through the heart without the slightest pity for the man, or shame of the deed. Was he not a Turk, their arch enemy, and the enemy of their race? Their point of view on the ethics of life was quite original to me, and as they boasted of the things they had done, something barbaric in me responded to their recitals. I loved them, and as for their leader, he was a real hero to me.
Again they passed from themselves to the heroic period of the Armateloi and Kleftai, when brigandage attained its apotheosis.
After the fall of Constantinople, the Greeks were powerless against the Turks. The other powers of Europe, during two hundred years, were too frightened to think of more than saving their own skins; and when, later, they did interfere in behalf of the Christians under the Ottoman yoke, they did so only as an excuse for their personal gain.
Thus the Greeks had to depend on themselves, and in time the flower of Greek manhood took to the mountains. Then the wrongs done by the Turks, to their weak and defenceless fellow-countrymen, were fiercely and brutally punished by these brigands. It was these Armateloi and Kleftai who put an end to the human tax which the Greeks had been forced to pay the conqueror. If a little girl was taken by force from a Greek home, the brigands would fall upon a Turkish
