Ioulia D. Dragoume

On a very hot morning in May, at the corner of the Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, in the Square of the Constitution, in Athens, a dirty little boy with a sheaf of unsold newspapers under his arm was sitting on a shoeblack’s box, alternately munching a piece of bread and wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

Another boy, not so dirty, stood beside him, with one foot on the edge of the box, watching the people in the square. He was fair for a Greek boy, with light hair which showed through the many holes of his cloth cap.

There was a tug at his ragged tunic:—

“Aleko! Aleko! You are not listening!”

“What is it? I hear.” But he did not look down at the grubby little fellow who continued sniffing:—

“I dreamt, I tell you, as truly as I see you here I did, that I went away somewhere, and that I found a great big sweet shop, bigger than Yannaki’s or Doree’s, ever so much bigger, and in the shop there were dishes and jars and trays, and trays, and trays all around of chocolates, and baklava,¹ and kourabiedes, and little cakes with pink and green and white sugar all over them; and there were piles of comfits, and caramels,—oh, and heaps of other things; and …” warming to his description, “bottles and bottles of cherry syrup and lemonade, and I dreamt that the man of the shop waved his hand—so,—over everything and said ‘Please,’—Aleko, do you hear? ‘Please eat all the things you want.’ And then,” with a savage tug at the tunic, “then you came and waked me!”

Aleko looked down at him for a minute:—

“Did I want to wake you? It was time to get up. The big one sent me. And what are you crying about now, any way? For the sweets you never had?”

The small boy, Andoni, gulped down a sob.

“No!”

“What then?”

“I only sold two newspapers; the other boys got before me; and the big one will beat me when he sees all these left.”

Aleko shrugged his shoulders.

“You will cry when he beats you; what is the use of crying now?” Then he looked out again, over the square.

Watching people and things always kept him very busy. There were so many things going on at once. Two coachmen, on the side of the square where the carriages stand, were swearing at each other, and they were using swear-words quite different from those Aleko had heard in his village. A man from Rhodes was trying to sell his embroidered bags to some foreigners, of those who walk about with little red books in their hands, at double the price he usually asked for them. Some men were carrying big trunks down the steps of the hotel, and three ladies with bright coloured sunshades were going towards the street of the shops.

Two men, an old white bearded one and a fat one who walked with his legs wide apart and his hands behind his back, passed in front of the two boys.

“Ah, my friend,” the older one was saying; “you are quite right, but ????? sea?t??, know thyself, is a very difficult thing.”

Suddenly Aleko stooped and pushed Andoni off the box.

“Run!” he said, “they have no newspapers; run after them!”

The dirty little boy picked up his sheaf of papers and rushed after the men, who had already turned the corner.

In a few minutes he returned, jingling some copper coins in his hand.

“They bought three,” he said, “the old one took the Acropolis and the fat one the Embros, and the Nea Himera. Why did you not sell them yours? You have some left.”

“Because I am waiting here for a man whose shoes I black every morning. He always comes at this time, and I wait for him.”

“Do you mean,” asked Andoni eagerly, “a big man with a beard, who wears a soft gray hat?”

“Yes; why?”

“Because I saw him now at the corner where the flower boys stand. Yoryi, the one who squints, had just polished his boots for him, and the gentleman was paying him.”

Aleko wasted no words. He seized his box, and ran round the corner of the square with such speed that his feet raised a cloud of dust all around him.

A group of shoeblacks and flower boys were standing about the end of the Kiphissia Road, but there was no sign of a client of any sort.

Aleko rushed up to a boy much bigger than himself, with squinting eyes, and caught hold of his arm:—

“Did you clean the boots of the man with the black beard?” he asked. “Do you not know he is my client?”

The elder boy shook him off roughly.

“You, with your clients!” he muttered.

The other boys sniggered.

“You are late, you see, to-day, Aleko; another got before you.”

The lad’s face reddened.

“He always asks for me, and I was waiting for him just there.”

“Oh,” said one of the flower boys, tying up a big bunch of scarlet carnations as he spoke, “your client asked for you all right, but Yoryi here, told him that you had been sent on a message and that he was your partner.”

Yoryi laughed noisily.

“That is how I do business.”

But his laugh broke off in the middle. Aleko had come close to him, and with one well-directed kick had sent the big shoeblack’s box flying into the middle of the road.

Brushes flew here and there, bottles of yellow and black polish were broken and their contents spilt in the dust, and round metal boxes rolled in all directions. Yoryi seized hold of Aleko by the neck and struck him savagely on the head.

“A bad year to you!” he shouted, as blow followed blow. “Did you not know that you would eat stick if you played those tricks on me? Did you not know it? Take that then! And that! And that! Did you think you could touch me and go free?” and the blows came down like rain. At last he flung the smaller boy away from him and began sullenly collecting the scattered contents of his box.

Aleko picked himself up, staggering a little as he stood.

“Oh, I knew!” he shouted, staunching a bleeding nose on the sleeve of his tunic. “Of course I knew. Do I not eat stick every day? Am I not the smallest? But it was you who did not know! You who thought you could cheat me and be safe! You did not know that your box would be all over the road, that your bottles would be broken, that all your things would be so spoiled that you could not steal other lads’ clients this morning again! Pick them up then! Stoop! Yes, stoop in the dust and pick them up!”

The other boys were laughing at Yoryi now.

“He has played you a good trick, the little one!”

“Did you think,” shouted Aleko, “that you could touch me and go free?” and before Yoryi, furious now with rage, could catch him a second time, he doubled, and ran round the corner of the University Road.

Being fleet of foot, he left Yoryi far behind him, and running up one street and down another and across a third, he soon arrived safe and unpursued at the top end of Stadium Street and back again in Constitution Square.

A sound of music came from the direction of the Palace and he looked up eagerly. The guard was changing; he could hear the measured tread of the soldiers. Though he had been in Athens nearly two years the spectacle had never lost its charm for him.

Pushing, stooping, dodging, he elbowed his way to the edge of the pavement and waited.

On they came, the officer, the band, the marching men, the beautiful blue flag held aloft by a white-gloved sergeant. Aleko knew all about it, for a soldier had told him one day that you had to be a good-conduct man to be allowed to carry the flag, and that you had to wear white gloves: and the boy had long ago decided that when his time came to serve as a soldier, he would always carry the flag.

Up sprang all the officers who happened to be sitting at the little cafÉ tables in the square, and stood saluting. Civilians who were passing stopped and uncovered; coachmen stood up on their boxes bare-headed; Aleko pulled off his tattered cap in imitation and stood with the hot sun shining on his tumbled fair hair.

An old man looked down on him and smiled. Then, catching sight of the dust and smears of blood on the boy’s face, he remarked with a chiding gesture:—

“Ah! you have been fighting.”

“No,” answered Aleko, “I have been beaten.” Then emboldened he asked, “Tell me, why do people take their hats off?”

The old man stared at the question.

“Why, to the flag, of course.”

“Yes, I know; but why?”

“Why? To show respect to the flag, of course.”

“Why does it show respect when one takes one’s hat off?”

The old man answered by another question:—

“From where are you my lad?”

“From Megaloupolis.”

“Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?”

“At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,² there was always a flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off.”

“Well, in Athens you will learn many things,” said the old man walking away. Aleko looked after him.

