“Now,” said the impatient beauty, “you can let us go:  we have nothing more for you.”  They indicated to her, by a menacing gesture, that the session was not ended.  The chief of the band squatted down before our spoils, called “the good old man,” counted the money in his presence, and delivered to him the sum of forty-five francs.  Mrs. Simons nudged me on the elbow.  “You see,” said she, “the monk and Dimitri have betrayed us:  he is dividing the spoils with them.”

“No, madam,” replied I, immediately.  “Dimitri has received a mere pittance from that which they had stolen from him.  It is a thing which is done everywhere.  On the banks of the Rhine, when a traveler is ruined at roulette, the conductor of the game gives him something wherewith to return home.”

“But the monk?”

“He has received a tenth part of the booty in virtue of an immemorial custom.  Do not reproach him, but rather be thankful to him for having wished to save us, when his convent was interested in our capture.”

This discussion was interrupted by the farewells of Dimitri.  They had just set him at liberty.

“Wait for me,” said I to him:  “we will return together.”  He shook his head sadly, and answered me in English, so as to be understood by the ladies:—­ “You are prisoners for some days, and you will not see Athens again before paying a ransom.  I am going to inform the milord.  Have these ladies any messages to give me for him?”

“Tell him,” cried Mrs. Simons, “to run to the embassy, to go then to the Piraeus and find the admiral, to complain at the foreign office, to write to Lord Palmerston!  They shall take us away from here by force of arms, or by public authority, but I do not intend that they shall disburse a penny for my liberty.”

“As for me,” replied I, without so much passion, “I beg you to tell my friends in what hands you have left me.  If some hundreds of drachms are necessary to ransom a poor devil of a naturalist, they will find them without trouble.  These gentlemen of the highway cannot rate me very high.  I have a mind, while you are still here, to ask them what I am worth at the lowest price.”

“It would be useless, my dear Mr. Hermann!  It is not they who fix the figures of your ransom.”

“And who then?”

“Their chief, Hadgi-Stavros.”

HADGI-STAVROS

From ‘The King of the Mountains’

The camp of the King was a plateau, covering a surface of seven or eight hundred metres.  I looked in vain for the tents of our conquerors.  The brigands are not sybarites, and they sleep under the open sky on the 30th of April.  I saw neither spoils heaped up nor treasures displayed, nor any of those things which one expects to find at the headquarters of a band of robbers.  Hadgi-Stavros makes it his business to have the booty sold; every man receives his pay in money, and employs it as he chooses.  Some