‘Go!’ he commanded.
Reluctantly the little boys turned away and began to play leap-frog in an open space where once had stood an altar to the great god Zeus. Looking back wistfully, they saw something that made them stop their game in horror.
The big boys, too, had moved away. One of them was halfway up the embankment, but Petro Negroponte had slipped behind the tree under which the artist sat. Suddenly his hand shot out, and the next instant he and his pal were dashing up the embankment and along the road to Arcadia.
‘My paint box!’ cried the artist, springing to her feet. She spoke in English, but the little boys understood. Their own particular stranger had appealed to them for help! Forgetting their fear, they started in full cry after the thieves.
Along the stony road to Arcadia they ran, the artist panting far behind. Shepherds waved to show which direction the fugitives had taken. Men in the field shouted encouragement, but no one joined the chase.
What the boys feared, happened. Petro and his companion made for a thick wood on a cliff above the road. There, rocks and brush made pursuit almost impossible. With thumping hearts and dry throats, the little boys scrambled up the steep incline and out of sight of the artist on the road below.
It was a long half-hour before they came sliding down the hill, dusty and sweating. Andreas carried the paint box, but it was empty. All of the boys were silent and ashamed, because they had failed, but, most of all, because a Greek boy had betrayed a stranger. There were still zanes in Olympia!
The sun was dropping low. It touched the sheep in the meadows, rimming each one of them with silver. The road to Arcadia still lay in sunshine, and over it the little procession turned back.
Suddenly Spiro pounced on something lying in a rut—a stick of charcoal! Instantly five pairs of eyes sharpened, searching the edges of the road. Patiently they went over the course step by step, and shouts of triumph punctured the twilight when a lead pencil or a tube of paint was found among the rocks. At the top of the embankment, where Petro had stumbled over a pine root, they found the most. The box had slipped and, having no cover, many of the paints had dropped from it.
Eagerly the boys gathered the lost tubes. Not the very smallest piece of charcoal was withheld, not even the fascinating lump of rubber which trembled in Alexander’s grimy little hand, nor the empty porcelain pans which Adoni picked out of the moss. At the end of the search, a handful of odds and ends had been gathered, precious little bits of red and yellow and green saved from the wreck.