulis? Did he fight at Missolonghi? Was he there when the Turks passed the stake through Diakos?"[8] "Stop, stop, my child! you want the whole of the Revolution at once!" However, he was very patient, the old man, and Aleko heard many of those things which never get into the history books, at least into those from which he read at school. Little incidents of the many battles and sieges, tales of the misery and the hardships, and of the braving of all the misery and the hardships, for the sake of freedom. Of the Christian children who were stolen and turned into infidels! Of the boys who were taken as babes and brought up to hate and to fight against their own people; of the girls who were made slaves in the harems; of the bloodshed, and the tortures, until at last the day came at Navarino when even strangers joined in arms against the cruel oppressors. "I am afraid," said Kyr Themistocli, "that you cannot quite understand yet, how it all came to pass." "There is only one thing I cannot understand," said Aleko slowly. "What thing?" "When they had the strangers to help them, why they did not go everywhere, and cut off all the Turks' heads so that none should be left." The old man leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud. "He is terrible, the little one!" and he tried to explain, but Aleko remained rather unsatisfied on this point. "Now, will you find me some water to drink. I have talked much."