"Yes, I. Mitsos, will you forgive me? I ought to have been certain of you, and indeed in my heart I was; but I wanted to test you to the full, to put the fear of death before you, for it was needful that I should give convincing proof to others. My poor boy, don't tremble so; it was necessary, believe me. By the Virgin, Mitsos, if you had hit one hundredth part of a second sooner one of these men would have gone home with no nose and fewer teeth. You hit straight from the shoulder, with your weight in your fist. And that double you made up the hill was splendid. Mitsos, speak to me!"
But the boy, pale and trembling, had sunk down on the ground with bent head, and said nothing.
"Here, spirits," said Nicholas, and he made Mitsos drink.
He sat down by him, and with almost womanly tenderness was stroking his hair.
"You were as firm as a rock," he said, "when you stood there, and I saw the muscle of your jaw clinch."
Mitsos, to whom spirit was a new thing, recovered himself quickly with a little choking.
"I wasn't frightened at the moment," he said; "I was only frightened before, when I knew I was caught."
Then, as his boyish spirits began to reassert themselves, "Did I—did I behave all right, Uncle Nicholas?"
"I wish to see no better behavior. It is even as your father told me, that you were fit for the keeping of secrets."
Mitsos flushed with pleasure.