Mitsos, still smiling kindly, lifted the Turk off his feet, and, with a mighty swing, threw him, as Yanni suggested, onto the road, where he fell, pitiably, in a heap, and, once free from Mitsos, called, in a lamentable voice, for Mohammed the Prophet. Next moment Yanni had shut the gate, locked it, and thrown the key away into the bushes that lined the road.
The two looked at each other for a moment, and then Mitsos broke into a roar of good, wholesome laughter, as unlike as possible to the exhibition to which he had treated Yanni after the affair of the powder-mill. Yanni joined in, and for a few seconds they stood there shaking and helpless. Mitsos recovered himself first.
"Oh, Yanni!" he cried, "but I could laugh till morning were there not other things to do! Come away; there will be no sleep for us this night. No, we keep to the road at present and go westward. Come, we will talk afterwards."
For two hours they jogged on as fast as Yanni could, for a month of living in the confinement of a house and garden "has made a hole," as he said, "in my bellows; and as for the fat of me, why, Mitsos, it's a thing of shame." But there was no wind in him for more than the running, and it was in silence they climbed the steep road into the mountains between Tripoli and the plain of Megalopolis. These were cut in half by a small valley lying between the two rows of hills, with a sharp descent into it from each side, going down into which Yanni recovered his wind a little. On the edge of the valley, as Mitsos knew, stood a small khan, the keeper of which was his father's friend, and as a light still shone in the window he and Yanni entered to rest awhile and get provisions for the morning. Anastasis was glad to see him, and asked him what he was doing there and at that time; and Mitsos, knowing his man, told him in a few words the story of the escape, and begged him, if there was pursuit from Tripoli, to say that they had just passed, going to Megalopolis. "For you see," put in Yanni, observing that their host's wits were not of the quickest, "we are not going to Megalopolis, and it will be a fine gain of time to us if they seek us there."
After an interval this appeared to Anastasis to be a most admirable joke, and for five minutes more, as he was cutting them bread and meat, he kept bursting out into a chuckle of delight, and turned to Mitsos, saying, "Then they'll find you not at Megalopolis. Eh, who would have thought it?"