We hurried so much that we left our best soap and our mascot, a beautiful little wooden chicken, behind for ever.  The major was waiting in the bar room.

We were sorry to say good-bye, he was lonely, and we liked him; but we lost no time, as we were seven hours from Podgoritza and goodness knows how far from Cettinje.

The carriage and coachman were the same as yesterday’s, but his expression was so lugubrious in the downpouring rain that he looked another man.

Just outside the village he picked up a friend and put her in the carriage.  She was a velvet-coated old lady with a flat white face and two bright birdlike brown eyes which she never took off us.  Conversation was impossible, as she had only one tooth, round which her speech whistled unintelligibly, and she hiccuped loudly once in every half-hour.  We were most uncomfortable.  The hood was up, and a piece of tarpaulin was stretched from it across to the coachman’s seat, blocking out the view except for the little we could see through a tiny triangle.

What with three humans, our bags, the old lady’s bundle, and an enormous sponge cake, we were very cramped, and whenever we tried to move a stiffened knee her bright eye was on it, and she made some suitable remark to which we always had to answer with “Ne rasumem,” “I don’t understand,” the while beaming at her to show we appreciated her efforts to put us at our ease.

The mist and rain entirely obscured the view.  Now and then a tree showed as a thumb-mark on the grey.  We little knew that we were passing through some of the most marvellous scenery in Europe.

The carriage settled down with a bump.  Something wrong with the harness; string was produced, and it was made usable for the next half-hour.  Carriages in Montenegro must have been designed in the days when builders thought more of voluptuous curves than of breaking strains, for we have never been in one of them without many halts, during which the coachman endeavoured to tie the carriage together with string or wire to prevent it from coming in two.

We stopped at wayside inns and politely treated the old lady to coffee at a penny a cup to make up for our inappreciation of her conversational powers.

Women passed carrying the usual enormous bundles.  Sometimes they were accompanied by husbands or brothers, who strolled along entirely unladen.

Jo busily sketched everybody she saw.

Passers-by demanded, “What is she doing?” and the onlookers answered—­

“She is writing us;” for everything that is done with pencil on paper is to them writing.

One pretty young woman shook her fist, laughing—­

“If I could write, I would write you,” she said.

We were no longer in the Sanjak.  Turkish influence had vanished, and we longed to see the famous Black Mountains of old Montenegro.