ore fervently that they would conquer
Fortune with their weapons, but Vely Bey preserved a gloomy silence.

"Art thou not my son?" asked the veteran.

"Allah hath so willed it," answered Vely, "and I also will fight, not
for thee but for myself, not for life nor for what is on the other
side of death, but because I have a little child in Lepanto, and the
enemy is besieging that fortress. That little child is all the world
to me. I will fight as only a father can fight for his son. I will
rescue him if possible. Thy glory or thy ruin is alike indifferent to
me. If the report reach thee that the enemy hath taken Lepanto and
slain my son, then count no more upon the sword which thou hast
intrusted to me."

And with these words Vely turned his back on his father and softly
withdrew.

As Ali saw his son quietly pass before him, it occurred to him whether
it would not be as well to draw his pistol from his belt and shoot
down the waverer before he quitted Janina. It is true that he had
known all this beforehand. His own wife, his own sons, his own
weapons, were to turn against him; but then, on the other hand, was
he not to stand at the gate of the Seraglio on a silver pedestal?

A host of more than twenty thousand men stood under arms at his
disposal, Albanians and Suliotes. A gallant host, if only it would
fight. But for whom would it fight?--for him or for the Sultan? And
these soldiers, when they saw him besieged, would they forget their
murdered kinsfolk, their plundered fields, their burned villages? Did
not every man of them know that Ali Tepelenti had been amassing
treasures all his life, but had never troubled himself about good
deeds? And now these treasures would surely be his ruin.

Time brought the answer. While his enemies were still afar off, the
Suliotes arose, under the leadership of a girl among the mountains of
Bracori, where one of Ali's grandsons, Zaid, was recruiting soldiers,
and massacred Ali's men to the very last one. The last one, however,
they suffered to escape and convey to Ali Zaid's severed head, at the
same time informing him that it was sent by that girl the head of
whose betrothed he had cut off before her very eyes, and she meant to
send him still more.

This was the Greek's declaration of war. There at Janina, under his
very nose, the Greek captain, Zunga, deserted the Albanian camp, and
when the Grand Signior's army reached Trikala, and Gaskho Bey's herald
galloped between the tw