he populace,
headed by Vlacho, the innkeeper, that if found on the island
after six o'clock the next morning, their lives will not be
worth much. Toward midnight, little disposed to sleep, and
curious to look about somewhat before leaving the island, they
stroll inland, and come by chance upon the manor-house, still
and apparently deserted. Curiosity drives them to enter. They
find Lord Stefanopoulos, whom Vlacho had reported to them as
recently dead of a fever, not dead, but on the point of
dying--from a dagger wound. And the wound, they learn from his
own lips, was given him by his nephew, Constantine, in a tumult
that arose a few hours before when the people came up to protest
against the sale of the island, and to persuade the lord to send
the strangers away. Constantine, it further appears, is making
them all their trouble, having come to the island just ahead of
them to that end, after learning their plans by overhearing
Wheatley talking in a London restaurant. In the darkness, on
their way up, they have met a man and a woman going toward the
village. The man, by his voice, they knew to be Constantine. The
woman, they now learn, was the Lady Euphrosyne, cousin of
Constantine and heiress to the island. From talk overheard
between her and Constantine, she had seemed to be, while
desirous of their departure, also anxious to spare them harm. In
full possession of the house, they decide to stand siege, though
scant of provisions and ammunition, and armed only with their
own revolvers and a rifle left behind by Constantine. Soon
Stefanopoulos dies, and by an old serving-woman they send
warning to Constantine that he shall be brought to justice for
his crime. Thus passes the night. Next morning Wheatley's
attention is engaged by a woman studying them through a
field-glass from before a small bungalow, higher up the
mountain. Then Vlacho, the innkeeper, presents himself for a
parley, of which nothing comes but the disclosure that
Constantine is pledged to marry Euphrosyne, while already
secretly married to another woman. The evening falls with the
"death-chant" sounding in the air--a chant made by Alexander the
Bard when an earlier Lord Stefanopoulos was killed by the people
for having tried to sell the island. Lord Wheatley himself tells
the story.

CHAPTER IV.