pardon of whomever I saw fit to name.  On one condition, I replied, I would accept the appointment, this being that the persons I pardoned and recalled to the island should also be guaranteed from arrest and molestation on civil process for acts committed in the course of the military operations, such as the taking of cattle or sheep for the subsistence of the bands, but not comprehending criminal acts.  On this condition we came to a final difference, as A’ali said that by the Turkish law the government became pecuniarily responsible for all such damages by condoning the acts of the offenders, and that they were not prepared to agree to.  But it was impossible for me to enter into an agreement to invite a chief to the island with his pardon, under my full powers, and then see him thrown into prison by civil process for acts which the war had made necessary, as had already happened in several cases, as it impugned my good faith and made the pardon null and void, as much as if the offense charged were the rebellion.  A’ali’s confidence and the prospect of doing good to my Cretan friends touched me profoundly, and in my destitute condition the salary of a Turkish official was a heavy inducement, but I had to insist on the condition which divided us, and I withdrew.

A’ali asked me to come to the treasury and receive the compensation for my time spent in waiting on his inquiries, but the messenger carrying the money missed or evaded the appointment, or I mistook it; for, after waiting some time, I had to go back empty-handed, and after waiting two or three days longer to hear of the money, with an unjustifiable suspicion of A’ali’s good faith, I took boat again for Athens, more destitute than I had come.  I had the additional pain of telling the chiefs, on whose behalf I had pleaded, that there was no hope of an amnesty.  I shall never forget the despair in the face of old Costa Veloudaki, the chief of the Rhizo district, when I told him of my failure.  Tall and straight under his seventy odd years, sickened with a terrible nostalgia away from his mountain home, he listened mute and turned away without a word, bowed with grief and too much moved to risk speaking lest tears should shame him.  I had known the old man from the beginning of the troubles, for he was the chief of the mountain country above Canea, and had been the spokesman of the committee when they came to see the consuls,—­a noble, honest, and truly patriotic man, and a hero of all the movements since 1827.  In one of the first battles, fought in view of my house, his son had been killed, and, taking his hand as he lay on the ground they had successfully defended, he thanked God his son had been worthy to die for Crete.  It was, for me, the hard ending of a tragedy in which I had had my part, serious enough to identify myself with my island friends, and I can remember this episode of my life with the consciousness that those who suffered more than I did acknowledged that I had been a true friend and a prudent counselor from the beginning.