"A few weeks passed thus, until one midnight there appeared in the further room four men in black cloaks, carrying guns; they seemed to have sprung out of the ground. They shook hands and without a moment's pause began moving about in the ruddy, uncertain light of the pine-torch. In the silence outside--a silence caused by the fog which deadened all sound--their words could be overheard. As my father slung his scimitar over his shoulder, one of them said in a loud clear voice: 'At Sticótur, in the monastery.' 'Since when?' 'Since dinner-time to-day--he is eating and drinking.' 'The man is caught,' said another. 'He can't escape this time.'
"They went out quickly; they were lost in the black darkness which began to vibrate with the rising of the wind. The bushes rattled and bent beneath the rain--storms of rain beat and splashed against the window-panes, a sea of sound, storm after storm."
Here, as far as I can remember, Mitu Dola brought the story to a close. I asked:
"Didn't you hear the song? My father took the head and put it in his pouch. As he said, 'and the head and two hundred ducats.'"
Mitu Tega returned to the house much annoyed. As he entered his wife asked him:
"This is what happens when you rely on an unknown man, a stranger. Suppose he never comes. God forbid that he should go off with the whole herd!"
Tega did not reply. He sat motionless in the silent veranda, which gradually grew dark with shadows of the evening mist, and pondered. Of course such things did happen; he might have taken the goats and gone off, in which case let him find him who can! Where could one look for him? Whither could one follow him?
And as he meditated thus he seemed to see the shepherd before his eyes; he called to mind the first day he had seen him; a terrible man, like a wild man from the woods, with a great moustache lost in a hard, black beard, which left only his eyes and cheek-bones visible. He came into him, and without looking him in the face, said:
"I have heard--some people told me that you want a man to tend the bucks. Take me, I am a shepherd."
Tega gave him one look, he was just the kind of man he wanted. He asked him:
"I come--well, from Blatza. Toli--Toli the shepherd--I have been with many other goat owners."