breath! Swear it!"

"I swear it," said the man, "and that all Albania prays to-day for George Castriot. These are the tidings which the noble Moses bade me bring thee, though I found thee at the Indus or under the throne of the Sultan himself. I have no other message. That I might tell thee this in the free speech of Albania I have kept dumb to all others. If it be treason to the Sultan for thee to hear it, let my head pay the penalty. But know, Sire, that our land will rest under no other rule than that of a Castriot."

"A Castriot!" soliloquized the general. "Well, it is a better name than Scanderbeg. Ho, guard! Take this fellow! Let him share your mess!"

When alone the general threw himself upon the divan for a moment, then paced again the apartment, and muttered to himself——

"And for what has a Castriot given himself to the Turk! Yet I did not betray my land and myself. They stole me. They seduced my judgment as a child. They flattered my conceit as a man. Like a leopard I have fought in the Padishah's arena, and for a leopard's pay—the meat that makes him strong, and the gilded cage that sets off his spots. I have led his armies, for what? For glory. But whose glory? The Padishah cries in every emergency, 'Where is my Scanderbeg? Scanderbeg to the rescue!' But it means, 'Slave, do my bidding!' And I, the tinselled slave, bow my head to the neck of my steed, and the empire rings with the tramp of my squadrons, and the praise of Scanderbeg's loyalty! Pshaw! He calls me his lightning, but he is honored as the invisible Jove who hurls it. And I am a Castriot! A Christian! Ay, a Christian dog,[10] indeed, to fawn and lick the hands of one who would despise me were he not afraid of my teeth. He takes my father's lands and gives them to another; and I—I am of too little account to be even told 'Thy father is dead.'"

Scanderbeg paused in the light that streamed through the western window. It was near sunset, and a ruddy gleam shot across the room.

"This light comes from the direction of Albania, and so there comes a red gleam—blood red—from Albania into my soul."

He drew the sleeve of the left arm and gazed at a small round spot tattooed just above the elbow—the indelible mark of the Janizary.

"They that put it there said that by it I should remember my vow to the Padishah. And, since I cannot get thee out, my little talisman, I swear by thee that I shall never forget my vow; no, nor them that made my child-lips take it, and taught me to abjure my father's name, my country's faith, and broke my will to the bit and rein of their caprice. It may be that some day I shall wash thee out in damned Moslem blood. But hold! that would be treason. Scanderbeg a traitor? How they will hiss it from Brousa to Adrianople; from the lips of Vizier and pot-carrier! But is it treason to betray treason? But patience! Bide thy time, Castriot!"

A slight commotion in the court drew the attention of Scanderbeg. In a moment the sentry announced:

"A courier from His Majesty!"

The message told that the Ottoman forces had been defeated in Europe—the noted bashaw, Schehadeddin, having been utterly routed by Hunyades. The missive called the Sultan's "always liege and invincible servant, Scanderbeg, to the rescue!" Within an hour a splendid suite of officers, mounted on swift and gaily caparisoned steeds, gathered about the great general, and at the raising of the horse-tail upon the spear-head, dashed along the road to the coast of Marmora where vessels were in waiting to convey them across to the European side. Scanderbeg had but a moment's interview with the dumb captive, sufficient to whisper,

"Return our salutation to the noble Moses Goleme; and say that George Castriot will honor his confidence better in deeds than he could in words. I know not the future, my brave fellow, and might not tell it if I did, even to ears as deaf as yours. But say to Goleme that Castriot swears by his beard—by the beard of Moses—that brighter days shall come for Albania even if they must be flashed from our swords. Farewell!"

The man fell at the general's feet and embraced them. Then rising he raised his hand, "By the beard of Moses! Let that be the watchword between our people and our rightful prince. Brave men scattered from Adria to Hæmus will listen for that watchword. Farewell, Sire. By the beard of Moses!"

Scanderbeg summoned a soldier and said sternly, "Take this fellow away. He is daft as well as dumb and deaf. Yet treat him well. Such creatures are the special care of Allah. Take him to the Bosphorus that he may cross over to his kin, the Greeks, at Constantinople."

CHAPTER II.

A little hamlet lay, like an eagle's nest, high on the southern slope of the Balkan mountains. The half dozen huts of which it consisted were made of rough stones, daubed within and without thick with clay. The roofs were of logs, overlaid with mats of brushwood woven together by flexible withes, and plastered heavily. The inhabitants were goatherds. Their lives were simple. If they were denied indulgence in luxuries, they were also removed from that contact with them which excites desire, and so were contented. They seldom saw the faces of any from the great world, upon so large a portion of which they looked down. Their absorbing occupation was in summer to watch the flocks which strolled far away among the cliffs, and in winter to keep them close to the hamlet, for then terrific storms swept the mountains and filled the ravines with impassable snow.

Milosch and his good wife, Helena—Maika Helena, good Mother Helena, all the hamlet called her—were blessed with two boys. Their faces were as bright as the sky in which, from their lofty lodgings, they might be said to have made their morning ablutions for the eleven and twelve years of their respective lives. Yet they were not children of the cherubic type; rather tough little knots of humanity, with big bullet-heads thatched over with heavy growths of hair, which would have been red, had it not been bleached to a light yellow by sunshine and cloud-mists. Instead of the toys and indolent pastimes of the nursery they had only the steep rocks, the thick copse, the gnarled trees, and the wild game of the mountains for their play-things. They thus developed compactly knit muscles, depth of lung and thickness of frame, which gave agility and endurance. At the same time, the associations of their daily lives, the precipitous cliff, the trembling edge of the avalanche, the caves of strange beasts, the wild roaring of the winds, the awful grandeur of the storms, the impressive solitude which filled the intervals of their play like untranslatable but mighty whispers from the unknown world taking the place of the prattle of this,—these fostered intrepidity, self-reliance, and balance of disposition, if not of character. For religious discipline they had the occasional ministrations of a Greek priest or missionary monk from the Rilo Monastir, many leagues to the west of them. They knew the Creed of Nicæa, the names of some of the saints; but of truly divine things they had only such impressions as they caught from the great vault of the universal temple above them, and from the suggestions of living nature at their feet.

By the side of Milosch's house ran—or rather climbed and tumbled, so steep was it—that road over the Balkans, through the Pass of Slatiza, by which Alexander the Great, nearly two thousand years before, had burst upon the Moesians. Again, within their