efly women,
the walls were in a few days erected, and very soon covered with a
roof of olive-branches. My mother obtained a living by making
bottle-cases of bark and skins, and I kept the sheep belonging to
the priests, who were sometimes peasants, while I had for my
playfellows Anastasia and the turtles.

Once our beloved Aphtanides paid us a visit. He said he had been
longing to see us so much; and he remained with us two whole happy
days. A month afterwards he came again to wish us good-bye, and
brought with him a large fish for my mother. He told us he was going
in a ship to Corfu and Patras, and could relate a great many
stories, not only about the fishermen who lived near the gulf of
Lepanto, but also of kings and heroes who had once possessed Greece,
just as the Turks possess it now.

I have seen a bud on a rose-bush gradually, in the course of a few
weeks, unfold its leaves till it became a rose in all its beauty; and,
before I was aware of it, I beheld it blooming in rosy loveliness. The
same thing had happened to Anastasia. Unnoticed by me, she had
gradually become a beautiful maiden, and I was now also a stout,
strong youth. The wolf-skins that covered the bed in which my mother
and Anastasia slept, had been taken from wolves which I had myself
shot.

Years had gone by when, one evening, Aphtanides came in. He had
grown tall and slender as a reed, with strong limbs, and a dark, brown
skin. He kissed us all, and had so much to tell of what he had seen of
the great ocean, of the fortifications at Malta, and of the marvellous
sepulchres of Egypt, that I looked up to him with a kind of
veneration. His stories were as strange as the legends of the
priests of olden times.

"How much you know!" I exclaimed, "and what wonders you can
relate?"

"I think what you once told me, the finest of all," he replied;
"you told me of a thing that has never been out of my thoughts--of the
good old custom of 'the bond of friendship,'--a custom I should like
to follow. Brother, let you and I go to church, as your father and
Anastasia's father once did. Your sister Anastasia is the most
beautiful and most innocent of maidens, and she shall consecrate the
deed. No people have such grand old customs as we Greeks."

Anastasia blushed like a young rose, and my mother kissed
Aphtanides.

At about two miles from our cottage, where the earth on the hill
is sheltered by a few scattered trees, stood the little church, with a
silv