At last the luggage train came.  We sat on the step dangling our legs and peering down at the country below us.

We were again held up at Krusevatz and bearded the officials.  They promised to put on a special carriage for us when the next luggage-train should come in, some time that evening.

[Illustration:  BIG GUN PASSING THROUGH KRUSEVATZ.]

Nothing for it but to lunch and to kill time.  We watched the mountain batteries pass on their way to the Bulgarian frontier.  One or two big cannon trailed by, drawn by oxen.  Many horses looked wretched and half-starved.

The Englishmen built a camp fire by the rail-road.  Soon tea was brewing; we drank, and chewed walnuts, stared at by crowds of patient Serbian soldiers.

We travelled with the treasurer of the district, a charming man who revelled in stories of a mischievous boyhood spent in a Jesuit establishment.  The fathers had stuck to him nobly until he had mixed red paint with the holy water, and one of the fathers, while administering the service, had suddenly beheld his whole congregation marked on the forehead with damnatory crosses like criminals of old time.  That ended his school days.  He introduced us to an officer, whose business it was to search for spies, a restless man who was always feeling under the seats with his feet.  Perhaps it was only cramp!  The four Englishmen, cheered at the thought that their long journey was nearing its end, burst into song.  The Serbs stood round listening to the melodies that were so different to their own plaintive wailings, and presently asked us to translate.  We don’t know if the subtleties of “Didn’t want to do it,” or “The little grey home in the west,” were very clear in the translations, as they seemed puzzled.

Arrived at Vrntze, we found no carriages to meet us.  The station-master at Krusevatz had promised to telephone, but as usual had not done it.  We had to break the news to our Englishmen, who, their songs over, had naturally fallen into tired depression, and had to tell them that a three-kilometre walk was before us, and one man had better stay to look after the baggage.  Carriages were telephoned for, but they would be long in coming.

They were!  We arrived at the village—­no carriages.  We agitated.  The spy searcher came out of the cafe—­to which he and the “Bad Boy’s Diary” man had driven—­and made people run about.  They said the carriages had already gone.  We denied it, so they woke up the coachman.

We took the three men to the hospital and went back to sit in the cafe with our new friends and met many old ones.  The local chemist cheered and promised us a present of mackintosh cotton to celebrate our return.  We had spent Easter morning in his shop eating purple eggs and drinking tea enlivened with brandy, while the choir came in and chanted beautiful Easter songs to us.

An hour rolled by, the cafe closed, our friends disappeared.  We went to meet the carriages from the station; at last they arrived, with Mr. Owen half asleep amidst the kitbags.