the Gilberts' unswept steps, between the treacherous, sliding lumps of ice and snow; they spoke together for a moment. Lorrie was waiting, and drew him into the hall. She was not crying, but her face trembled as she began to speak in a guarded voice. "The doctor told you, did n't he? He has just seen Bob he says it may be any time now. It's so strange we thought Bob was better for a little while this morning. And then all at once- no, he's quite right in his head, he'll know you, it's nothing of that kind. He's just like himself, and does n't seem to be in any pain either. But, oh, Van Cleve, poor Bob — it's such a pity it's always been such a pity!' She stifled a sob against the front of his rough ulster which he had got half off; Van stroked her shoulder in an awkward, comforting caress.

He followed her into the sick-room.

Bob was lying there, propped on his pillows in the bright, fresh, pretty place they managed always to keep about him, looking somehow a little different from the way he had last night, as Van swiftly noted, but certainly no worse. Van Cleve went up to the bed, where the father and mother drew aside for him, and sat down close beside it, taking the other's hand; he said with that false heartiness that seems as if it never should deceive anybody, least of all the person for whom it is intendedVan said, 'Well, Bob, how are you coming on, hey?'

Bob raised his head a little and looked at him with his old, sweet, boyish smile, confiding and gay. 'Why, I'm about even, Van, old fellow!' he said. His head dropped back with so gentle and natural a movement, it was a full minute before any of them saw that he was dead.

LAMBRO the shepherd had come down from the hills of Poros to the village, as he usually did on Sunday mornings. Under his long frieze cape he carried two little new-born kids, one under each arm. He had been told that a woman near the Rock of the Cross wanted them, and he was on his way to see if it were so. After that, when he should be free of his burden, he could exchange a few words with the men at the coffee-house and buy his provisions for the coming week, before returning to his sheep and goats in the stani high up on the hills, far above Boudouri's monument.

Lambro was not a Poriote, but he was better known in the village than many a native. Old Louka who has the boats, Petro the hunchback shoemaker, and Kyr Apostoli the baker, all wished him good-day as he limped past, and even Kyr Vangheli the schoolmaster stopped in the midst of an animated political discussion with the doctor, to call out, 'Health to you, Lambro.'

For twenty years now, ever since he had been a weakly child of seven, lamed long before that by the kick of a mule, Lambro had made the journey backward and forward from Valtetsi, his native village in Arcadia, to Poros, twice a year, with the flocks and the other shepherds.

Other changes might happen in the island, other customs fall into disuse, but from time immemorial the day of Saint Demetrius in October sees the shepherds and their flocks arrive in Poros and on the mainland opposite, for the winter months; and Saint George's day in April, when Summer is close at hand, sees them start on their return to Arcadia. They come with their flocks, with their big fierce sheepdogs and their strong little horses laden with the long poles for building the winter huts on the top of the hills, and the goat's-hair cloths which are thrown over the poles to form the roof and the walls; laden also with cocks and hens and chickens, as well as with all the primitive household utensils. They come, old men and young men, with their women and their children, from the big ones who can run and shout and help the dogs to keep the flocks together, to the babes slung in their leathern cradles over their mothers' shoulders. They come in long straggling procession, some riding, some walking, some laden, some free; old women carrying in their arms newborn lambs which cannot keep up with the rest; young men striding along with their bright colored 'tagaria '; and before the mind's eye rises unbidden the picture of the patriarchs of old, at the head of their tribe, moving with their tents and their flocks and 'all their substance' toward the land of Gilead.

Lambro's mother had died at his birth, and his father had been acci

dentally shot before that, so he had never made the journey as an infant, but his uncles brought him along with the rest as soon as he could be of any use, and he remembered his old grandmother carrying him on her back when he was stiff from riding so long on the mule in their six days' journey from Valtetsi, over the hills and the plains of Arcadia and Argolis.

As he grew older he grew stronger; the simple life always under the open sky, the good air of the hills, the strong race of which he came, all helped him, and by the time he was twelve years old, his uncles found him as useful as any lad of his age, in fact more so, Nature having gifted him with good brains and a good memory. He always limped very perceptibly, and at first the other lads used to tease him mercilessly about his crooked walk, but as time passed, they had thought it wise to leave him alone. If his leg was lame, his arms were strong! Now, at twentyseven, in his short linen kilt, so like the tunic of the ancients, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted round his dark head, long-limbed and broad-shouldered, he was a fine man, though a 'marked one' as he would say of himself with bitterness.

He had disposed of his kids, and was crossing the open market-place, when he met a woman in a black gown, with a black kerchief over her head, carrying a bundle of herbs in one hand and a small bottle of retsinato wine in the other. He looked at her, hesitated for a second, and then came to a sudden stop before her.

