ep. A cock in the
far corner began crowing and was answered by another outside....

But this does not give a full account of the animation of the khan.
"OH!" said Amanda, rolling over again with the suddenness of accumulated
anger.

"They're worse than in Scutari," said Benham, understanding her trouble
instantly.

"It isn't days and nights we are having," said Benham a few days later,
"it's days and nightmares."

But both he and Amanda had one quality in common. The deeper their
discomfort the less possible it was to speak of turning back from the
itinerary they had planned....

They met no robbers, though an excited little English Levantine in
Scutari had assured them they would do so and told a vivid story of a
ride to Ipek, a delay on the road due to a sudden inexplicable lameness
of his horse after a halt for refreshment, a political discussion that
delayed him, his hurry through the still twilight to make up for lost
time, the coming on of night and the sudden silent apparition out of
the darkness of the woods about the road of a dozen armed men each
protruding a gun barrel. "Sometimes they will wait for you at a ford
or a broken bridge," he said. "In the mountains they rob for arms. They
assassinate the Turkish soldiers even. It is better to go unarmed unless
you mean to fight for it.... Have you got arms?"

"Just a revolver," said Benham.

But it was after that that he closed with Giorgio.

If they found no robbers in Albania, they met soon enough with
bloodshed. They came to a village where a friend of a friend of
Giorgio's was discovered, and they slept at his house in preference to
the unclean and crowded khan. Here for the first time Amanda made the
acquaintance of Albanian women and was carried off to the woman's region
at the top of the house, permitted to wash, closely examined, shown
a baby and confided in as generously as gesture and some fragments of
Italian would permit. Benham slept on a rug on the first floor in a
corner of honour beside the wood fire. There had been much confused
conversation and some singing, he was dog-tired and slept heavily,
and when presently he was awakened by piercing screams he sat up in a
darkness that seemed to belong neither to time nor place....

Near his feet was an ashen glow that gave no light.

His first perplexity gave way to dismay at finding no Amanda by his
side. "Amanda!" he cried....

Her voice floated down through a chink in the floor above. "Wh