hours from Podgoritza and goodness knows
how far from Cettinje.

The carriage and coachman were the same as yesterday's, but his
expression was so lugubrious in the downpouring rain that he looked
another man.

Just outside the village he picked up a friend and put her in the
carriage. She was a velvet-coated old lady with a flat white face and
two bright birdlike brown eyes which she never took off us.
Conversation was impossible, as she had only one tooth, round which her
speech whistled unintelligibly, and she hiccuped loudly once in every
half-hour. We were most uncomfortable. The hood was up, and a piece of
tarpaulin was stretched from it across to the coachman's seat, blocking
out the view except for the little we could see through a tiny triangle.

What with three humans, our bags, the old lady's bundle, and an enormous
sponge cake, we were very cramped, and whenever we tried to move a
stiffened knee her bright eye was on it, and she made some suitable
remark to which we always had to answer with "Ne rasumem," "I don't
understand," the while beaming at her to show we appreciated her efforts
to put us at our ease.

The mist and rain entirely obscured the view. Now and then a tree showed
as a thumb-mark on the grey. We little knew that we were passing through
some of the most marvellous scenery in Europe.

The carriage settled down with a bump. Something wrong with the harness;
string was produced, and it was made usable for the next half-hour.
Carriages in Montenegro must have been designed in the days when
builders thought more of voluptuous curves than of breaking strains, for
we have never been in one of them without many halts, during which the
coachman endeavoured to tie the carriage together with string or wire to
prevent it from coming in two.

We stopped at wayside inns and politely treated the old lady to coffee
at a penny a cup to make up for our inappreciation of her conversational
powers.

Women passed carrying the usual enormous bundles. Sometimes they were
accompanied by husbands or brothers, who strolled along entirely
unladen.

Jo busily sketched everybody she saw.

Passers-by demanded, "What is she doing?" and the onlookers answered--

"She is writing us;" for everything that is done with pencil on paper is
to them writing.

One pretty young woman shook her fist, laughing--

"If I could write, I would write _you_," she said.

We were no longer in the Sanjak. Turkish influence had