We listened to one case, that of a woman who had amassed a large sum of money—­for Montenegro—­by fetching water from a distance at so much a gallon.  Cetinje is almost waterless in summer, and water-carriers can earn small fortunes, particularly if equipped with a donkey or two, as was this woman.  Having saved a few hundred guldens, she proceeded to lend it to needy friends—­people are foolish in this respect, even in Montenegro.  It would have been all right if she had not neglected the simple precaution of insisting on an I.O.U. for each loan.  Her money gone, she not unnaturally asked that some of it should be returned, for she had fallen on evil days.  But all knowledge of such loans was denied by the ungrateful borrowers.

It was a knotty point to decide.  Should the judges believe the woman’s word, or the emphatic denials of the debtors that they had ever received a kreutzer?  The seven looked hopelessly at each other, and then wisely retired to the seclusion of a private room, awaiting divine inspiration.

As of yore, the little prison, or rather house of detention, had a great attraction for us.  Many afternoons we wended our way thither to while away an hour in the genial company of the prisoners and their warders.  The handsome young director of prisons usually accompanied us, ostensibly but to bear us company, though doubtless he was acting on higher orders, and had instructions to see that our eccentricities did not go too far.

We organised sports on some occasions, chiefly consisting of putting the weight, i.e. a large stone, but they would swindle and invariably overstepped the limit line, declaring that they hadn’t afterwards.

But it was their stories that we loved to listen to.  They were mostly harmless quarrellers, for we shunned the debased thieving criminal; a man who could steal was vigorously excluded from our circle.  There was one exception, however, and he was a Hungarian, a deserter from his regiment.  That in itself is not a punishable crime, but he had eased the regimental cash-box of a thousand kronen at the time of his departure, and was awaiting the result of investigations.  He maintained that the money was his, and was quite indignant when it was hinted that he must have stolen it; but unluckily he destroyed any belief in his honesty by invariably contradicting himself as to how he came by it.  But he was such a good-natured, pleasant-spoken man that we let him sit by our side and prevaricate, till we bade him cease from further blackening his soul.

We gleaned a lot more information from the young director of the prison, and amongst it the method of recapturing escaped prisoners.  In the central prison at Podgorica, if a prisoner escapes, the rest of the criminals are sent out to catch him.  Very often they find him, and never has a prisoner abused this privilege, all punctually returning by a given date.