t on and the whole thing had almost faded out of mind when
it was brought back suddenly by my encounter with another Bulgarian
merchant, Melikoffby name, whom I met one fine summer's day at the
Strand end of Waterloo Bridge. I had met him at the Gueschoffs' table
and I asked for news of them. Such intelligence as he had to give was
wholly favourable; they were all well and prosperous. I suggested to
him that I thought it at least a little odd that no one of them had ever
thought it worth while to send me a line. "Well," he answered, in some
embarrassment, "they found it impossible to recover a very large part of
their property when they got back to Philipopolis, and for some time I
can assure you that they were in considerable straits." I answered that
they could scarcely have been in such straits as not to be able to buy a
postage stamp, but the upshot of the matter was simply this: At the
time at which I had been able to be of service to them I was the
representative of the _Scotsman_ and the _Times_, and was supposed to be
something of a personage. It was impossible at the time for them to have
offered what they thought would be a fitting recognition of my services,
and on the whole: it seems that they had thought it best to let sleeping
dogs lie and to say nothing at all about the matter. I might, it
appeared, have made some kind of claim against them which, though I
could not have enforced it legally, they would have been bound in honour
to recognise. I told him that this did not quite accord, with British
ideas of gratitude, but he appeared to think that he had offered a
perfectly satisfactory explanation. It was quite obviously beyond him
to conceive that I could have extracted any satisfaction from a mere
acknowledgment of service rendered, or that such an acknowledgment would
not have been used as the foundation for some more substantial claim.

As Edmund Burke said years ago, "It is impossible to indict a nation,"
but my experience does not lead me to believe that the Bulgarians are
a grateful people. In Kalofer, for example, I was introduced under
circumstances of dramatic secrecy to a refugee who was hiding for his
life and who had been concealed for days in a dark cupboard with
a sliding panel. I shall never forget the face of the haggard and
fear-stricken wretch who crawled out of that hiding-place into the light
of a solitary candle, or the enthusiastic protestations of gratitude on
the part of his wife wh