and shriek too.  Two of the dead man’s aunts were among the best keeners in the whole land.  They could keen marvellously.  It was raining too hard to go on. . . .  The road would be impossible in rain. . . .  Yes it was very melancholy.  Her house was close at hand.  Perhaps twenty or thirty women would join her.  It was impossible to go on until it had stopped raining.  It would be tiresome, but what could one do? . . .

7

As they sat upon the parapet of a broken bridge on the road between Elbassan and Ochrida Benham was moved to a dissertation upon the condition of Albania and the politics of the Balkan peninsula.

“Here we are,” he said, “not a week from London, and you see the sort of life that men live when the forces of civilization fail.  We have been close to two murders—­”

“Two?”

“That little crowd in the square at Scutari—­ That was a murder.  I didn’t tell you at the time.”

“But I knew it was,” said Amanda.

“And you see the filth of it all, the toiling discomfort of it all.  There is scarcely a house here in all the land that is not filthier and viler than the worst slum in London.  No man ventures far from his village without arms, everywhere there is fear.  The hills are impassable because of the shepherd’s dogs.  Over those hills a little while ago a stranger was torn to pieces by dogs—­and partially eaten.  Amanda, these dogs madden me.  I shall let fly at the beasts.  The infernal indignity of it!  But that is by the way.  You see how all this magnificent country lies waste with nothing but this crawling, ugly mockery of human life.”

“They sing,” said Amanda.

“Yes,” said Benham and reflected, “they do sing.  I suppose singing is the last thing left to men.  When there is nothing else you can still sit about and sing.  Miners who have been buried in mines will sing, people going down in ships.”

“The Sussex labourers don’t sing,” said Amanda.  “These people sing well.”

“They would probably sing as well if they were civilized.  Even if they didn’t I shouldn’t care.  All the rest of their lives is muddle and cruelty and misery.  Look at the women.  There was that party of bent creatures we met yesterday, carrying great bundles, carrying even the men’s cloaks and pipes, while their rascal husbands and brothers swaggered behind.  Look at the cripples we have seen and the mutilated men.  If we have met one man without a nose, we have met a dozen.  And stunted people.  All these people are like evil schoolboys; they do nothing but malicious mischief; there is nothing adult about them but their voices; they are like the heroic dreams of young ruffians in a penitentiary.  You saw that man at Scutari in the corner of the bazaar, the gorgeous brute, you admired him—.”

“The man with the gold inlaid pistols and the diamonds on his yataghan.  He wanted to show them to us.”