he makes ’imself responsible to end any feller wat disturbs you; ’e can post a babby along o’ you and so long as the kiddie’s wid yer nobody’ll touch you.  Dats so, Mister Jim, you bleeve me.  But all de same, dey’ve fixed it up so’s dis killing business ain’t perlite wen deres women about, so every feller taks ’is wife along ’o ’im so’s not to be ended right away.”

Every house by the roadside was a fortress, loopholes only in the ground floor, windows peering from beneath the eaves and turrets with gunslits at the second story; here and there were old Turkish blockhouses, solid and square, showing how the conquerors had feared the conquered.

“One o’ dese tough fellers ’e kill more’n hundred fellers.  Great chief ’e is.  Wen ’e was sixteen ’is fader get condemned ter prison way in Mitrovitza.  Dis young tough ‘e walk inter court nex’ day, in ’e kill de judge and two of de officers and ’scape inter de mountains.”

Nick himself when he was a comitaj had twice been caught by the Turks.  Once he was shot in thirteen places at once, but was found by some Christian women and eventually recovered; the second time the Turks beat him almost to death with fencing staves, and though they thought him dying put him on an ox cart and sent him to the interior of Turkey.

“I was ravin’ mad dat journey,” he said.  “I don’ want ter go ter ’ell if it’s like dat.”

They put him in hospital and treated him kindly; but once better they threw him into a Turkish gaol.  He described how the prison was dark as night, because the poorer prisoners blocked up the windows, stretching their arms through for doles from the passers-by.

“We was all eaten wi’ lice,” he went on, “an’ if de folks ’adn’t sent me money an’ food I’d a starved to def, sure.  ’N den dey bribes de governor ’n a soldier, ’n dey lets me ’scape.”

He lay a cripple in Montenegro six months, but in the summer crawled down to the Bocche de Cattaro and on the sweltering shores of the Adriatic built himself a primitive sweat bath.  In a few weeks he was better, and in a few months cured.  He then went to the mines in America, for he dared not return to Macedonia.  He saved L800 and returned with it to his sister’s in Serbia, but was so oppressed by the misery about him that he gave away all his money and went back.

“Dere’s lots a mineral in dese mountains, you feller.  I show you one lump feller got a’ Ipek, an’ I guess it’s silver, sure.  Wen de war over you come back an’ we’ll go over dem places tergedder.  Dere’s coal too.  Lots.”

He told us that the wretched skeleton who was driving us had power in Turkish days to commandeer the services of Christian labourers, and to pay them nothing.

We passed by placid fields containing cows, horses, donkeys.  The country seemed untouched by war.  Those cows could never have drawn heavy carts and lain exhausted and foodless after a heavy day’s work.  The horses reminded one of the sleek mares owned by old ladies who lived in awe of their coachmen.