"Mitsos," he said, angrily, "don't make a fool of yourself. Stop laughing at once. Stop laughing!" he shouted.
Mitsos stared at him a moment like a chidden child; the fit ended as suddenly as it had begun, and he sat still a minute or two, idly plucking the fragrant shoots of thyme, or tossing them in the air.
"It has been a great day, Yanni," he said. "This sort of adventure is like wine to me. I think it must have made me drunk. And now I have cursed that devil I feel better. But I was so angry all the way here that I thought I should have burst. I wonder what made me laugh just now. Uncle Nicholas told me once that men sometimes went crazed the first time they killed any one. He told me that I should probably be blooded before I came home again. My eyes! it was so funny," and he began laughing again.
"Oh, Mitsos, dear Mitsos, for God's sake don't laugh. It's horrible to hear you," said Yanni, with a sudden panic fear that Mitsos was indeed possessed.
Mitsos made a great effort and checked himself.
"That's right," said Yanni, soothing him as he would soothe a child. "Drink some more wine, and then stop quiet a while. Go to sleep if you like."
Mitsos drank some wine, shifted to an easier position, and putting his head on Yanni's knee, who was leaning against a tree-trunk just above him, stretched out his great length, and in a couple of minutes was fast asleep. Yanni was not very comfortable, but he sat as still as a stone for fear of waking Mitsos. How odd it was, he thought to himself, that this great cousin of his should have behaved so queerly. He had been so perfectly cool and collected while there was anything to be done, but as soon as the need for doing anything was over he was just a baby. During his struggle with the Turk he remembered seeing Mitsos' face as he threw Krinos, and that mask of fury seemed to bear no resemblance to the cheerful cousin; he was like a wild beast. If anything had been wanting to put the final touch on Yanni's conviction that Mitsos was the king of men, it was that uprising of the wild beast within him.
The sun had come out as they sat there and shone full onto Mitsos' face, and Yanni, as gently as a woman, pushed his cap over his eyes that it should not waken him, and with infinite craft filled his pipe and managed to get a light from his flint and steel. He felt almost jealous of this girl whom Mitsos loved. It was not fit that he should go a-mooning after womankind, who were—so Yanni thought—an altogether inferior breed. It was Mitsos' business to fight, and do the work of fifty men. How splendid he had been one night at Kalamata, when they sat in the café after supper! The keeper of the house had tried to make Mitsos drunk, for the sport of seeing so long a pair of legs in mutiny, and had promised him that if he could drink two okes of wine he should not pay for them. This had suited Mitsos excellently, for he was as thirsty as Sahara. He had drunk them in less than half an hour, and, to show that he was as sober as a woman, he had played draughts afterwards with one of the Greeks there, and beat him easily in the first two games. Then his misguided little opponent had tried to cheat, and Mitsos rising up, a tower of wrath, had dealt the other so shrewd a blow over the head with the draught-board that he was fain to play no more, for other reasons than that the draughts had rolled to all corners of the café. Several men looking at the game had seen him cheat, and applauded most cordially Mitsos' method of correction. They then asked him to drink more wine, but Mitsos thanked them and refused, saying he was thirsty no longer. However, they stopped on, smoking and talking, as there was to be no journey the next day, and Mitsos had sung the "Song of the Vine-diggers" as Yanni had never heard it sung before, for his heart and voice were in harmony. Decidedly there was no one in the world like him.
The inimitable cousin stirred in his sleep, woke, and stretched himself.
"Oh, little Yanni," he said, "what a brute I am! Have you been sitting here all the time with my head on you? Why didn't you knock it off? But the sun is getting low, and we must be on the road. How's the head?"