"Why a hundred and fifteen?"
"I mean to say a hundred thousand."
"No! a hundred and fifteen. That is right! Are you sure that this Stavros will not keep us here when he has received the money?"
"I will answer for it. The bandits are the only Greeks who never break their word. Do you not understand that if it happened once that they kept prisoners after having received the ransom, no one would ever pay one again?"
"That is true! But what a queer German you are, not to have spoken sooner."
"You always cut me short."
"You ought to have spoken even then!"
"But, Madame——"
"Silence! Lead me to this detestable Stavros."
The King was breakfasting on roast turtles, seated with his unwounded officers under his tree of justice. He had made his toilet; he had washed the blood from his hands and changed his clothes. He was discussing, with his men, the most expeditious means of filling the vacancies made by death in his ranks. Vasile, who was from Javina, offered to find thirty men in Epinus, where the watchfulness of the Turkish authorities had put more than a thousand bandits in retreat. A Laconian wished that they might get for ready money the little band belonging to Spartiate Pavlos, who had improved the province of Mague, in the neighborhood of Calamato. The King, always imbued with English ideas, thought of forced recruiting, and of pressing into service the Attic shepherds. This plan seemed to him to possess superior advantages, as it would require no outlay of funds and he would obtain the herds into the bargain.