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As usual, there was no cause to regret obedience to the commands so tactfully expressed. The snails were delicious, but when they were finished there came the sad reflection that the afternoon was wearing on, the roads momentarily becoming worse, the rain was not stopping, and that we still had two hours to go. (Cretan journeys are measured not by their distance in miles but by the number of hours they take to accomplish, a system less misleading to the traveller.)

So we took the road again, the more stout-heartedly for our entertainment.

Daylight had been gone for an hour before we reached the village of Daphnais. So often had the gendarme declared, "Ten minutes more and we are there," that we seriously began to fear he had lost his way, but it was really the condition of the road which delayed us. Darkness hid it, but the weary effort of the mules to drag their feet from the terrible stiff clay showed clearly enough what it was like. At last the lights of the village shone through the driving rain, and we saw that we had separated and that Monsieur Gallance and the muleteers were not in sight. We rode up the narrow street until we saw against the sky the dim shape of a house, which we knew was probably the gendarmerie post, often the only two-storeyed building in a village.

Its hospitality was not new to us, for this barrack at Daphnais was the fifth in which we had stayed, but wonder never died away at the warmth of welcome given to guests whose arrival meant that their hosts must sleep in the stable. For the bare boards of the upper storey, divided into two by a rough partition, and often with no glass in the windows, form the only living-room of the sergeant and his men, and the ground floor is given over to horses and occasional prisoners. Thither went the gendarmes, and thence would proceed, at the word of Monsieur Gallance, certain of life's necessaries, although even for him it was easier to procure wine than a washing-basin.

But when we arrived at Daphnais Monsieur Gallance was not with us, but somewhere in the rain and darkness which we had left behind outside, and we confronted our hosts alone.

They were sitting, eleven of them, round a pot of charcoal when we burst into their midst. I have a dim impression of gigantic forms in blue uniforms hurling themselves upon us and seizing our wet coats, but the sudden light and warmth were confusing, and the first clear picture is of ourselves sitting over the charcoal, while its rightful owners busied themselves in the background with the preparing of supper-table and beds. Visions of food and rest were like dreams of paradise, though a little marred by the absence

of Monsieur Gallance, until we heard the wooden stair outside creak under a footstep. The door opened, let in a gust of wind and wet, and he stood before us. From head to heel he was stiff with clay, nothing recognisable about him but his blue eyes and his cheerful laugh.

"Where have you been, Monsieur Gallance?"

66

"Behind, with the mules. They became troublesome in the dark. It was well I was there to help. As to my capote, see, it is ruined, and the joke of it is that it was a new one."

That was the whole of his explanation, but later we made out with difficulty that there had been a great deal of trouble and some danger at a narrow part of the road when one of the mules had slipped, and Monsieur Gallance's horse, always very excitable, had become quite unmanageable. But his manner of describing it implied that the incident had been fraught with an exquisite humour which all should regret having missed. That evening was a merry one, perhaps because it was the last of all, for three hours' riding next day brought us to Candia and civilisation.

Our hosts had some bottles of Malvoisie wine, which the sergeant brought out and poured into our glasses.

"He would like to know if the English care for Malvoisie?" said Monsieur Gallance, smiling at the murmured question.

The English answered most emphatically that they did, and hastily recounted the history of the Duke of Clarence and the manner of his end, as a proof of the good taste of their nation in the matter of Cretan wines. This story had an immense success, and everybody laughed loud and long. Monsieur Gallance added that it was indeed some little time since the thing had happened.

"No matter," said the sergeant. "I have heard that there are others in England still, not unlike that Prince you tell me of."

These gendarmes were shrewd observers, men of the hills mostly, keenly interested in the wider world beyond their mountains, and knowing not a little of its doings. Many an interesting conversation arose between them and Monsieur Gallance, after supper, when we shared coffee and cigarettes.

Gossip and politics, questions about England, histories of Crete, tales of things seen and done by Turk and Christian,— such were the topics of the talk. Often Monsieur Gallance would become too much absorbed to translate, until our impatient interruptions of "What does he say?" recalled him to his duties. Or the gendarme would be too anxious to finish his tale to wait till it was properly done into French. So the Babel of tongues went on, each night in a slightly different setting, yet the memories of all these hours are the same in their essentials of the group round the lamp in the

bare and comfortless room, of the broad-shouldered sergeant leaning forward into the circle of light, emphasising a point with the stump of his cigarette, of Monsieur Gallance nodding comprehension and throwing in comments and explanations.

We looked from one to another, at the eager faces and expressive dark features of the Cretans, and tried hard to pick up for ourselves a word or two of the torrent of Greek. Beyond, in the dim corners where the rifles were stacked, and against the walls hung with cartridge-belts and handcuffs, incongruous marks of the daily calling of our kindly hosts, other gendarmes would stand and sit, and come and go, sometimes adding a word or a laugh to the conversation, or watching for a while to see if anything was needed.