“I do not think,” he muttered, “that he knew why. How many people do not know things when you ask them.” Then he ran up the steps of the Hotel Grande Bretagne where one of the head servants, standing on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.

“Make them shine well,” said the man, putting his foot on the little inclined rest of the box.

“Be easy,” answered Aleko, “you will see your face in them.”

He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:—

“What does ‘Know thyself’ mean?”

“Where did you pick up that fine phrase?”

“One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a very difficult thing. What does it mean?”

“If it be difficult how should I know it?” answered the head servant. “Do poor folk have time to go beyond the municipal classes at school?”

“Does he know?” and Aleko with a backward jerk of his thumb indicated another servant, stout and gray-haired, standing within the portal of the hotel.

“He! He can scarcely read the newspaper!”

“Then who knows?”

“Do you not go to the Parnassos School every night?”

“Of course I go.”

“Well, ask your schoolmaster.”

“Oh, he has no time; we are many boys. You see I thought as you stand here so often doing nothing, if you knew you would have time to tell me.”

The man scowled.

“Enough words! There are your ten lepta. Go about your business and leave me to mine.”

Aleko slung his box over his shoulder and descended the hotel steps slowly. He was beginning to feel sore all over and his head ached. He decided that he would go home and have a sleep. Home meant the cellar which he shared with the other boy, Andoni, and with the older shoeblack, “the big one” who had brought them over from Megaloupolis, and for whom they worked, till such time as they should have earned enough to set up for themselves.

Bells were ringing for noon, and after that no one would be out in the sun-blaze of the streets to want boots cleaned; there would be no work again until the sales of the evening newspapers began.

He trudged rather wearily up the steep streets towards the Square of the Kolonaki, near which he lived; and as he went, he wondered once more why so many people did not know things when you asked them.

There were so many things he wanted to find out.

Who lived in the Academy with the two statues on the tall columns, which he passed two or three times a day, and what did people do inside it? What was in the red books which the foreigners held in their hands when they looked up at the old temples? What was that statue in the Zappion Gardens where a woman was putting a crown of leaves on a man’s head? And most of all, what made automobiles go without horses when the driver turned that round wheel? The whole town was one great “Why” to him.

When he reached the street behind the Kolonaki Square, and went down the steps to the cellar, he found it empty. From a shelf in one corner he took down the half of a loaf of bread, and a piece of white cheese wrapped in a sheet of paper. His mother was renowned in Megaloupolis as one of the tidiest housewives of the place, and it was from her that he had learned not to leave food about uncovered; this was also probably the reason why his face and hands were generally less grimy than those of most of the other shoeblacks.

Nearly all the boys he knew were shoeblacks, or newspaper sellers and messenger boys, or they combined the three trades; and nearly all came from Megaloupolis in the charge of an older boy of eighteen or twenty years old, “the big one,” as they called him. He paid them a yearly wage and, except what was necessary for food, all their earnings went to him. Aleko was paid one hundred and fifty drachmÆ a year; next year he was to have two hundred. Later on, he would work for himself, and doubtless when he was old enough he would in his turn employ smaller boys. He had no father, and the money was required to help his mother and the two small sisters in Megaloupolis. How could they live else?

After he had eaten, he sat down and pulled out his morning’s earnings from the breast of his tunic. The copper coins and nickels amounted to one drachma and thirty-five lepta; of these, he put aside thirty lepta for his supper, and screwing up the rest in a piece of old newspaper pushed it underneath a painted wooden chest to give to “the big one” when accounts were made in the evening. Then he threw himself on his mattress, doubled his arm under his head, and slept till the loud barking of a dog on the pavement outside awoke him with a start.

He rushed up the cellar steps which led to the pavement of the narrow street, banging the door behind him, and nearly fell headlong over a fox-terrier busily occupied with the rubbish tin of the next house. The little dog yelped sharply as Aleko stumbled over him, and abandoning the rubbish tin, trotted quickly off towards the square.

“Solon!” called Aleko. “Here Solon! Why do you run away? It is only I.”

Solon stopped short, listened for a moment with uplifted paw, and then with a series of little joyful barks ran back towards the boy.

Aleko stooped, and catching him up by the middle of his well-fed, white little body tucked him under his arm.

“You little rascal! What do you mean by rooting in the rubbish? Have you not enough to eat in your house? I should be glad to have your luck.”

Two little ears were cocked on one side of Aleko’s arm and a short tail wagged frantically on the other.

“I wonder how it happens that you are out alone? Has Anneza lost you?”

Just then, coming out on the Kolonaki Square, Aleko descried a young woman carrying a basket, who was looking all around her and peering under the bushes of the enclosure seemingly in great distress. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply.

“Anneza! Eh! Here is your dog! It is I who have him!”

The young woman wheeled around and came rapidly towards him. She was pretty, with black hair and a big white apron crossed over a pink cotton frock.

“Do you not feed him enough?” Aleko asked her as he put down the dog. “I found him in my street with his nose in the rubbish tin.”

“Feed him, indeed?” snorted the young woman, “he has of the best. If all poor people fared as he does, it would be well. The master is so fond of him he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body. He often comes himself into the kitchen to see what I give him to eat. But all the same the dirty dog is always grubbing in the rubbish tins. When I take him out he is always straying and making me go cold with fright for fear the ‘boya’³ should catch him.”

“The ‘boya’ only takes dogs who belong to no one. He would not take yours,” said Aleko, turning Solon over on his back with his foot as he spoke.

“Do I know? Now, in this hot weather when dogs go mad, they say that the ‘boya’ gets paid one drachma for every dog he catches; and all he can lay hand on are thrown into his cart. If I had my way the dog should never stir out, but the master says he must have exercise, and if he sees me out without Solon, bad luck for me!”

“Take your dog now,” said the boy, “I must go for my newspapers.”

“Listen, Aleko.”

“What?”

“Come to the house in the morning; there are some curtains to beat.”

“I will come.” Then, as he turned to go, he added, “Keep the dog by you! Do not let him stray again.”

“I have no strap,” answered Anneza.

Aleko was already some way off, but he called back over his shoulder:—

“You need not tie him. Talk to him.”

Anneza looked after the boy, whose bare feet were raising a cloud of dust as he ran, and tapped her forehead.

“A good boy,” she murmured, “but …”

It was nearly sunset when Aleko came up to the Kolonaki again with his evening papers, after having sold all he could in the big squares and at the little tables outside the cafÉs and confectioners’ shops where people sit to eat ices and look at the passers-by.

He was walking slowly up the long straight street, dotted here and there with trees, which leads out of the square, dragging his feet as he walked, for the day had been long and hot. There were not many papers left in his sheaf but every now and then he raised his piercing cry:—

“Astrapi! Hesperini! Hestia!” These were the names of his newspapers.

Suddenly from a narrow side street which he had already passed he heard an answering call.

“Newspapers! Here!”

He turned on his steps and looked down the alley. At the door of a low house stood an old man leaning on a stick. He did not beckon nor make any sign but continued to call, “Newspapers! Here!”

Aleko ran up.

“Which do you want?”

“Have you the Embros?”

“No, that is published in the morning.”

“I know it, but I thought you might have one left. I always take the Embros, but no one passed here this morning.”

“I have only the evening papers.”

“Well, give me the Hestia, then.”

