Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—
“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.
At last an old woman directed him.
“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”
Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.
A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!
As he stood there, on the coarse down-trodden grass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.
The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”
And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.
Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.