angling our legs and
peering down at the country below us.

We were again held up at Krusevatz and bearded the officials. They
promised to put on a special carriage for us when the next luggage-train
should come in, some time that evening.

[Illustration: BIG GUN PASSING THROUGH KRUSEVATZ.]

Nothing for it but to lunch and to kill time. We watched the mountain
batteries pass on their way to the Bulgarian frontier. One or two big
cannon trailed by, drawn by oxen. Many horses looked wretched and
half-starved.

The Englishmen built a camp fire by the rail-road. Soon tea was brewing;
we drank, and chewed walnuts, stared at by crowds of patient Serbian
soldiers.

We travelled with the treasurer of the district, a charming man who
revelled in stories of a mischievous boyhood spent in a Jesuit
establishment. The fathers had stuck to him nobly until he had mixed red
paint with the holy water, and one of the fathers, while administering
the service, had suddenly beheld his whole congregation marked on the
forehead with damnatory crosses like criminals of old time. That ended
his school days. He introduced us to an officer, whose business it was
to search for spies, a restless man who was always feeling under the
seats with his feet. Perhaps it was only cramp! The four Englishmen,
cheered at the thought that their long journey was nearing its end,
burst into song. The Serbs stood round listening to the melodies that
were so different to their own plaintive wailings, and presently asked
us to translate. We don't know if the subtleties of "Didn't want to do
it," or "The little grey home in the west," were very clear in the
translations, as they seemed puzzled.

Arrived at Vrntze, we found no carriages to meet us. The station-master
at Krusevatz had promised to telephone, but as usual had not done it. We
had to break the news to our Englishmen, who, their songs over, had
naturally fallen into tired depression, and had to tell them that a
three-kilometre walk was before us, and one man had better stay to look
after the baggage. Carriages were telephoned for, but they would be long
in coming.

They were! We arrived at the village--no carriages. We agitated. The spy
searcher came out of the cafe--to which he and the "Bad Boy's Diary" man
had driven--and made people run about. They said the carriages had
already gone. We denied it, so they woke up the coachman.

We took the three men to the hospital and went back to sit in the