"HE HAD CLAMBERED UP AND DROPPED DOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE"
The battlemented line of the wall opposite to him stood up clear-cut between the moon and the lights of the town, twenty feet above him, and ran on southward into vague shadow, untenanted. Fifty yards to the left it was interrupted, or rather crowned, by half a dozen big houses, built flush with the wall, pierced by several rows of rather narrow windows, the lower of which were barred, the upper, from their height, needing no such defence. As he crept up alongside of these he heard the subdued murmur of women's voices from within the first house—the home, perhaps, of some Turkish captain and his harem; and the sound of women's voices made mirth to him, and he listened for a while, smiling to himself. From the next house came more such music, and once a woman walked to the window and stood looking out for a minute, or perhaps two, unveiled and playing with the tassel of the blind-cord, till from within some one called her by a purring Turkish name, and she turned into the house again.
He crept slowly on to the end of the line of houses, where the battlemented wall began again, and feeling closer to Suleima in the sound of women's voices, came back and lay down again in the shadow of a tall toothed rock. It was something to be alone, away from the jarring camp, and to be nearer to her. His portentous nightmare beset him no longer, and his anxieties again were charmed to sleep. One by one the lights went out in the windows opposite, and the houses became blackness; the shadow of the rock moved a little forward in the setting moon, and he shifted to be in the shade again. Another half-hour went by, and the mountain ridge hid the moon.
Presently afterwards a man appeared on the top of the wall to the right. Mitsos, perhaps, would not have noticed him but that he waved some white linen thing up and down once or twice, and then waited again, and after a time uttered some impatient exclamation. Mitsos watched him, puzzled to know what this should mean, when suddenly a possible solution dawned upon him, and he crept up, still in the shadow, to below where the Turk was standing, and whistled softly.
Then a voice from above said:
"You are late. Here is the paper signed," and a white thing fluttered down. This done, the Turk turned, and, without waiting for a reply, went southward down the wall.
The paper, whatever it was, was in Mitsos' possession, and putting it in his pocket, for it was too dark to read it, he crept back to his old place to wait a few minutes more there before going back to the camp. Lights showed only in one house now, and before long they, too, were quenched, and the black mass of flat roofs rose against the sky silent and asleep. Then suddenly and softly from out that blackness, like a bird flying in the desert, came the sound of a voice singing, and at those notes Mitsos thought his heart would have burst. For it sang: