They reached Galaxidi before the evening and the land-breeze fell, and the Capsina, who had cousins there, went ashore with the baby, intending to leave it there, for, indeed, on the brig they had but little time or fit temper for a child that should have been still lying at its mother's breast. She heard from her friends of a young mother who would perhaps take charge of it, for her own child, a baby of three days old, had suddenly died, and the Capsina herself took it there, nursing it with a singular tenderness, and jealous of all hands that touched it.
"See," she said to the mother, "I have brought you this to care for. I am told that your own baby has died. It seems like a gift of God to you, does it not? Yet it is no gift," she added, suddenly; "the child is to be mine. But I will pay you well."
The young woman, no more, indeed, than a girl, came forward from where she had been sitting, and looked at the baby for a moment with dull, lustreless eyes.
Then suddenly the mother's love, widowed of its young, leaped into her face.
"Ah, give it to me," she cried, quickly. "Give it me," and a moment afterwards the baby was at her breast.
The Capsina stared for a little space in wonder and amazement, then her face softened and she sat down by the girl.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Catherine Vlastos," and her voice caught in her throat; "but Constantine Vlastos, my husband, is dead, and the little one is dead."
Again the Capsina waited without words.
"Tell me," she said, at length, "what is it you feel? How is it that you want the child? It is nothing to you."