VIINext morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who livesveryfar away, where he willneverfind it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.However, he was not to wait even until to-morrowfor his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.The iron cage on wheels, with its load ofbarking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”“Stand out of my way,” shouted the mansavagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.Anneza was gone.“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”“I am not selling anything,” answered Alekowith dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.“Yes.”“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”The older boy stared at him.“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because thisismy stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”Then Aleko asked another question.“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia15Square.“Down where?”“Far down the Piræus Road.”“What does he do with them there?”“Puts them into a room which kills them.”“How can it kill them—a room?”“Do I know?”“When does the cart come here?”The elder boy looked up at the sun.“Now, any minute.”“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen toyou?”“Then what shall I do?”“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”“Where is the place?”“I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask.”Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was “far down,” therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the “boya’s” cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.Hemustget there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! “As clever as a Christian,” as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.“The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil.”After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.“Somewhere down there,” they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.“What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!”Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.At last an old woman directed him.“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!As he stood there, on the coarse down-troddengrass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it wasnota stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”“I amnotcheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you willfind trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”Aleko seized hold of his arm.“Keep him till noon!”“He shall go infirst, I tell you. Now, leave go!”“Keep him just one hour!”“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.
VIINext morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who livesveryfar away, where he willneverfind it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.However, he was not to wait even until to-morrowfor his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.The iron cage on wheels, with its load ofbarking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”“Stand out of my way,” shouted the mansavagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.Anneza was gone.“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”“I am not selling anything,” answered Alekowith dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.“Yes.”“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”The older boy stared at him.“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because thisismy stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”Then Aleko asked another question.“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia15Square.“Down where?”“Far down the Piræus Road.”“What does he do with them there?”“Puts them into a room which kills them.”“How can it kill them—a room?”“Do I know?”“When does the cart come here?”The elder boy looked up at the sun.“Now, any minute.”“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen toyou?”“Then what shall I do?”“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”“Where is the place?”“I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask.”Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was “far down,” therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the “boya’s” cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.Hemustget there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! “As clever as a Christian,” as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.“The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil.”After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.“Somewhere down there,” they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.“What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!”Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.At last an old woman directed him.“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!As he stood there, on the coarse down-troddengrass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it wasnota stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”“I amnotcheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you willfind trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”Aleko seized hold of his arm.“Keep him till noon!”“He shall go infirst, I tell you. Now, leave go!”“Keep him just one hour!”“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.
VIINext morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who livesveryfar away, where he willneverfind it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.However, he was not to wait even until to-morrowfor his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.The iron cage on wheels, with its load ofbarking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”“Stand out of my way,” shouted the mansavagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.Anneza was gone.“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”“I am not selling anything,” answered Alekowith dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.“Yes.”“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”The older boy stared at him.“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because thisismy stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”Then Aleko asked another question.“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia15Square.“Down where?”“Far down the Piræus Road.”“What does he do with them there?”“Puts them into a room which kills them.”“How can it kill them—a room?”“Do I know?”“When does the cart come here?”The elder boy looked up at the sun.“Now, any minute.”“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen toyou?”“Then what shall I do?”“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”“Where is the place?”“I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask.”Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was “far down,” therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the “boya’s” cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.Hemustget there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! “As clever as a Christian,” as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.“The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil.”After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.“Somewhere down there,” they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.“What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!”Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.At last an old woman directed him.“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!As he stood there, on the coarse down-troddengrass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it wasnota stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”“I amnotcheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you willfind trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”Aleko seized hold of his arm.“Keep him till noon!”“He shall go infirst, I tell you. Now, leave go!”“Keep him just one hour!”“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.
VIINext morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who livesveryfar away, where he willneverfind it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.However, he was not to wait even until to-morrowfor his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.The iron cage on wheels, with its load ofbarking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”“Stand out of my way,” shouted the mansavagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.Anneza was gone.“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”“I am not selling anything,” answered Alekowith dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.“Yes.”“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”The older boy stared at him.“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because thisismy stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”Then Aleko asked another question.“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia15Square.“Down where?”“Far down the Piræus Road.”“What does he do with them there?”“Puts them into a room which kills them.”“How can it kill them—a room?”“Do I know?”“When does the cart come here?”The elder boy looked up at the sun.“Now, any minute.”“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen toyou?”“Then what shall I do?”“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”“Where is the place?”“I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask.”Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was “far down,” therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the “boya’s” cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.Hemustget there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! “As clever as a Christian,” as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.“The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil.”After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.“Somewhere down there,” they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.“What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!”Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.At last an old woman directed him.“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!As he stood there, on the coarse down-troddengrass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it wasnota stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”“I amnotcheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you willfind trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”Aleko seized hold of his arm.“Keep him till noon!”“He shall go infirst, I tell you. Now, leave go!”“Keep him just one hour!”“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.
