I had on two former occasions failed to reach Lamia at nightfall and been obliged to pass the night in this region; once in 1890, very near where we were then standing, in a barn filled with corn-husks, and again, ten years later, under the hospitable roof of the chief of police at Molo, to the east of Thermopylæ. But this time it seemed as if, with a sufficient outlay of energy, we ought to pass over Jordan into a land of milk and honey. The first step was to go back. Just where we were turning from the high-road to go into the village there met us a man on horseback, who proved to be the village doctor going to visit a sick woman. The husband of the patient was trotting along behind him. No sooner did the doctor hear our story than he turned to the man following him, and said: "Go into the village and tell the ferry-man that if he doesn't get back to the ferry as fast as his legs can carry him I will split his head for him. Tell him there are strangers waiting to get over to Lamia." The word "stranger" has great power in Greece. If the stranger is not, as in Homer, under the special protection of Zeus, he is under the protection of all good men, which is perhaps quite as efficient. At this point came a curious turn. The man who was to call the ferry-man said: "But the ferry-man will not believe me when I tell him that strangers are waiting." The doctor saw the point, and said: "Yes, one of you must go with him." I decided that I was needed, and after a hard tramp quite a distance through mud about a foot deep--I would not abate one tittle of nine inches--I saw the effect of the message. The ferry-man saddled a horse and shot off in the direction of the missing bridge as if he believed the doctor was ready to do what he had said he would do. When we reached the ferry all was in readiness for our passage, and, shortly after seven o'clock we sat down to dinner in Lamia. As the doctor and his follower went over in the same ferry-boat it is a fair inference that they had also a personal interest in stirring up the ferry-man.