Then, after a time, he might say:
"You were very like her when you were a boy, Kanaris; she had the same eyes as you. Have you finished drinking? If so, I will put the wine away."
And Kanaris, who would often have wished for more, would say he had finished.
One such evening, towards the end of July, Kanaris came up with news.
"You have heard?" he asked.
"I have heard nothing," said Nikola. "But I dropped a fifty-piaster piece to-day; I know not where or how."
"Athens has capitulated."
Father Nikola rose and brought his hands together with a palsied trembling, and then sank back in his chair again.
"Wine! Give me some wine!" he said. And he gulped down a glassful, holding it in a shaking hand and spilling much. Unused as he had been for so long to anything but water, it was strength and steadiness to him, and he got up again, renewed and firm, his own man.
"I must go, then," he said; "I must go."