lly a jolly old boy. He said his son was a
puny weakling, but as for himself he never had had a doctor in his life.
So Jan tried his mettle with a cigar. An officer, a filthy old peasant
in the remains of a battered uniform, joined the group, but he was not
charming; however, Jan offered him a cigarette. The old yokel rushed on
his fate. He said--

"Cigarettes are all very well; but I would rather have one of those you
gave to the other fellow."

The road wound on and up in the usual way, rain came down at intervals,
and it grew colder and colder. At last we extracted all our spare
clothes from the knapsack and put them on. We reached the top of the
pass and began to rattle down the descent on the further side, and we
kept our spirits up, in the growing gloom, by singing choruses: "The old
Swanee river" and "Uncle Ned."

We pulled up at dusk at a dismal hovel, on piles, with rickety wooden
stairs leading to a dimly lighted balcony over which fell deep wooden
eaves.

"Is this Jabooka?" we asked, for we had been told to alight at Jabooka.

"No," said the driver; "we cannot reach Jabooka to-night. But here are
fine beds, fine, fine, fine!"

We climbed in. The rooms were whitewashed and looked all right, but
there was a funny smell. We shall know what it means a second time.
There was a crowd of American Montenegrin volunteers in the kitchen. One
gay fellow was in a bright green dressing-gown like overcoat: he said
that his wife--a hard-featured woman who looked as if nobody loved
her--had brought his saddle horse. We got some hard-boiled eggs and
maize bread. Maize bread is always a little gritty, for it has in its
substance no binding material, but when it is well cooked and has plenty
of crust is quite eatable. French cooking is far away, however, and the
bread is usually a sort of soggy, half-baked flabby paste, most
unpalatable and most indigestible. Here was the worst bread we yet had
found.

They took us down a dark passage, in which huge lumps of raw meat
hanging from the walls struck one's hand with a chill, flabby caress as
one passed. In our room, four benches were arranged into a pair of
widish couches; mattresses were given us and coarse hand-woven rugs. We
were then left. But we could not sleep; somehow lice were in one's mind,
and at last Jan awoke and lit the tiny oil lamp. He immediately slew a
bug; then another; then a whopper; then one escaped; then Jo got one. In
desperation we got up, smeared o