Aleko picked out one of his three remaining Hestias and held it out, but the old man made no movement to take it. He was tall, straight, and gray haired, and somehow it was not easy to imagine his face as ever having been young. He wore shabby gray clothes, very frayed and stained.

“Here is your Hestia.”

“Put it down here on the step beside me. Take your five lepta,” and from an inner pocket the old man produced a copper coin, but as he held it out, his stick came into sharp contact with Aleko’s elbow. The boy gave a little cry and began to rub it.

“I have hurt you, my lad,” said the old man, bending forward and dropping his stick with a clatter. “You must forgive me! I cannot see; I am blind.”

Aleko stopped rubbing his elbow and looked curiously into the old man’s face. The wide open brown eyes seemed to be looking at him. He remembered an old blind woman who used to go about asking for alms in Megaloupolis, but her head was always sunk on her chest, and her eyes were closed.

“Are you quite blind?”

“Quite.”

“Your eyes do not look blind.”

“But they are.”

Aleko held up his hand, high above his head.

“Can you not see how many fingers I am holding up now?”

“Not even that you have lifted your hand; not even that you stand before me.”

“That is a pity you should be blind,” said the boy slowly. “You are not very old yet. Have you been blind long?”

“Two years now.”

“That was before I came to the town. And how did you lose your light?”

“I had a bad fever for many months, and afterwards my eyes never got well; then they grew worse and worse, till the darkness fell. There is a good man who was once my pupil and who is rich now, and he took me to the best oculists; but they said they could do nothing.”

Aleko passed his fingers through his hair and hesitated; but his curiosity got the better of him.

“Tell me, master, why do you buy a newspaper if you cannot see to read it?”

“It is read to me.”

“Your children read it to you?” queried the boy.

“No, I have no children. There is a young man,—a student, who lives in the next house,—and every day at noon I give him ten lepta to read the whole newspaper to me. One must know the news and what the outside world is doing.” Then half to himself he added, “Though the eyes be blind the mind must see.”

But Aleko frowned.

“What! Pay lepta to have the news read to you! That is a sin! Better keep the good money for bread. In our village, he who can read reads aloud, and the others listen, but no one pays.”

“In the town it is different,” sighed the old man. “In small places people are kinder. I know, for I taught school for many years at Lixuri in Cephalonia and one helped the other when there was trouble.”

Aleko looked up suddenly.

“Give me your name, master.”

“My name is Themistocli.”

“Listen, then, Kyr Themistocli; now, with the sun-blaze, no one comes out to have their boots cleaned after noon, so there is no work before the evening newspapers are published. I will keep you an Embros every day, and at two, or at three, after you have had your sleep, I will bring it and read it to you, and then you need not spend your lepta.”

“But, my child …”

“Oh, I can read. I can read without stopping at the big words. Also I do not sing when I read. It is not I who say so; it was one of the members of the Parnassos at our examinations, when we all read out aloud. He said to the master, ‘That boy there, with the yellow hair, is the only one who can read without singing.’ Shall I come, Kyr Themistocli? Shall I come to-morrow?”

The old man groped with his hand until he found Aleko’s arm and patted it gently.

“You are a good boy to a poor blind man.”

“No,” said Aleko wriggling a little, “I like to read, and since you were a schoolmaster perhaps you will know things when I ask you.”

The old man, stooping, felt for the newspaper on the doorstep and turned towards the house.

“Come inside with me for a minute, my lad.”

Aleko followed him through a narrow passage and into a little living-room, containing a round table covered with a red and white checked cloth, two cupboards, a high one and a low one, and three odd chairs. On the floor were two or three torn newspapers, and on the low cupboard was a pile of unwashed plates. The dust lay thick everywhere.

Just as they entered, a door leading to another room opened and a stout woman with a dirty blue apron tied round her, looked in; she held a pan in one hand and a plate of salad in the other.

“Your soup is ready,” she began, then catching sight of Aleko she added quickly, “A loustro⁴ has followed you in. What does he want?”

“I brought him,” answered Kyr Themistocli. “Sit down, my child.”

But Aleko had been taught that one should never stay when people are about to sit down to a meal.

“With your permission, master, I go to eat bread, and I shall return.”

“No, do not go. Stay and take your soup with me.”

The stout woman muttered something about a rat whose hole was too small for him, but who would drag a pumpkin in as well.

“What is it, Kyra Katerina?” asked the old man sharply. “Is there not sufficient soup for two?”

“As for that, yes, there is sufficient.”

“Then pour it into two soup plates, and stay … there was a dish of potatoes left ….”

“Those are for to-morrow,” said the woman sullenly.

“I wish for them to-night.”

The woman said nothing. She pushed the red and white cover half off the table and put down the pan and the plate of salad on the yellow oilcloth underneath. Then, opening the low cupboard, she produced two soup plates and the half of a ring-shaped loaf. Then she poured the thick rice soup into the plates: it was red with tomato and smelt very good. Lastly, she took the empty pan into the back room and returned with a dish of cold potatoes and a pitcher full of water.

“I have served,” she said. “Is there perhaps anything else you want?”

Her voice sounded angry, but Kyr Themistocli took no notice of it.

“No, there is nothing. You can go.”

The stout woman pulled down her sleeves, and untying her apron threw it on the top of the unwashed plates.

“As you like.” Then, as she opened the door, she added, “A nice work it will be in the morning to have to clean the floor after a shoeblack’s dusty feet.” Then she passed out and shut the door quickly before Kyr Themistocli could answer.

“Eat your soup, and do not mind her,” he said to Aleko.

“I do not mind her,” said Aleko, taking a big spoonful of soup; and after swallowing it, he added sagely, “Women always make much noise.”

The blind man ate slowly and did not always find his mouth exactly. Aleko saw, now, why there were so many stains on his clothes. When he had finished he pushed his plate back.

“Tell me, now, what do they call you?”

“They call me Aleko.”

“From where?”

“My mother lives in Megaloupolis, and I was born there and the little ones, but my father was not from there.”

Kyr Themistocli noticed the past tense.

“He is dead, your father?”

“Yes, it is two years ago that he died.”

“And from where was he?”

“From Siatista.”

“Ah, a Macedonian! And what was his name?”

“Philippos Vasiliou.”

“So your name is Alexandros Vasiliou?”

Aleko nodded.

“Alexander of the King! Alexander the son of Philip!⁵ Your master has taught you about him at school?”

“Of course,” said Aleko frowning.

The old man smiled. “There is a story about him which you have not heard perhaps. Do you know how Alexander the King got the Water of Life?”

Aleko shook his head: “We have not reached such a part.”

“Well, I will tell you about it. Listen:—

“When Alexander the King had conquered all the Kingdoms of the world, and when all the universe trembled at his glance, he called before him the most celebrated magicians of those days and said to them:—

“ ‘Ye who are wise, and who know all that is written in the Book of Fate, tell me what I must do to live for many years and to enjoy this world which I have made mine?’

“ ‘O King!’ said the magicians, ‘great is thy power! But what is written in the book of Fate is written, and no one in Heaven or on Earth can efface it. There is one thing only, that can make thee enjoy thy kingdom and thy glory beyond the lives of men; that can make thee endure as long as the hills, but it is very hard to accomplish.’