VII
Next morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who livesveryfar away, where he willneverfind it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.However, he was not to wait even until to-morrowfor his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.The iron cage on wheels, with its load ofbarking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”“Stand out of my way,” shouted the mansavagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.Anneza was gone.“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”“I am not selling anything,” answered Alekowith dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.“Yes.”“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”The older boy stared at him.“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because thisismy stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”Then Aleko asked another question.“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia15Square.“Down where?”“Far down the Piræus Road.”“What does he do with them there?”“Puts them into a room which kills them.”“How can it kill them—a room?”“Do I know?”“When does the cart come here?”The elder boy looked up at the sun.“Now, any minute.”“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen toyou?”“Then what shall I do?”“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”“Where is the place?”“I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask.”Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was “far down,” therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the “boya’s” cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.Hemustget there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! “As clever as a Christian,” as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.“The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil.”After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.“Somewhere down there,” they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.“What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!”Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.At last an old woman directed him.“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!As he stood there, on the coarse down-troddengrass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it wasnota stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”“I amnotcheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you willfind trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”Aleko seized hold of his arm.“Keep him till noon!”“He shall go infirst, I tell you. Now, leave go!”“Keep him just one hour!”“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.
Next morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.
“Just let him wait and see!” he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer’s shop while Kyr Themistocli’s coffee was being weighed. “Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying—and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away—I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who livesveryfar away, where he willneverfind it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!” As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.
However, he was not to wait even until to-morrowfor his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.
Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.
From behind the corner of a chemist’s shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.
Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.
The iron cage on wheels, with its load ofbarking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.
“Stop!” panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, “stop I tell you!”
She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.
But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.
“The little dog you have just taken,” he cried, “is not a stray dog. He belongs ….”
“Stand out of my way,” shouted the mansavagely, “or I will bring my whip down on your head!” and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.
Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.
Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.
Anneza was gone.
“Do you know,” he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, “where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?”
“Anneza, from the Spinotti’s, you mean?” answered the woman. “The ‘boya’ took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master.”
“By the time she finds him,” said Aleko, “it will be too late.” And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.
“Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?”
“I am not selling anything,” answered Alekowith dignity; “I am riding.” And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.
He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack’s box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.
“Is this the Central Police Station?” inquired Aleko.
“Yes.”
“Does the Chief of the Police live here?”
The older boy stared at him.
“He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because thisismy stand, and I see him when he comes and goes.”
Then Aleko asked another question.
“Does the ‘boya’ bring the dogs he catches here?”
“He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there.” And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia15Square.
“Down where?”
“Far down the Piræus Road.”
“What does he do with them there?”
“Puts them into a room which kills them.”
“How can it kill them—a room?”
“Do I know?”
“When does the cart come here?”
The elder boy looked up at the sun.
“Now, any minute.”
“Listen,” said Aleko, “the ‘boya’ has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?”
“Are you mad?” asked the strange boy contemptuously. “Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen toyou?”
“Then what shall I do?”
“If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the ‘boya’ alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more ….”
“Where is the place?”
“I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask.”
Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was “far down,” therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the “boya’s” cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.
Hemustget there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! “As clever as a Christian,” as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.
“The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil.”
After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.
“Somewhere down there,” they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.
“What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!”
Aleko remembered that his father used to say:—
“By asking one can find the way to Constantinople.” And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the “boya’s” place, to the “room that killed” he went on asking.
At last an old woman directed him.
“Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place.”
Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.
A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!
As he stood there, on the coarse down-troddengrass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.
The boy had said, “They pay him a drachma for each dog—perhaps if you were to give him more ….”
And Aleko, thinking of the dog’s master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.
Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The “boya” was coming.
Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.
The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs’ heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.
Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the “boya’s” route.
Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.
Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.
He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.
The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.
“Open it!” he cried. “Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it wasnota stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!” and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.
The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy’s grasp.
“Give it to you, indeed!” he shouted, “and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!”
“I tell you,” persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, “I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together.”
“I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!”
“I amnotcheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house.”
“And have I no other work to do than to be running to people’s houses?” snarled the “boya.” “Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors.”
“I tell you,” said Aleko flushing very red, “that if you do not give me that dog you willfind trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and ….”
“If it belonged to the King I would not give it!” shouted the man. “What goes into the cart stops there!”
“Keep the dog somewhere safe, then,” pleaded Aleko, “and I will bring his master down here to pay you!”
“No,” said the man, unlocking the iron door. “The dogs are going in here; and,” he added with an ugly laugh, “yours shall go in first of all!”
Aleko seized hold of his arm.
“Keep him till noon!”
“He shall go infirst, I tell you. Now, leave go!”
“Keep him just one hour!”
“You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!”
But these last words were the man’s undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.
“Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!”
All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy’s fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man’s chin.
The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.