"
"Yes, to Constantine Stefanopoulos," said I with a nod.
"Well, then, if you will, to the Lord Constantine," he admitted, with
a careless shrug; "but her message was for his ear only. He took her
aside, and they talked alone."
"You know what she said, though."
"That is between my Lord Constantine and me."
"And the young lady knows it, I hope--the Lady Euphrosyne?"
Vlacho smiled broadly.
"We could not distress her with such a silly tale," he answered; and
he leant down toward me. "Nobody has heard the message but the lord
and one man he told it to; and nobody will. If that old woman spoke,
she--well, she knows, and will not speak."
"And you back up this murderer?" I cried.
"Murderer?" he repeated, questioningly. "Indeed, sir, it was an
accident, done in hot blood. It was the old man's fault, because he
tried to sell the island."
"He did sell the island," I corrected. "And a good many other people
will hear of what happened to him."
He looked at me again, smiling.
"If you shouted in the hearing of every man in Neopalia, what would
they do?" he asked, scornfully.
"Well, I should hope," I returned, "that they'd hang Constantine to
the tallest tree you've got here."
"They would do this," he said, with a nod; and he began to sing softly
the chant I had heard the night before.
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