“But what have their grievances to do with you?”
“Why, I am a sufferer by them, so are you. Therefore I naturally feel an interest in getting to know what they are.”
“And what are they, Maurice?” asked Zoe. “I thought these men all came from Thracia or Dardania.”
“No, they are nearly all Illyrians—the Christian kind, such as it is. They are Emathians born, though they are under foreign direction; there’s no doubt of that. And very few of them seem to have become brigands for the fun of the thing. Most of them are pretty sick of the life, but they have made their own villages too hot to hold them.”
“But that was their own fault,” objected Eirene.
“Partly, but it was other people’s fault too. They have failed to pay their taxes in bad years, or have mortgaged their land and been sold up. Some of them have taken to the hills after assaulting tax-collectors, and some on account of blood-feuds. They boast that they only rob the rich, whom they hate most heartily; but I fancy that the poor haven’t much choice about keeping them supplied with food and clothes, especially if they are Greek poor.”
“Why, Maurice, you are hearing the other side!” cried Zoe.
“What other side?” asked Eirene sharply.
“When we heard Professor Panagiotis talk, Maurice said he should like to hear the other side, and now he is doing it,” replied Zoe promptly. Maurice, absorbed in his subject, might have revealed secrets if she had allowed him to answer.
“Yes, it’s just as I thought, there are two very distinct sides to the case,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s something appalling the way these fellows hate the Orthodox Church and everything connected with it. It seems they have been dragooned into belonging to it for generations, with no alternative but Mohammedanism. The priests don’t appear to have been examples to their flocks by any means, but were tremendously keen on their dues, though they could only gabble through services which neither they nor the people understood. All education was in Greek, and the people hadn’t even the Bible in their own language, so that the only chance for a man to rise was to turn his back on his own nationality altogether.”