Summary Mountainous Epirus, year of our Lord 1949, soon after the defeat of ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army) in Grammos and Vitsi. The local police chief arrests Vasiliki because she brought food to her partisan husband. Shaken and charmed by her beauty, he can’t resist the temptation and rapes her. Soon afterwards, he is transferred to Volos, but he comes back again for Vasiliki. He asks her to follow him, assuring her that her husband is dead. His strong love for the wife of a dissident communist causes him to be expelled from the gendarmerie, and he is forced to take refuge in Xanthi. He marries Vasiliki and tries to find gold in the Pangaion Hills. Things, however, do not turn out as hoped. After the death of his partner in an accident and the refusal of his friends to help him open a mine, he is forced to ask for the help of a tobacconist, a man with a dominant social position in the area. When the latter – who, in the meantime, has made Leonidas’ sister-in-law, Smaragda, his mistress – betrays him, Leonidas kills him, in this way sealing his own doom. Vasiliki and her sister gather their scant possessions and return to their village.