"In the last hour at the café in the square. They are all clacking and swearing right and left, and the soldiers are patrolling the streets."
"I must go, then," he said. "This is just what Nicholas did not want to happen. Have there been blows between the soldiers and the Greeks?"
"Yanko knocked a Turkish soldier down with such a bang for calling him a dog that the man will never have front teeth again. They took him and clapped him in prison."
"The fat lout shall eat stick from me when he comes out. I suppose, as usual, he was neither drunk nor sober," said Constantine. "As if knocking a soldier down took away the tax. Is Father Andréa there?"
"I passed him just now on the road," said Mitsos, "going to the town."
"Stop here, Mitsos," he said; "I will catch Father Andréa up, and make him tell them to be quiet. He can do what he pleases with that tongue of his."
"But mayn't I come?" said Mitsos, scenting an entrancing row.
"And get your black head broken? No, that will keep for a worthier cause."
Constantine hurried off and caught Father Andréa up before he entered the town.
"Father," he said, "you can stop this, for they will listen to you. Remember what Nicholas said."
"I heard there were loud talk and blows in the town, and I am on the road for that reason. Nicholas is right. We must pay the extra tax, and for every pint of wine we pay we will exact a gallon of blood. Ah, God, how I have fasted and prayed one prayer--to wash my hands in the blood of the Turks."
"Softly," said Constantine, "here is the guard."
The guard at the gate was unwilling at first to let them pass, but Andréa, without a moment's hesitation, said that he was a priest going to visit a dying man who wished to make a confession, with Constantine as witness, and they were admitted.
"God will forgive me that lie," he said, as they passed on. "It is for His cause that I lied."
Since Mitsos' departure the disturbance had increased. There were some forty or fifty Greeks collected in the centre of the square, and Turkish soldiers were coming out one by one from the barracks and mingling with the crowd. The Greeks, according to their custom, all carried knives, but were otherwise unarmed; the Turks had guns and pistols. There was a low, angry murmur going up from the people, which boded mischief. Just as they came up Father Andréa turned to Constantine.