“ ‘I did not ask ye,’ said the great King Alexander, ‘whether it be hard, I asked only what it was.’

“ ‘O King, we are at thy feet to command! Know then that he alone who drinks of the Water of Life need not fear death. But he who seeks this water, must pass through two mountains which open and close constantly, and scarce a bird on the wing can fly between them and not be crushed to death. The bones lie in high piles, of the kings’ sons who have lost their lives in this terrible trap. But if thou shouldst pass safely through the closing mountains, even then thou wilt find beyond them a sleepless dragon who guards the Water of Life. Him also must thou slay before thou canst take the priceless treasure.’

“Then Alexander the King smiled, and ordered his slaves to bring forth his horse Bucephalus, who had no wings yet flew like a bird. The king mounted on his back and the good horse neighed for joy. With one triumphant bound he was through the closing mountains so swiftly that only three hairs of his flowing tail were caught in between the giant rocks when they closed. Then Alexander the King slew the sleepless dragon, filled his vial with the Water of Life, and returned.

“But when he reached his palace, so weary was he that he fell into a deep sleep and left the Water of Life unguarded. And it so happened that his sister, not knowing the value of the water, threw it away. And some of the water fell on a wild onion plant, and that is why, to this day, wild onion plants never fade. Now when Alexander awoke, he stretched out his hand to seize and drink the Water of Life and found naught; and in his rage he would have killed the slaves who guarded his sleep, but his sister, being of royal blood, could not hide the truth, and she told him that not knowing, she had thrown the Water of Life away.

“Then the king waxed terrible in his wrath, and he cast a curse upon his sister, and prayed that from the waist downward she might be turned into a fish, and live always in the open sea far from all land and habitation of man. And the gods granted his prayer, so it happens that to this day those who sail over the open sea in ships often see Alexander’s sister, half a woman and half a fish, tossing in the waves.

“Strange to say, she does not hate Alexander, and when a ship passes close to her she cries out:—

“ ‘Does Alexander live?’

“And should the captain, not knowing who it is that speaks, answer, ‘He is dead,’ then the maid in her great grief tosses her white arms and her long golden hair wildly about, and troubles the water, and sinks the ship.

“But if, when the question comes up with the voice of the wind, ‘Does Alexander live?’ the captain answers at once, ‘He lives and reigns,’ then the maid’s heart is joyful, and she sings sweet songs till the ship is out of sight.

“And this is how sailors learn new love songs, and sing them when they return to land.”

When the old man ceased speaking Aleko waited a moment and then said slowly,—

“That is not true—but I like it.”

“Do you know, my lad,” said Kyr Themistocli, “that with a name such as yours you ought to grow up a great man.”

“But if one cannot?”

“That is only if one is not born so,” said the old man shaking his head, “but if one is born with brains, and will, one always can.”

“No!” burst out Aleko, “without learning one cannot and when one is poor how is one to get learning?”

“We live in a country, my boy, where learning is free.”

“And must not one live while one is learning? And must one not keep one’s mother and the little ones who cannot work?”

“Did you not say that you go to the Parnassos School?”

“Of course I go, but already I am in the third class, next year I shall be in the fourth, which is like the first Hellenic class in municipal schools, and after that, there are no more classes at the Parnassos.”

Kyr Themistocli thought for a moment.

“How old are you?”

“In August, on the Virgin’s Day, I close my twelve years.”

“Why are you in the third class if you have only been here two years?”

“Oh, the first is only for those who cannot read, I did not pass through it at all.”

“You could read already, when you came from your village?”

“Long before that.”

“Who taught you?”

Aleko shifted from one bare foot to another and thought for a moment.

“I do not know,” he said at last. “My father had three books, and there were newspapers which the coffee-house keeper threw away, and … I learnt.”

“If you finish the fourth class of the Parnassos, you will know a good many things.”

“What will be the benefit? When there is no more night school and I have to work with my hands all day, as the years pass I shall forget all they have taught me, and I shall be an unlearned man. The member who spoke at the examinations last year, told us that an unlearned man is like wood that has not been hewn.”

The boy pushed back his chair and stood up.

“Why do they say such things to us? Can we help it if we are poor? It is bad to know only the beginning of things! It is worse I think than to know nothing. Sometimes I am sorry that I went to the Parnassos!” And Aleko turned towards the window and began drawing his finger over the dust on the pane. But the old schoolmaster called him:—

“Find the Hestia,” he said, “and read to me, will you?”

So Aleko read for some time by the fading light. He read of many things, and amongst others of how a great big warship had been launched and was soon to be brought to Greece … the Averoff.

“Why do they call it the Averoff? What does it mean?”

“It is the name of a very good, and very rich man, who gave the money to build it.”

“Will it fight the Turks?” asked Aleko eagerly.

“Good grant it, my boy! And may I be alive to hear of it.”

“When it does, I will read all about it to you.”

“Thank you,” said the old man very seriously.

Then Aleko went on reading till he could see no longer.

“You read well,” said Kyr Themistocli slowly. “Will you come again? you will give me pleasure.”

“I will come every day.” Then Aleko got up and began carrying the plates off the table into the kitchen at the back. He returned with a lighted candle.

“Now,” he said, “I will tidy up a little so that the cross woman will not have so many words to say to-morrow. As for her floor …” and he looked at it with disgust, “it is so dusty that anyone who walks over it will take dust away instead of adding any! Does she come every day?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes, she cleans and cooks for me.”

“And you pay her?”

“Naturally.”

“Kyr Themistocli, you must find another woman who will have a little conscience; this one, because you cannot see … she lets you live in dirt.” He took up the cover and shook it vigorously out of the window. “But what dust! It is a sin to take money for such dirty work! Ah,” he continued, polishing the window panes with a piece of torn newspaper, “you ought to have my mother to work for you! Then you would see what your house would be like!”

“Your mother is a good housewife?”

“She is the best in Megaloupolis; all say it. What would she say if she saw this room? And my clothes also,” he added, looking at them ruefully. “But when one works, what can one do?”

When he had finished, he blew out the candle. “Since it is useless to you,” he remarked, “why should it burn in vain?” Then he came close to the old man and laid his hand on his knee.

“I thank you for the good food. To-morrow, then, I shall come at three.”

The old man stood up and felt for Aleko’s head.

“I want to see how tall you are. Ah, you are well above my shoulder, that is a good height for twelve. Are you strong? Do you have gymnastics at the Parnassos?”

“Yes, in the square outside. I know all the movements; and there is one member—not the one who comes to the lessons, another who has been abroad—and he is teaching us boxing.”

“Boxing?” echoed the old man. This was new for him.

“It is how to fight with your hands; and he says that I shall learn well and soon.”

“That is not real learning,” objected Kyr Themistocli, “that is play.”

“I do not know,” answered Aleko, “but it is very useful for me, because there are some of the boys who will not understand things unless you explain with your fists. Now I go,” he added. “I must be at the school at eight o’clock. Good night, master.”

“Good night, my child.”

But from the door he rushed back again.

“What is that statue in the Zappion Gardens, of the man who stands at the woman’s knee; she who is putting a crown of leaves on his head?”

Kyr Themistocli put his hand to his forehead in a bewildered fashion.

