THE VINEYARD
"Ahout the vintage? No."
"Instead of paying one-tenth to the tax-collector, we are to pay one-seventh and instead of paying in grapes, we pay in wine."
"One-seventh? It is impossible!"
"It is true."
"Where did you hear it?"
"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."
Constantine got up.
"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."
Constantine got up.
"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.
61
