“Let us camp here,” said everybody.

But the policeman had a mailbag to deliver that night, and we had to push on.  Experienced as we were in Serbian roads, never had we seen such mud.  Down, down sank our feet, and we could only extract them again clinging to the carts with the sound of a violent kiss.  We tried to escape it by climbing into the thick brushwood, only to find it again, stickier and more slippery, while the bushes grasped us with thorny arms and athletically switched our faces.  A moonless darkness came upon us and we had to walk just behind the carriages, peering at the square yard of road illuminated by candles in our penny lanterns.

Occasionally a voice greeted us.  We asked how far Tutigne was.

“About an hour,” was the invariable answer all along the line.

But the dignified guide was right.  After four hours we reached the main street, arriving slowly to the music of incredible clatter as our little carts leapt and jolted over hundreds of big pointed stones laid carefully side by side—­Tutigne’s concession to Macadam.

There were faint lights in some of the little wooden houses.  Others stood dark and unfriendly.  We stopped.  Curses filled the air.  An ox-cart was lying right across the road.  After shouting himself hoarse the policeman woke up an old man in a house near by—­the owner.  He rheumatically grumbled in his doorway; so the gendarme called our Albanians, and in two twos they had turned the cart upside down in a ditch, saying—­

“It serves you right.”

Voices sounded in the darkness.  The carriages lurched on.  Presently they left the road and turned on to grass, they seemed to be leaving the village behind.  We did not know where they were going, and were so tired that we did not care, if only they would get somewhere and stop, which at last they did.  We jumped off into a squelch of water.

“Good heavens, this won’t do!”

We searched the whole field for a dry spot, but though it was a hillside, it was a swamp.  We chose the least marshy place and built a fire.

“Where is the mayor?” we asked of the strange faces dimly to be seen in the light of our fire.

They pointed to two cottage window lights.  We went towards them, at last realizing our proximity by stumbling into a dung-heap and knocking against a pig-stye.  There was a narrow stairway, and above it a big landing.  A man followed and knocked at a door for us.

The mayor appeared—­a little man—­square in face, hair, beard and figure.

We explained ourselves and showed our letter.  He looked grave at our demand for horses; said we would talk it over on the morrow, and sympathized about the swampy field.

“Would you like to sleep here on the floor?” he said, showing us a clean-looking office.  “We regret we have no beds.”

We were delighted.  His wife, who had gone to bed, appeared in a striped petticoat and a second one worn as a shawl.