into another outhouse, where he climbed into an empty loft.
There was a small hole in the loft near the floor. As he lay down and
pillowed his head on a beam, he found that he could see the greater part
of the village through the hole, but this fact had barely reached his
brain, when he had again fallen into the heavy slumber of an exhausted
man.

His next awakening was caused by shouts and cries. He raised himself on
one elbow and looked out of his hole. A large body of Russian soldiers
had entered the village, and were welcomed with wild joy by the
Bulgarians, while the Turkish inhabitants--those of them who had not
been able or willing to leave--remained quiet, but polite. The column
halted. The men swarmed about the place and "requisitioned," as the
phrase goes, whatever they wanted--that is, they took what they chose
from the people, whether they were willing or not. To do them justice,
they paid for it, though in most cases the payment was too little.

There was a good deal of noisy demonstration, and some rough treatment
of the inhabitants on the part of those who had come to deliver them,
but beyond being "cleaned out," and an insufficient equivalent left in
money, they were not greatly the worse of this visit from the regulars.

The loft where Lancey had ensconced himself did not attract attention.
He felt, therefore, comparatively safe, and, while he watched the doings
of the soldiery, opened his wallet and made a hearty meal on the debris
of his rations.

Before he had finished it the trumpets sounded, the troops fell in, and
the column left the place.

Then occurred a scene which astonished him not a little. No sooner were
the troops out of sight than the Bulgarian population, rising _en
masse_, fell upon their Turkish brethren and maltreated them terribly.
They did not, indeed, murder them, but they pillaged and burned some of
their houses, and behaved altogether in a wild and savage manner.
Lancey could not understand it. Perhaps if he had known that these
Bulgarians had, for many years, suffered horrible oppression and
contemptuous treatment from the Turks under whose misrule they lay, he
might have felt less surprise, though he might not have justified the
act of revenge. If it be true that the worm turns on the foot that
crushes it, surely it is no matter of wonder that human beings, who have
long been debased, defrauded, and demoralised, should turn and bite
somewhat savagely when opport