“At the Zappion? A crown of leaves? Oh, I see; you mean Byron. Well, he was a great poet—a stranger—and because he left his own country and came and fought for us against the Turks, and helped us, and sang about us, and loved us, the woman, who means Greece, is crowning him with laurels.”

“Is it like when you take your hat off—to the flag—to show respect?”

“Well, in a way, perhaps,” said the old man smiling.

“Is he dead now, that poet?”

“Yes.”

Aleko thought for a moment.

“I will fight for his country when I grow up if they want me.”

Then he ran very fast because he was afraid he would be late for school. In winter the hours were from seven to nine in the evening, but in summer they were from eight to ten, for the members of the Parnassos who arranged all about the night school, knew that the little shoeblacks and newspaper boys could find work in the streets much later, now that the days were long and people dined at such late hours.

Aleko rushed through the Kolonaki Square and all the length of the street called after the brave Kanaris,⁶ into Academy Road, crossed it, and tearing down two narrow streets one after the other, came out into Stadium Street; this also he crossed, dodging in and out between the tram-cars and the streams of people, and only slackened his pace when he got into the short street that leads to the Church of St. George and the building of the Parnassos.

He pushed open the big door, and dumping down his shoeblack’s box in the outer hall beside a long line of others, was in the class room and seated in his place, just one moment before the master took his.

Two members were present this evening. One of them heard the boys’ grammar and arithmetic lessons, and commented on them; the other, a young man with a small dark moustache, leaned against the wall and looked on without speaking. Just before the books were closed he crossed the big room and exchanged a few words with the master, who smiled, nodded his head, and gave up his place on the platform to him. The whole class looked up with astonishment; members never took the master’s place except to make speeches on the twenty-fifth of March, or on examination day. This member was very tall, his back was very straight, and his eyes were always laughing.

He leaned carelessly across the desk.

“Listen to me, boys!” he said. “Some people have been blaming me for teaching you boxing. They say you are ready enough to fight without being taught any more about it. So I want to explain, here, why I think it such a good thing for you. Now—until all men become saints, and I believe that we, at least, shall not see that day—a boy will always need to defend himself, or his people, or his things, by fighting, sometimes. Well, boxing makes a fine healthy animal of him, ready to face anything that may happen.”

Some of the older boys scowled at the word “animal,” and the young member saw it.

“I am sorry you do not like being called ‘animals,’ ” he continued, “because in reality, you are far worse off than animals when it comes to fighting, and that is why you must learn how to use your strength, so as not to be at the mercy of any who choose to attack you. Why, many insects, even, are stronger than you are!”

The boys laughed out loudly.

“An ant,” continued the young member gravely, “can bear nearly a thousand times the weight of its own body over it, without being crushed. How many times your own weight do you think you could carry? But science can supply what nature has denied to us. We can make our fists be to us just what its horns are to a bull, or its claws and its teeth to a lion; only, you see, we have to learn how to do this carefully, and systematically. When a horse kicks, or a dog bites, no one in the world can teach them to do it better, but most men have no idea how to hit straight from the shoulder with all the strength of the body behind the blow. A boy who has learned how to defend himself will be a thousand times less molested by others, and more independent. When grown men, in a fit of passion, pull out a knife to avenge an injury, it is, nine times out of ten, because they have not learned the use of their fists.”

Then the young member, suddenly leaving the platform, came down amongst them.

“Who will learn?” he asked smiling.

Not a boy but came pressing around him. Benches were pushed against the walls, and the lesson began.

He made the boys who were to fight take off their tunics and roll up the sleeves of their more or less ragged shirts. He placed them in the correct attitude of defense, the right fist closed and held near the body and the left slightly extended. He showed them how to thrust straight from the shoulder for the right-hand stroke, and for the left-hand stroke; then how to parry the right-hand stroke with the left arm raised and slightly bent, and how to parry the left-hand stroke with the right arm bent forward and protecting the face. He showed them how to take their opponent’s head prisoner, and he showed the imprisoned one how to get free.

“Now, Kosta!” he cried, “straight out from the shoulder! Follow your blow! Come with it! Come with it! Be ready, Aleko! Raise your left arm. There you see …. That is the way!”

When the lesson was over and the boys had shouldered their boxes, Aleko lingered until the two members came out down the steps into the street smoking their cigarettes. He stood himself right in the way of the younger member.

“Tell me, Kyrie, if you please, when you strike straight out from the shoulder and the other one does not know how to parry the blow, what happens?”

The member laughed.

“Why, he will see stars, my boy, especially if your blow lands on his chin.”

“Ah!” said Aleko. “Yoryi who squints shall not take my client from me again!”

“Does Yoryi ‘who squints’ come to school?” asked the member.

“Not he!”

“Then I certainly think your client will remain yours.”

“Good night, Kyrie.”

“Good night to you, my lad.”

Then as Aleko ran off, the younger member turned to the older one.

“I wish a few more of the boys had his spirit.”

“How fair he is! From what part does he come, I wonder?”

“Oh, they all come from Megaloupolis, but I believe that this one’s father is originally from Macedonia.”

“Ah, a good race,” said the older man. “One of our best.”

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 Souli⁷ 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.”

Aleko found the water, and was just putting the pitcher back in its place, when he heard a series of short sharp barks in the distance. Instead of passing out of the house door, before which the old man was sitting, he vaulted out of the low kitchen window and went tearing down the street.

“Aleko!” called Kyr Themistocli who heard the clatter. “Aleko! Where are you?” But there was only silence. He sighed and leaned back in his chair crossing his hands.

“Of course the boy cannot stay long; it is well he comes at all,” and he sighed again.

Suddenly he felt something warm, and soft, and alive on his hands. He was startled.

“What is it?”

“It is only Solon,” said Aleko. “Did you not hear me return? He was barking down the street and I knew he had strayed again from the cook—Anneza—and I brought him for you to see.”

Kyr Themistocli always talked of “seeing” and Aleko had got into the same habit.

“Put your hands over him,—so,—Is he not soft? And clever! as clever as a Christian! Whatever I tell him he understands.”

Kyr Themistocli smiled.

“He is not yours?”

“Mine! No! He belongs to the big house higher up, the one which has the garden. Do you know it? Someone lives there who is called ‘Spinotti.’ ”

“Kyrios Spinotti, the banker; he is a very rich man.”

“Is he?” said Aleko indifferently. “Well, Solon is his dog, and he is so fond of him that he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body; and he often goes into the kitchen to see what he eats, and Anneza says that if all poor people fared as well as this dog does, it would be well. So that is why he is so fat, you see! And when Anneza goes out, her master says she must take the dog with her for exercise, and if she does not … bad luck to her! But he is always straying. She is a stupid woman and Solon will not stay with her. Some day she will lose him and never find him again, and then there will be trouble. Now I must take him back.”

“His master,” said the old man slowly, “is so fond of the dog because it was his wife’s dog, and she is dead.”

Aleko, with Solon contentedly tucked under his arm, stopped short.

“You know him then?”

“This house in which I live, is his, and because of that, I pay very little rent for it. He, Nico Spinotti, is my old pupil from Cephalonia, of whom I told you; he who took me to the oculists. Once, a long time ago, when I first came to Athens, when I could still see, I went to his house. His wife was alive then—a beautiful woman, of one of the first names of the island—and as she was talking to me and smiling, she had the little dog, who was but a puppy, in her arms. She died—God rest her soul—of typhoid fever. Since then I have not seen Nico often, but he never forgets his old master.”

