the movements of the great convoys
appointed to guard treasures. They lived in
wild places, with their arms in their hands;
sometimes on the brink of absolute starvation,
but rarely forgetting that they were
Greeks, and might only steal from the Turks.
The flocks and herds of the Turks were
carried off in the night; but seldom those of
the Greeks, unless indeed they had made
positive friends with those of the oppressors
who lived among them. Sometimes an
unlucky aga would be taken prisoner by the
Klephts, and would have to pay a high
ransom for his liberty. Again, they were like
Robin Hood and his merry men in the hatred
they bore to the caloyers or monks; and
these last were not slow in avenging
themselves; whenever they could, they gave
information to the Turks where they might
surprise a half-starved party of Klephts.

Sometimes the Klephts when hard pressed
by starvation and an ever-watchful enemy,
would send word to a village that unless a
certain sum was paid in a place specified
by a particular day, all the houses should
be burnt. The poor villagers were between
two fires. If they gave to the Klephts, the
Turks took from them all their possessions;
if they did not give to the Klephts after such
a notice, the menace was sure to be fulfilled.
So, before they gave to the Klephts, the warning
had usually to be repeated. If they
showed no sign of acquiescence after the
second notice, the third and last came on a
piece of paper burnt at all the four corners; and
then the poor villagers dared no longer refuse.
They gave what they were asked for; the
Turks took all the rest of their possessions,
and they were turned empty and naked upon
the world to become Klephts if they liked.

The Klephts kept a constant watch against
surprises all day long. At night their mountain
paths were all but inaccessible, and they
might sleep in the open air wrapped up in
goatskins, on beds made of leaves. When
they set out on a predatory expedition, it was
always by night—the darker and the more
stormy the better for their purpose. In their
mountain hiding-places they practised shooting,
until they acquired what they supposed
to be extraordinary skill as marksmen. They
had rifles of an unusual length, with which
some of the most expert could hit an egg
hung by a thread to a branch of a tree at a
distance of two hundred paces. Others yet
more skilful could send a bullet through a
ring hardly larger; and this gave rise to a
proverbial expression for a good marksman
—"he can thread the ring with a bullet."
The Klephts by long practice acquired such
quickness of sight that many of them could,
by watching from whence the flash of an
enemy's musket fire proceeded, pick out the
man, and lay him low with their rifle. They
called this "firing upon fire." Besides all
these exercises, the Klephts practised some
which came down to them from the ancient
Greeks. One of the principal of these was the
game of the disc, which was to be thrown:
he who hurled it the furthest was the
conqueror. The Klephts were famous leapers;
and wonderful stories are told of them in
this capacity. One Klephtic hero, the Captain
Niko Isaras, is said on good authority to
have cleared seven horses standing abreast.
There is another anecdote on record of a man
who leaped over three wagons loaded with
stones to the height of seven or eight feet.
Their feats in running were equally marvellous;
not to say incredible. They tell of one
man who literally ran so fast that "his
heels touched his ears." Fortunio's servant
Lightfoot was a fool to this. But there is no
doubt that the Klepht was unrivalled in his
power of making long marches. They were
also capable of enduring extraordinary
hunger. Combats of three days and nights,
during which the Klephts neither ate, drank
nor slept, were not unusual among them,
according to M. Fauriel. The same endurance
was known in bearing the torture which
surely awaited them if taken alive. Having
their limbs crushed by repeated blows from
a blacksmith's hammer was a common mode
of execution; there were others, more rare,
too horrible to be mentioned. No wonder
that it became a favourite toast among the
Klephts to wish each other "a sure hit from
a bullet,"

But what was most injurious to their sense
of honour was the dread of having their
heads, after death, exposed to all the insults
which the Turks could devise. The entreaty
of the wounded Klepht to his comrades was
to cut off his head, and bear it far away to
their mountain fastnesses far out of the reach
of the Turks. Thus, in one of their songs, the
Klepht says, "O my brother, cut off my
head; let not the Turkish passers-by see my
shame. My enemies will wag their heads
and laugh; but my mother—my mother will
die of grief." All honour attended the death
of him who was slain in battle. He was
called a "victim," and the survivors mourned
him with pride; whereas he who died of
illness on his bed was spoken of as the
"corps crevé," and he was looked upon with a
kind of shame and repugnance. But the
Klephts in the midst of their wild and
barbarous life preserved many chivalrous and
noble feelings. They might be simple—they
were not vulgar; they might be fierce—they
were never cruel. They were full of delicate
honour in their treatment of their female
captives; even when these were the wives or
daughters of those who had most deeply
injured and outraged relations of their own.
A captain of a band of Klephts who
insulted a Turkish woman taken prisoner,
was immediately killed by his own soldiers
as unworthy to command brave men. Their
songs are full of allusions to the respect with
which their female prisoners are treated.
Images of the Virgin hung up in some rocky