me on no account
if I went further afield, to take the train as all the railways were
shortly to be blown up.

Meanwhile the Turkish authorities could not decide what to do about
me and called me to the Konak about my passport. There I waited
hours. The place was crowded with applicants for permission to
travel. Half-starved wretches begged leave to go to another district
in search of harvest work and were denied. The Turks were in a
nervous terror and doubtless knew a crisis was at hand. As I waited
in the crowd a youth called to me across the room and said in
French: "It is pity you were not here a week or two ago. You could
have gone to Uskub and met all the foreign correspondents. Now they
have all gone. I was dragoman to The Times correspondent. He has
gone too. They think it is all over and it has not yet begun." He
laughed. I was terrified lest any one present should know French.
The boy declared they did not.

Finally, the Pasha refused me permission to go to Jakova as I had
asked. And quite rightly, for fighting was still going on there
between the troops and the Albanians. I was allowed only to visit
the monastery of Detchani, a few hours' ride distant. Detchani is
one of the difficulties in the drawing of a just frontier. Though in
a district that is wholly Albanian, it is one of the monuments of
the ancient Serb Empire and contains the shrine of the Sveti Kralj,
King Stefan Detchanski, who was strangled in 1336 in his castle of
Zvechani, it is said, by order of his son who succeeded him as the
great Tsar Stefan Dushan, and was in his turn murdered in 1356.

St. Stefan Dechansld is accounted peculiarly holy and yet to work
miracles. The Church, a fine one in pink and white marble, was built
by an architect from Cattaro, and shows Venetian influence. A rude
painting of the strangling of Stefan adorns his shrine. I thought of
the sordid details of the death of. Serbia's latest King and the old
world and the new seemed very close. Except in the matter of
armament, things Balkan had changed but little in over five
centuries.

A Turkish officer and some Nizams were quartered at the monastery,
but the few monks and students there seemed oddly enough to have
more faith in a guard of Moslem Albanians who lived near. They were
expecting shortly the arrival of Russian monks from Mount Athos.
Russia was, in fact, planting Russian subjects there for the express
purpose of making an excuse for intervention. The youn