“Of course not,” said Aleko, “why should he?”

“Many would, my boy; many would. But he is a good man; take his dog back to him that he may not be anxious.”

After Aleko had left Solon at the big house, it was already dark. He hurried down the Kiphissia Road and through the Square of the Constitution, thinking he would have more chance of selling the few papers he still held, if he went to school by that way.

It was getting cooler, and the streets were filled with people pouring out of all quarters of the city to breathe the night air after the weariness of the day spent behind closed shutters.

Crowded street cars and carriages crossed and recrossed, carrying family parties down to Phalerum and the sea.

The little round tables at Yannaki’s, Doree’s, and Zacharato’s were all occupied, in fact those of the latter had spread right out across the square. All around rose the hum of summer night noises, of music, of the cries of the cafÉ waiters, the tinkling of many glasses and spoons, and the distant whistle of the Kiphissia train.

Groups of men lounged past, talking and laughing.

A man in one of the groups beckoned to Aleko, a young man with a small dark moustache:—

“Here! Have you any newspapers left?”

Aleko looked up into the pleasant, laughing eyes of his boxing master.

“OristÉ!”⁹ he cried eagerly. “Certainly, all you want.”

“Ah, is it you, Aleko! Good evening to you! Well, give me the Hestia, the Astrapi, the Hesperini—and the Romios, if you have it.”

Then, when he had gathered them up, he asked laughingly:—

“Now, as we are old friends and I have bought so many newspapers, surely you will take off a discount for me! What shall I give you?”

Aleko, being of pure Greek blood, answered in the good old Greek fashion:—

“Whatever you please to give.”

The young man laughed and held out a five lepta copper coin, the value of one newspaper alone.

“Suppose then I please to give only this.”

Not a muscle moved in Aleko’s face.

“You shall give it,” he answered, then taking the coin he dropped it into his pocket, and was turning away, when the young man called him back.

“Here! Stop! Did you take it seriously?” and while he was searching for more coins, he asked, “Do you boys not have to account for all the papers you sell?”

“Of course; the ‘big one’ keeps count of everything.”

“Well then, what would you have said when the ‘big one’ as you call him, found fifteen lepta too little?”

“He would have found his money right.”

“How could he?”

“I would have put it there from my supper money.”

The young man looked at Aleko rather curiously, and two of the other men who were with him laughed. The one of them, an older man, said:—

“This is an original little specimen!” and the other, an officer, asked:—

“And why should you be taking from your supper money to make this gentleman a present of three newspapers? Do you not think he is richer than you?”

“That does not matter at all,” answered Aleko. “My father told me that it is a shame always to take, and never to give, however poor you are. He …” pointing with his thumb backwards, “has given me much; may I not befriend him with three newspapers?”

“Ah, that of course alters the question,” remarked the officer.

“I assure you,” began the young man, “that I have never given the child a single thing!” Then turning to Aleko, “Are you thinking of the ‘tsourekia’¹⁰ and red eggs at Easter? but that was from all the members of the Parnassos, not from me alone.”

“No,” said Aleko, “I mean that you have taught me many things, and that is more than things which are eaten and finished.”

“Oh, ho!” laughed the officer, “this is a philosopher we have here.”

“No,” said Aleko gravely, “I have not enough learning; perhaps if I could go to school all day, I might be one, some time.”

The older man shook his head.

“That is the way of the world. My son can go to school all day, and every day, and his one object is to stay away.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” asked the officer of Aleko.

“I do not know … yet,” he answered slowly. “I want to learn how to do many things, and then to go and do them.”

“You could not wish better,” said his boxing master. “I think you will be a man anyway. Here is your money, and run off to the Parnassos; I am not coming this evening; it is too hot for boxing.” Then turning to the officer he quoted smilingly:—

?? ?a??e? ?s?’ ?????p?? ?ta? ?????p?? ?

Aleko heard him, though he did not understand; and as he ran down Stadium Street, he kept repeating the words to himself for fear of forgetting them, and when he sat down in his place in the class, the first thing he did was to borrow a stump of a pencil from his neighbour, and write the words on the fly leaf of his reading book. Of course they were spelled and accented all wrong, but they could be read quite plainly. The arithmetic lesson came last, and Aleko was the last pupil called up to the blackboard, so that when the boys were leaving the class he ventured to show his sentence to the schoolmaster.

“What does this mean, master?”

The schoolmaster took up the book.

“Why do you write on your school books?” he asked sharply.

“I had no paper. What does it mean?”

The master read the sentence slowly.

“This is ancient Greek,” he said. “You have not done any yet: you could not understand it. Even next year in the higher class, you will only do Æsop’s fables, and a little Xenophon. Better leave it,” he added laughing. “Do not trouble your head! It is not for you!”

But Aleko put his book into his shoeblack box to take away with him.

The next day it was four o’clock before he went up to the Kolonaki and found the blind old man seated on a chair outside his door, waiting for him patiently. The daily newspaper was read, but without the usual stopping for questions. When the reading was over Aleko opened his box and pulled out his book. Then he flung himself down and resting the book on the old man’s knees opened the tattered, scribbled-over blue paper cover.

“Master,” he said, “these are ancient Greek words; I heard a man say them to another, and I wrote them down. What do they mean?” and he read the words aloud slowly:—

?? ?a??e? ?s?’ ?????p?? ?ta? ?????p?? ?

“Ah, my child!” and the old man’s voice trembled a little, “they knew so much, those old forefathers of ours,—

?? ?a??e? ?s?’ ?????p?? ?ta? ?????p?? ?

“Yes, that is from Menander. How shall I tell you? It means so many things and so many different things at different times. Sometimes, I think, it may mean simply, that it is a duty to be a man and not a brute. Let me explain ….”

“I know!” broke in Aleko, whose eyes had been fixed on the entrance of the narrow street. “You mean, to be like you and not like that fruit-seller over there who is kicking his donkey because he has laden it too heavily, and it cannot walk.” Kyr Themistocli smiled.

“Well, … yes, if you like, my boy … yes. Sometimes it means that it is a glorious thing to be all that a man can be! to be afraid of no evil talk, to hold your head very high, to remember that we have sprung from a race which has given light to all the civilized world, to become all that an ancient Greek of the best might have been. I do not mean that there were no bad men among them! Which race has been without? There were Ephialtes¹¹ … Antipater¹² … and many others. But to approach the noblest, … to touch the hem of their garment … who would not be proud? Sometimes, Aleko, it means that like Socrates, one must give work, and strength, and patience, and forgiveness to others, and look for nothing in return. Sometimes it means that a man, to be a man, must give the thing that is hardest to give of all—his life even!”

“But …” began Aleko hesitatingly.

“What, my child? Ask all that you wish.”

“If a man—a great man, and a good man as you say—gives his life, then it is finished; he cannot help anyone, or be great, or strong, any more.”