'Good-day, Kyra Laskarina.'
'Good-day, Lambro.'
'Why in black?'

'For the old man.'

'Bah! When?'

'Last week. We buried him on Tuesday. Did you not see the funeral crossing the Narrow Beach?'

'I was on the other side of the hills that day. And of what did he die?' 'Of nothing; of old age.' 'Was he ill many days?'

'Many days! Why, he was quite well, and sat out in the sun all that same day. Only in the evening he would not eat. I cooked him some lappa but he scarcely touched it, and then he would not go to bed. "If I fall," he said, "I may never rise again." So he sat all night in his chair. I kept a little fire in the manghali and pulled my mattress there, so as to be near him if he wanted anything. When the day was dawning, he stirred once and said, "Chryssi," it was my mother-inlaw's name you know,—and that was the end. He went out like a candle.' 'Well, well, he had eaten his bread. Life to you, Kyra Laskarina!' 'I thank you.' 'Your man is well? children?'

And the

"They are well. They salute you.' 'And now that the old man is dead

the girl your niece -?'

'Francesca?' replied the woman a little sharply, 'She stays with us, of course. Where else should she stay?'

'Of course of course,' assented Lambro hurriedly; then after a second, 'Now that Easter is past, if you would like any yaourti, Kyra Laskarina, I have plenty.'

'I thank you; since you are so good, I will send for some; my man likes it.' 'Good-day, Kyra Laskarina.' "The good hour be with you, Lambro.'

Before he had taken many paces the heavy lame paces which made the one shoulder dip below the other at each step a girl holding a black kerchief loosely over her fair hair, ran past, nodding a smiling good-day to him as she went. She joined the woman and disappeared with her under the dark arch leading up to one of the rocky streets

behind the market-place. Lambro Lambro turned round and followed her with his eyes as long as she was in sight.

It is true, most men in Poros did the same when she passed them; for Francesca, as they said, was as white as though the sun had never looked at her, and smiling always, and sweet-eyed, and her hair gleamed like ripe corn under her white kerchief, and you could look, and look, and never be satisfied. But Lambro frowned a little as he looked. Who was he to be gazing after a pretty maid? A marked man, a man set apart, not as the others were. Had he not heard it often enough? Had he not grown up with its echo in his ears? He gave his shoulders a little impatient shake and passed on.

He had never been a man of many words, but the men found he had even less than usual, this fine spring morning, as he sat with them outside Sotiro's coffee-house, before starting back for the hills. 'Had the lambing season been successful this year?' 'Not so bad.' 'He would soon be returning to Arcadia again, would he not?' 'On Saint George's day as usual.' 'His uncles had not come with the rest this year?' 'No; they were too old for the journey now.' 'And he had charge of all their sheep?' 'Yes; it was he. Who else? since God had given them no sons.' 'But some of the sheep must be his own surely?' 'A few.'

At last, when they considered that they had said enough for good manners, they fell to talking of their own village matters: of Yoryi who was returning to America and taking his eldest son with him this time, of strangers who had come to the island for Easter, of the chances of a good oil year, and of Panayoti who had found trouble because he had begun his charcoal-burning without the written permission.

Lambro finished his black coffee, drank his glass of water, got slowly up

from his chair, wished the men goodday and left them. His week's provisions were soon bought and packed in his tagari, and it was not yet noon when he left the more populous part of the village behind him, and set out along the quay toward the Narrow Beach and the hills.

In the courtyard, set a little back from the sea-wall, he came upon Viola, the daughter of old Stamo, and her husband Mantho, sitting under the big pine that grows among the mulberries, playing with their little one. They called out good-day to him, and Viola asked him in to see the child, and to feel how heavy it was, but he said it was late and with a gruff, 'May it live to you,' he limped on, his head bent, and his long crook trailing behind him.

II

Up on the hills, on the afternoon of that same day, Lambro sat carving a new head for his glitsa, his long curved shepherd's crook. He worked deftly enough, but his imagination did not soar beyond the time-honored design, the head of the very primitivelooking dragon, the scaly body, and the tail curled round and round itself.

His yellow sheep-dog, Mourgo, was stretched on the ground beside him, bruising hosts of tiny spring flowers with his big body and thereby bringing out the aromatic scent of the camomile. The higher slopes, with their velvety, pine-covered outline, rose behind the incline which sheltered the stani. The gray thyme bushes, that constantly recurring leitmotif of the Greek hills, were relieved here and there by the vivid green of the dog-onion, and the pink and mauve of the hill-rose bushes rising at this season out of a thick carpet of yellow brown-hearts, of honeyflowers, and of purple grape-hyacinths. The gray goats walked to and fro,