eadiness; all three figures awkwardly
drawn and without knowledge of anatomy. For background my scouring
had brought to light a group of buildings, and among them just such a
church as this, with just such a belfry. Of architecture and its
different styles I knew nothing; but, comparing the church before me
with what I could recollect of the painting, I recognized every
detail, from the cupola, high-set upon open arches, to the round,
windowless apse in which the building ended.

My father, meanwhile, had taken a lantern and explored the interior.

"I know this place," he announced quietly, as he reappeared, after
two or three minutes, in the ruinous doorway; "it is called Paomia.
We can bivouac in peace, and I doubt if by searching we could find a
better spot."

We ate our supper of cold bacon and ship-bread, both slightly damaged
by sea-water--but the wine solaced us, being excellent--and stretched
ourselves to sleep under the ilex boughs, my father undertaking to
stand sentry till daybreak. Nat and I protested against this, and
offered ourselves; but he cut us short. He had his reasons, he said.

It must have been two or even three hours later that I awoke at the
touch of his hand on my shoulder. I stared up through the boughs at
the setting moon, and around me at my comrades asleep in the grasses.
He signed to me not to awake them, but to rise and follow him softly.

Passing through the screen of ilex, we came to a gap in the stone
wall of the garth, and through this, at the base of the hillside
below the forest, to a second screen of cypress which opened suddenly
upon a semicircle of turf; and here, bathed in the moon's rays that
slanted over the cypress-tops, stood a small Doric temple of
weather-stained marble, in proportions most delicate, a background
for a dance of nymphs, a fit tiring-room for Diana and her train.

Its door--if ever it had possessed one--was gone, like every other
door in this strange village. My father led the way up the white
steps, halted on the threshold, and, standing aside lest he should
block the moonlight, pointed within.

I stood at his shoulder and looked. The interior was empty, bare of
all ornament. On the wall facing the door, and cut in plain letters
a foot high, two words in Greek confronted me--

PHILOPATRI STEPHANOPOULOI.

"A tomb?" I asked.

"Yes, and a kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the
emperors did not disdain to mate with.