“Ah, no! Many people have said that, little one, but I must make you see further. There are those who will say, if this man had not done this deed of sacrifice, if he had kept his own valuable life, he might have done many more great things later on. Ah, but they forget ….” and the blind man stretched out his arms as though appealing to an unseen audience. “They forget that all the useful and good things which he might still have done, are as nothing before the wonderful example he has given, before …. Oh, how shall I tell you, my child? … before the way in which he has made thousands of men’s and women’s hearts beat with noble thoughts,—before the way in which he has made the little children of his land lift up their heads, and say, ‘I, too, will be like him some day!’ No, Aleko, no! What he has done lasts through the years; and the bravery of great men of whom you will read some day, such a deed for instance as that of Paul Melas¹³ in our own time, makes all the world nobler and stronger for them, even after their names come to be forgotten!”

There was silence for some minutes, then Aleko said:—

“When I am twenty-one years old, and my time comes to serve in the army, if there be a war while I am a soldier, then I may be very brave and perhaps …” his eyes brightened as he spoke, “they may print it in the newspaper, and someone will read it to you, and you will say, ‘That is Aleko, I know him.’ But if there is no war, … then what can I do?”

“It is of your age, my child, to think that only in fighting can one be brave; but I could fill a big book with all the different kinds of courage.”

“Tell me, then! How could I be brave if there were no war?”

The blind man groped for the boy’s hand and held it for a moment.

“I think you are brave now.”

“But that is impossible; I have done naught.”

“Suppose that next year when you finish the highest class of the Parnassos, you were to get the first prize?”

“Yes,” assented Aleko, “I shall get it.”

“Very well; how much is it?”

“Three hundred drachmÆ.”

“Would that sum not be sufficient to keep you for a year at least without working, if you wished to go to a higher class in the Municipal School?”

“It would be sufficient for me alone, but who would send money to my mother and the little ones, if I did not work?”

“That is just what I meant; you go on working for them, instead of getting more learning for yourself, as you would like to do. Well, that is a brave deed!”

“But, no,” said the boy, his face puckered with perplexity, “that is not brave. I do not like it at all!”

“But you do it.”

Aleko got up from his knees.

“I do not do it; it does itself. How can I help it?” then, as he shouldered his box to go, he asked, “After I have read to-morrow, will you tell me about some more great men?”

“I will tell you all I know; … only come!”

And as the days became hotter and hotter, as May melted into June and June into July, Kyr Themistocli got to depend more and more on the boy’s daily visits, and as he was an old man and had lost many things in his life, he would tremble sometimes at the thought of losing this new joy. For it was a joy as all creating and all planting is a joy. In all the years he had been a schoolmaster, it was the first time he had come across an intellect where all seeds once sown bore fruit; where there were no barren spots.

But Aleko never failed him; every day he would bring the newspaper and read it all through to the blind man. When the heat was intense, and the white light in the streets was blinding, they would sit indoors behind closed shutters, and when it became cooler, late in the afternoon, the old man’s chair would be placed outside the house, and Aleko sat on the step below him, and asked all the questions that crowded into his mind. He had more time now, for examinations were over and school was closed until September again. One evening, when the sounds of passing guitars and men’s voices singing, floated up to the narrow little street, mingled with the cries of boys racing and calling to each other, the old man asked him:—

“Do you not want to run with the other lads, Aleko?”

And Aleko answered:—

“I run all day; now it is good to sit. Tell me about some great men, Kyr Themistocli.”

And the old schoolmaster, well content, tilted his chair back against the sun-baked wall of the house, and told him many things.

He told him of the old, old times even before the ancients, when men were almost like brutes, but with something manlike in them which set them apart from the wild beasts; when they made weapons of stones, and lighted fires by the rubbing of sticks; when they crossed over the barrier of water by hollowing boats out of trees. He told him of the terrible wild animals which existed in those days, so monstrous that the heads of some would reach up to the third floor windows of a house; and how they would long ago have devoured all the men if these had not used their brains to defend themselves. How men followed men through the centuries and how, little by little, their brains grew cleverer and cleverer through much using, until at last, from those wild men sprang the minds, and the hearts, and the hands, of Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle, the philosophers, and Leonidas, the warrior, and Pericles, the statesman, and Phidias and Praxiteles, the sculptors. Then, he went on to tell him of all the poor boys through many ages who had the spirit of the old cave dwellers in them—who would not stay as they had been born. He told him of Æsop, who was only a poor slave boy, so ugly and deformed that people laughed and jeered at him; and yet his fables have been translated into all languages of Europe, and even into Arabic and Chinese; of Christopher Columbus, the son of a poor comber of wool in Genoa, who discovered America; of the shepherd boy Giotto, who drew pictures on stones whilst watching the sheep, and who grew up to be a celebrated painter; of Lully, the musician, who was a cook-boy; of Metastasio the Italian poet, who as a boy recited verses in the streets of Rome; and to come to our own days, he told him all he had read before he lost his sight, of Edison, the American, who was a poor boy, and—like Aleko—had at one time sold newspapers to earn his bread, and of what wonderful things he had invented, and how there were few in the world who were not indebted to him; he told him of others—of all he could remember; then he tried to explain to him, a little, how hard all these men had worked, each in his own way, and how they had not only wished to do great things, but had willed it very hard, and had gone on willing it every moment of their lives, and how it was this great will that had made them conquer all obstacles, and all discouragement. He told him also how it was not enough to work, and to be brave, in order to grow up into a great man, or even simply into a good and just one, but how he must think as well; how he must always look for the cause, always ask himself the why and the wherefore, of everything ….

“Of course,” interrupted Aleko, “I know that. If you do not you are stupid. Yesterday, the drawer of a boy’s box would not open; you know the drawer, where all the shoe-polishes and rags are kept; and this boy—Dino—he pulled, and he pulled, and he could not get it open, and he was very angry, because a man got tired of waiting for him to clean his boots and went to another boy’s stand. Then I looked at Dino’s box, and I pulled a little, and it was one side only of the drawer which stuck, so I turned it to the light, and I found that a little nail had fallen between the side of the box and the drawer, and jammed it, and when I pulled it out with a bit of wire it opened as before.”

“And Dino was glad?”

“He was glad, but he did not look why the drawer had stuck, and when another nail falls in he will be stupid again; he will not know how to open it. His head is stuffed with straw!”

Then Aleko got up from the step, and gathered his remaining newspapers under his arm.

“The good hour be with you, Kyr Themistocli!”

“You are going?”

“Yes, I want to go and see if that Anneza has found the dog yet.”

“What? She has lost him again?”

“Since noon to-day, and she was trembling with fear of what her master would say.”

“You will remember, Aleko, to bring the coffee to-morrow afternoon.”

“I will remember. Be easy! I have the money you gave me safe here.” Then as he turned to go, he said, “You have sufficient for the morning?”

“No,” answered the old man, “it is all finished; but for one day it does not matter if one eats one’s bread dry.”

“For you it matters,” pronounced Aleko. “I shall bring the coffee in the morning, ready ground.”

“Do not trouble, my boy; in the mornings you have no time.”

“I shall have time, and I shall bring it when I come with the newspapers for the Spinotti house,” and without waiting for further objections he ran down the street and up the wider one, till he came to the railings of the Spinotti garden.

Anneza, leaning out of her kitchen window, was explaining something vehemently to the next-door cook.

“Have you found the dog?” asked Aleko.

“If only I could find him, I would give twenty drachmÆ out of my wages, that I would! The master was like mad when he heard I had lost him; he says the dog must have been stolen, and he has gone now to put it in the newspapers.”

