attered in every direction without his having to waste a
single cannon-shot upon them.

But as I have already said. Ali was often so reduced as to possess
nothing but his sword, and with this same sword he would win
everything back again.

CHAPTER VII

THE ALBANIAN FAMILY

And now we will let the rumor of great deeds rest a while; we will
close our eyes to the wars that followed upon the siege of Janina; we
will shut our ears against the echoes of the names of a Ulysses,
Tepelenti, a Kolokotrini, those heroes who shook the throne of the
Sultan, and all of whom the Pasha of Janina called his very dear
friends. While these bloody wars are raging we will turn into the
grove of Dodona, where formerly the ambiguous utterances of sacred
prophecies were always resounding in the ears of contemplative
dreamers. Let us go back eighty years! Let us seek out that quiet
little glen whither neither good report nor evil report ever comes
flying, whose inhabitants know of nothing but what happens amongst
their own fir-trees; why, even the tax-collecting Spahi only light
down amongst them to levy contributions once in a century!

The house of Halil Patrona's consort no longer stands beside the
rippling stream. Nobody even knows the tomb in which the beautiful,
the elfin Guel-Bejaze now lies; Guel-Bejaze, the White Rose,[9] blooms
no longer anywhere in that valley. Nobody knows the name even; only
the oldest old grandmother in the circle of the spinning maidens can
tell them tales, which she also has heard from her mother or her
grandmother, of a mad lady who used to dwell in this valley and lay a
table every evening and prepare a couch every night for an invisible
spirit, whom she called her husband, and whom nobody saw but herself.

[Footnote 9: The heroine of another Turkish tale of Jokai's, _A feher
rozsa_ (_The White Rose_).]

This old woman had a son called Behram, a brave, honest, worthy youth;
many a time with his comrades he would pursue the Epirot bandits, who
swooped down upon their valley and carried off their cattle.

Near to him dwelt the widow Khamko, whose husband had been shot at
Tepelen, and who, with her son, little Ali, in her bosom, had sought
refuge amongst these mountains.

Formerly Khamko was a gentle creature, but when they began to talk to
her about the mad lady she also grew as crazy as ever the other was.
She was ready to destroy the whole world, and over and over again she
would utter the