These were supper-parties worth remembering, and it was sad that they always ended early, for we took the road betimes in the morning. Inducements to linger in bed were not strong, and when once the sun was up there were enchantments enough outside. But the turning of a pleasant page is a melancholy thing, and our last ride was not over gay. We had no welcome for the broad high-road when we came to it, no pleasure in meeting the first wheeled carriage we had seen in eight days, for these things meant Candia and the end of the journey, and, worst of all, good-bye to Monsieur Gallance. Much too soon we saw the towers and minarets of the city crowded within its

great walls, which arose high up above the plain. "Thalassa! Thalassa!" shouted the muleboys, pointing eagerly forward to the blue sea beyond.

It was indeed the sea once more, the sea over which only a short while before we had come to the place which we now felt we could never bear to leave for ever. For truly Crete has a magic to hold and compel the traveller who has once trodden her stony ways and lived in the golden light of her valleys. As she first appeared to us in the dawn of a spring morning, with the glow of sunrise flushing the snows of the White Mountains, until the very last evening when we rowed away from her in the dark, over a phosphorescent sea, she was entirely lovable. We stood upon the deck of the ship and watched the summer lightning glimmering upon the dim walls and fortresses of Candia, built by Venice so long ago, until the night had swallowed them quite up.

"We will come back," we said to each other, just as we had said to Monsieur Gallance when we parted from him. Probably he did not believe it, for he shook his head and said it was more likely that he would come to us. Who knew the future? The Powers were to evacuate Crete, and would Canea be the place for a peaceable Frenchman after the troops were gone?

We could not tell him, for would not the solving of that problem be the answer to the whole Cretan Question?

THE TRAMP TRANSFIGURED.1

(AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A CORN-FLOWER MILLIONAIRE.

BY ALFRED NOYES.

I.

ALL the way to Fairyland across the thyme and heather,
Round a little bank of fern that rustled on the sky,
Me and stick and bundle, sir, we jogged along together,-
(Changeable the weather? Well it ain't all pie!)
Just about the sunset-Won't you listen to my story?-
Look at me! I'm only rags and tatters to your eye!
Sir, that blooming sunset crowned this battered hat with glory!
Me that was a crawling worm became a butterfly—
(Aint it hot and dry?

Thank you, sir, thank you, sir!) a blooming butterfly.

II.

Well, it happened this way! I was lying loose and lazy, Just as of a Sunday, you yourself might think no shame, Puffing little clouds of smoke, and picking at a daisy,

Dreaming of your dinner, p'raps, or wishful for the same: Suddenly, around that ferny bank there slowly waddledSlowly as the finger of a clock her shadow cameSlowly as a tortoise down that winding path she toddled, Leaning on a crookéd staff, a poor old crooked dame, Limping, but not lame,

Tick, tack, tick, tack, a poor old crooked dame.

III.

Slowly did I say, sir? Well, you've heard that funny fable
Consekint the tortoise and the race it give an 'are?
This was curiouser than that! At first I wasn't able

Quite to size the memory up that bristled thro' my hair: Suddenly, I'd got it, with a nasty shivery feeling,

While she walked and walked and yet was not a bit more

near,

Sir, it was the tread-mill earth beneath her feet a-wheeling Faster than her feet could trot to heaven or anywhere, Earth's revolvin' stair

Wheeling, while my way-side clump was kind of anchored there.

1 Copyright, 1909, by Alfred Noyes, in the United States of America.

IV.

Tick, tack, tick, tack, and just a little nearer,

Inch and 'arf an inch she went, but never gained a yard: Quiet as a fox I lay, I didn't wish to scare 'er,

Watching thro' the ferns, and thinking "What a rum old card!"

Both her wrinkled tortoise eyes with yellow resin oozing, Both her poor old bony hands were red and seamed and scarred!

Lord, I felt as if myself was in a public boozing,

While my own old woman went about and scrubbed and charred!

Lord, it seemed so hard!

Tick, tack, tick, tack, she never gained a yard.

V.

Yus, and there in front of her-I hadn't seen it rightly-
Lurked that little finger-post to point another road,
Just a tiny path of poppies twisting infi-nite-ly

Through the whispering seas of wheat, a scarlet thread that showed

White with ox-eye daisies here and there and chalky cobbles, Blue with waving corn-flowers: far and far away it glowed, Winding into heaven, I thinks; but, Lord, the way she hobbles,

Lord, she'll never reach it, for she bears too great a load; Yus, and then I knowed,

If she did, she couldn't, for the board was marked No Road.

VI.

Tick, tack, tick, tack, I couldn't wait no longer :

Up I gets and bows polite and pleasant as a toff"Arternoon," I says, "I'm glad your boots are going stronger; Only thing I'm dreading is your feet 'ull both come off."

Tick, tack, tick, tack, she didn't stop to answer,

"Arternoon," she says and sort o' chokes a little cough, "I must get to Piddinghoe to-morrow if I can, sir!" "Demme, my good woman! Haw! Don't think I mean

to loff,"

Says I, like a toff,

"Where d'you mean to sleep to-night? God made this grass for go'ff."

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