“Did he give it to you badly?” asked the next-door cook curiously.

Anneza became tearful.

“He scolded me,” she said, “till I have been trembling ever since.”

“He did well,” pronounced Aleko as he turned away, “if your head were not fixed on, you would lose it every day.”

“Wait a moment!” shouted Anneza. “Wait till I get the jam stick to you!” but Aleko was already out of sight.

When he got back to his cellar home he folded the left-over newspapers to be returned on the morrow, and looked doubtfully at his mattress; Andoni, the other boy, was already fast asleep in the farther corner. But it was stiflingly hot in the cellar and there was bright moonlight outside, so he sauntered up the steps again and looked about him. There were few passers-by, and the shadows of the houses lay in deep blue-black patches on the moonlit street.

Farther down, outside a closed fruit shop, were some empty baskets, and on one of these he sat down, his elbows on his knees, and his face cupped in his hands. A cooling breeze came from one of the side streets leading up to the first slopes of Mount Lycabettus,¹⁴ and though Aleko drowsed a little as he sat there, he did not feel inclined to return to his cellar.

Suddenly, behind him came a soft patter and something sniffed at his bare ankles.

He jumped up, overturning the basket.

“Solon!”

And Solon it was, not smooth and white and clean as usual, but muddy, and draggled, and gray with dust.

“You bad dog! How did you find yourself here? Do you know that your master is searching for you in all the town? Do you know that he has paid money to have it printed in the newspaper that you are lost? Are you not ashamed then? Bad dog!”

Solon did not like this tone of voice so he sat up and begged with his dusty little forepaws. All at once, Aleko saw that a broken piece of coarse string was tied round the dog’s neck.

“Bah! Your master was right then that you had been stolen! Some one tried to tie you up, and you must have broken the string and run away. You are a very clever dog! Bravo, Solon!”

Solon opened his mouth very wide and curled up his tongue in a long yawn.

“Come, I will carry you home so that you may not stray again.” And Aleko stooped to pick him up; but as he did so, a man who was coming along the other side of the pavement some distance off, a tall man wearing a Panama hat, called out loudly:—

“Who is there? What are you doing with that dog?” and hastened his steps. He crossed the road to Aleko’s side, and stooped over him to see what he held.

Suddenly Solon gave a shrill, joyous bark and the man snatched him out of Aleko’s arms, at the same time giving the boy a violent push which sent him staggering against the closed shutters of the shop.

“You young scoundrel, you! So I have caught you, have I? Do you know that this is my dog?”

Aleko looked up. It was the man he had often seen coming out of the big house in the garden; it was Solon’s master.

“Yes,” he said, “I know; but you need not push people in that way. I was going to bring the dog to your house. Now that you have found him, you can take him yourself.”

And turning his back he was walking off. But Nico Spinotti had been searching for his dog for the whole long hot afternoon; he had walked up and down likely and unlikely streets; he had visited most of the shops at which Anneza dealt, he had been to the police station, and to three newspaper offices, and now that he thought he had found the culprit, and that this culprit was mocking him, his fury knew no bounds. He put Solon down and darting forward seized Aleko by the arm and brought down his walking stick with force across the boy’s shoulders.

“You young limb!” he shouted. “You thieving little blackguard! From where did you steal that dog? Tell me! Tell me or I will pull your ears off!” and each word was accompanied by a fresh blow. The poor boy twisted and writhed, but he had no chance in those strong hands.

“Leave me!” he screamed. “Let go! Why do you strike me? Leave me, I tell you! I never stole your dog …. I found him …. He knows me …. He came to me!”

“You can tell those lies to others! They will not pass with me,” cried the furious man, pushing Aleko away at last and stooping to pick up Solon. “How should my dog know a ragamuffin like you?”

Aleko, who had fallen on his knees beside the overturned basket, put up his arm to ward off further blows.

“But he does! It is I who bring the newspapers to your house, and he sees me every day. Ask Anneza if it be not true?”

“So much the worse if you know him! I suppose someone has put you up to steal the dog. Now, hark you! You are not to dare to come to my house or anywhere near it, and if ever I see your dirty face in our neighbourhood again, I shall hand you over to the police. So now you know!” and picking up the little dog under his arm he turned to go.

“The street is not yours!” burst out Aleko with sudden fury, rubbing his shoulder. “And I shall sell my newspapers there every day!”

“You will! Will you? Very well, when you want any change out of the beating you got just now, you can come to me for it! Do you hear?”

“I hear.”

“Well, remember it then!” and turning on his heel he walked quickly down the street.

Aleko was sore all over, sore in body and sore in mind. Wearily he staggered back to his cellar, threw himself on his mattress, and there in the dark, dropped his head on his arms and sobbed himself to sleep.

Next morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.

“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who lives very far away, where he will never find it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.

However, he was not to wait even until to-morrow for his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.

Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.

From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.

Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.

The iron cage on wheels, with its load of barking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.

“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”

She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.

But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.

“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”

“Stand out of my way,” shouted the man savagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.

Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.

Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.

Anneza was gone.

“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”

“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”

“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.

“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”

“I am not selling anything,” answered Aleko with dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.

He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.

“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.

“Yes.”

“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”

The older boy stared at him.

“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because this is my stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”

Then Aleko asked another question.

“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”

“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia¹⁵ Square.

“Down where?”

“Far down the PirÆus Road.”

“What does he do with them there?”

“Puts them into a room which kills them.”

“How can it kill them—a room?”

“Do I know?”

“When does the cart come here?”

The elder boy looked up at the sun.

“Now, any minute.”

“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”

“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen to you?”

“Then what shall I do?”

“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the PirÆus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”

“Where is the place?”

“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.

The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.

Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.

Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.

Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.

He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.

The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.

“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it was not a stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.

The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.

“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”

“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”

“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”

“I am not cheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”

“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”

“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you will find trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”

“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”

“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”

“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”

Aleko seized hold of his arm.

“Keep him till noon!”

“He shall go in first, I tell you. Now, leave go!”

“Keep him just one hour!”

“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”

But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.

“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”

All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.

The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.

In the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.

It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.

Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—

“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.

Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.

“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”

But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.

“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.

Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.

“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.

“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”

The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.

“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”

“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”

“Are you not well, Nico?”

“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”

“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”

“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”

“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”

Nico Spinotti shook his head.

“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”

“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”

“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think of anyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”

“A boy stole him?”

“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”

The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.

“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”

But his sentence was never finished.

At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun, and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.

There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—

“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”

In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.

“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”

But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.

“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”

The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.

“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”

“Mine? Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.

Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.

“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”

Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.

“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”

“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was in the shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the PirÆus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”

“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.

“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”

Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.

“Bravo! And did he see them?”

“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”

“And then?”

“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”

“What … all?”

“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”

“And what became of the man?”

“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.

Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.

“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”

“It was not for you that I did it,” answered the boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”

“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”

“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why should he suffer?”

“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.

Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.

Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—

“You are forgiven.”

“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”

“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.

The banker laughed.

“Do you like to sell newspapers?”

“It is my work,” answered Aleko.

“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”

“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”

The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.

“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.

“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmÆ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”

“What would you do if you were free?”

“I want to learn.”

“To learn what?”

“To learn many things.”

“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fills the life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”

“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmÆ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”

But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.

Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.

To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing mattered any more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.