There was a short silence, and Yanni stretched out his hand to Mitsos:
"So to you, dearest of all," he said, "I owe my life—once at the mill, and now, once again, life and honor and freedom. Yet is the debt no burden to me, because I love you. But still I would it were the other way. I have no skill of speech, Mitsos, but I know certainly that gladly would I give my eye or my right hand for you, and this is no figure of talk only."
Mitsos took the hand held out to him and shut it between his, looking at Yanni with a serious mouth, but a smile in his dark eyes.
"God send me tears for water and salt for bread," he said, again quoting the oath of the clan, "if I fail you in your need, or love not those who love you and hate not those who hate you."
The sun was already declining to the western hills, and presently after they went down to the spring to eat and drink before they began the tramp through the night. Neither of them had been over this ground before, but it was likely that they would soon come into some path leading from the Arcadian plain to one or other of the villages near the Langarda pass; in any case, even though there were a night's plunging through the heather undergrowth before them, it could scarcely be more than a twelve-hours' journey. Thus, starting at six, they would be at the place by dawn; and, after stowing the remains of their provisions in their pockets, they began the ascent.
Upward they went out of the day into the sunset, and through the sunset into moonrise, and from moonrise into the declining of the moon. The air, warm below, soon grew colder, and their breath, as they walked, hung frostily in the still night. Now and then a whiff of some sweet-smelling shrub streamed across them, or again a roosting pigeon, with a bold noise of its uprising, started still sleepy from its perch in among the whispers of the fir, or a hawk, more cautious, slid into the air. To Yanni, born on the mountain and bred in the open, the spell of the sounds and scents that wander along the hill-side at night was unutterably sweet, and sweet the comradeship of the incomparable cousin. In Mitsos, too, the feeling towards the friend he had saved from death, and worse than death, was father to a very tender affection, for it was a gentle heart that beat so boldly at the hint of danger, and the sweetness of self-sacrifice made him most content. The child within him spoke to his spirit of Suleima, but the boy found his wants fulfilled in the comradeship of Yanni, and made answer with talk of brave adventures done in part and more to do.
About midnight they halted, and already they could see the heights no long distance above them, dappled with snow, and Mitsos, observing this, knew that they had come as high as they had need to go, for the beacon-ground, he remembered, was itself just below the line where the fresh snow lay. They had, an hour before, struck a sort of sheep-track which led in the right direction, but they found that here it went still upward, and leaving it to climb by itself, they struck off to the right, after eating the remains of their food, to follow the contour of the mountain through tracts of pines and open places, and across the scolding streams that rattled down from the snows above, and round deep-cut ravines that broadened out into the larger valleys. By degrees the stars paled at the approach of day, and the dark velvet-blue of the Southern night brightened to dove-color; a few birds awoke in the bushes with sleepy, half-tuned twitterings, and then the sun, great and bold, looked up over the rim of the mountain.
"Look, it is day," said Yanni. "Are we nearly there?"
"Yes," said Mitsos, "there is the beacon-hill. And who is that?"
Swiftly down the hill-side towards them came a great man, leaping and running like a boy.