This was too much for the bystanders. The presence they were in was not
sufficient to restrain an outburst of derision.

"But the conditions of the race shut you out. You are not Greeks," the
judge continued.

"Nay, Princess, that is according to the ground of judgment. If it
please you to decide by birth and residence rather than ancestry, then
are we to be preferred over many of the nobles who go in and out of His
Majesty's gates unchallenged. Has not the sweet water that comes down
from the hills seeking the sea through our meadow furnished drink for
our fathers hundreds of years? And as it knew them, it knows us."

"Well answered, I must admit. Now, my friend, do as wisely with what I
ask next, and you shall have a place. Say you come out winners, what
will you do with the prize? I have heard you are not Christians."

The man raised his face the first time.

"Not Christians! Were the charge true, then, argument being for the
hearing, I would say the matter of religion is not among the conditions.
But I am a petitioner, not lawyer, and to my rude thinking it is better
that I hold on as I began. Trust us, O Princess! There is a plane tree,
wondrous old, and with seven twin trunks, standing before our tents, and
in it there is a hollow which shelters securely as a house. Attend me
now, I pray. If happily we win, we will convert the tree into a
cathedral, and build an altar in it, and set the prize above the altar
in such style that all who love the handiworks of nature better than the
artfulness of men may come and worship there reverently as in the
holiest of houses, Sancta Sophia not excepted."