apologies, and so on. Somebody had gnawed a piece from one of the wheels, and we lurched through the scenery with a banging metallic clangour which made conversation difficult, in spite of which Jo astonished the natives by her colloquial and fluent Serbian. We had an enormous director of a sanitary department and a plump wife, evidently risen, but fat people rise in Serbia automatically like balloons. We had three meagre old gentlemen, one unshaven for a week, one whiskered since twenty years with Piccadilly weepers like a stage butler; some ultra fashionable girls and men; and a dear old dumb woman wearing three belts, who had been a former outpatient; and several sticky families of children.

The old gentlemen took a huge interest in Jo. They drew her out in Serbian, and at every sentence turned each to the other and elevated their hands, ejaculating "kako!" (how!) in varying terms of admiration and flattery.

The American has not yet ousted the Turk from Serbia, and the bite from our wheel banged off the revolutions of our sedate passing. Trsternik's church—modern but good taste—gleamed like a jewel in the sun against the dark hills. On either hand were maize fields with stalks as tall as a man, their feathery tops veiling the intense green of the herbage with a film, russet like cobwebs spun in the setting sun. There were plum orchards—for the manufacture of plum brandy—so thick with fruit that there was more purple than green in the branches, and between the trunks showed square white ruddy-roofed hovels with great squat tile-decked chimneys. Some of the houses were painted with decorations of bright colours, vases of flowers or soldiers, and on one was a detachment of crudely drawn horsemen, dark on the white walls, meant to represent the heroes of old Serbian poetry.

To Krusevatz the valley broadened, and the sinking sun tinted the widening maize-tops till the fields were great squares of gold. We had no lights in the train, and presently dusk closed down, seeming to shut each up within his or her own mind. The hills grew very dark and distant, and on the faint rising mist the trees seemed to stand about with their hands in their pockets like vegetable Charlie Chaplins.

A junction, and a rush for tables at the little out-of-door restaurant. In the country from which we have just come all seemed peace, but here in truth was war. Passing shadowy in the faint lights were soldiers; soldiers crouched in heaps in the dark corners of the station; yet more soldiers and soldiers again huddled in great square box trucks or open waggons waiting patiently for the train which was four or five hours late. There were women with them, wives or sisters or daughters, with great heavy knapsacks and stolid unexpressive faces.

While we were dreaming of this romance of war, and of the coming romance of our own tour, a little man dumped himself at our table, explained that he had a pain in his kidneys, and started an interminable story about his wife and a dog. He was Jan's devoted admirer, and declared that Jan had performed a successful operation upon him, though Jan is no surgeon, and had never set eyes upon the man before.

Georgevitch rescued us. Georgevitch was fat, tall, young and genial, and was military storekeeper at Vrntze. He was an ideal storekeeper and looked the part, but he had been a comitaj. He had roamed the country with belts full of bombs and holsters full of pistols, he and 189 others, with two loaves of bread per man and then "Ever Forwards." Of the 189 others only 22 were left, and one was a patient at our hospital where we called him the "Velika Dete" or "big child," because of his sensibility. With Georgevitch was a dark woman with keen sparkling eyes. Alone, this woman had run the typhus barracks in Vrntze until the arrival of the English missions. She was a Montenegrin; no Serbian woman could be found courageous enough to undertake the task. After struggling all the winter, she was taken ill about a fortnight after the arrival of the English. The Red Cross Mission took care of her and she recovered.

We left our bore still talking about his wife and the dog, and fled to their table, where we chatted till our train arrived. We found a coupé—a carriage with only one long seat—the exigencies of which compelled Jan to be all night with Jo's boots on his face, and we so slept as well as we were able.

CHAPTER II

NISH AND SALONIKA

To our dismay a rare thing happened—our train was punctual, and we arrived in Nish at four o'clock. It was cold and misty. The station was desolate and the town asleep. Around us in the courtyard ragged soldiers were lying with their heads pillowed on brightly striped bags. A nice old woman who had asked Jo how old she was, what relation Jan was to her, whether they had children, and where she had learnt Serbian, suddenly lost all her interest in us and hurried off with voluble friends whose enormous plaits around their flat red caps betokened the respectable middle-class women.

Piccadilly weepers vanished and a depressed little quartet was left on the platform—our two selves, a lean schoolmaster, and an egg-shaped man who never spoke a word. We found a clerk sitting in an office. He said we could not leave our bags in his room, but as we made him own that we could not put them anywhere else he looked the other way while we dropped them in the corner.

In the faint mist of the early morning the great overgrown village of one-storied houses seemed like a real town buried up to its attics in fog. We found a café which was shut, and sat waiting on green chairs outside. Around us old men were talking of the news in the papers. They said that Bulgaria was making territorial demands, and as the Balkan governments covet land above all things they felt pessimistic as to whether Serbia would concede anything, and said, shaking their heads, "It will be another Belgium."

We celebrated the opening of the café by ordering five Turkish coffees each, and the schoolmaster and we alternately stood treat. Jo loaded up with aspirin to deaden a toothache which was worrying her.

We spent a cynical morning in interviews with people who were supposed to know about missing luggage. Both they and we were aware that the first hospital which got a wandering packing-case froze on to it, and if inconvenient people came to hunt for their property the dismayed and guilty ones hurriedly painted the case, saying to each other, "After all it's in a good cause, and it's better than if it were stolen."

Then we went to see the powers who can say "no" to those who want to do pleasant things, and were handed an amendment to a plea for a tour round Serbia, including the front, which we had sent to them and which had been pigeon-holed for a month.

"But we don't want to see a lot of monasteries," said Jan, as he gazed at a little circle drawn round the over-visited part of Serbia. The powers were adamant and seemed to think they had done very well for us. We went away sadly, for monasteries had not been the idea at all.

Half an hour later we were pursuing an entirely different object. We had discovered that Sir Ralph Paget was housing about £1000 worth of stores destined for Dr. Clemow's hospital—which was in Montenegro—and which needed an escort. He was somewhat puzzled at our altruistic anxiety to take them off his hands, but was much relieved at the thought that he could get rid of them.

We hurried to the station,