"It's all very good for you," said Yanni, mournfully; "but here am I cooped up like a tame hen for a month, or it may be more, in this devil-kennel place, with a garden to walk in and an orange to suck. Eh, Mitsos, but it will be a gay life for me sitting here in this scented town. A fat-bellied, slow-footed cousin will you find when you come for me. I doubt not I shall be sitting cross-legged on the floor with a narghilé, and a string of beads, and a flower in my hair."
"Oh, you'll soon get fit again on the mountains," said Mitsos, cheerfully. "I expect it will be quick going when I come to fetch you out of this."
Yanni nodded his head towards the Turk's room next door.
"Some night when you come tramping on the roof overhead," he said, "will he not wake and pluck you by the two heels as you come down onto the balcony?"
"There will be fine doings that night," he said. "If only you looked into the street we could arrange that you should be at the window every night, and I could whistle you a signal; but here, bad luck to it! I could whistle till my lips were in rags and you would not hear. I shall have to come in myself."
Mitsos stopped in Tripoli two days, and before he left Yanni had plucked up heart again concerning the future. However much the Turks might in their hearts distrust the scornful clan, they could not afford to bring that nest of hornets about their ears without grave reason. Yanni had but to ask for a thing and he had it; it was only not allowed him to set foot outside the house and garden. About his ultimate safety he had no shadow of doubt. Mitsos had examined the wall again, and declared confidently that he would not find the slightest difficulty in getting in, and that their exit, with the help of a bit of rope, was in the alphabet of the use of limbs. The Turk who was Yanni's keeper was the only other occupant of that part of the house, the story below being kitchens and washing-places not tenanted at night. "And for the Turk," said Yanni, "we will make gags and other arrangements." In the mean time he announced his intention of being a model of discretion and peacefulness, so that no suspicion might be aroused.
Mitsos was to start on the third day, and it was still the grayness that precedes sunrise when he came into Yanni's room equipped for going. Yanni had told Mehemet Salik that his father could not spare him longer, and that he was to go home at once; whereat Mehemet had very courteously offered to put another Turkish servant at his disposal, a proposition which Yanni declined with some alacrity, as such an arrangement would mean another Turk in that block of building.
