time afterwards on another visit to Cetinje.  The only real severity is the chains, but these sturdy mountaineers soon accustom themselves to these thirty-pound trinkets, and when photographed take good care to arrange them tastefully and prominently.  When we lined them up for a picture, we demanded a front place for the chained men, to their intense delight and the chagrin of the others who cast envious glances at their more favoured brethren.  No doubt in that moment the unchained men wished they had gone just a little further in their “quarrel.”

After a pleasant half-hour with these quarrelsome gentlemen, we went round to the ladies who occupy a wing of the prison, with all windows and doors facing outwards on to the open ground.  Again no fence or wall marked a limit to their prison, and they walk in and out of their cells at leisure.  However, there is a boundary marked out by posts and trees, beyond which they may not go.  As we appeared they were sitting about, singly and in groups, knitting peacefully in the warm sunshine.  We again inspected their quarters, and learnt that the odd score of women represented the total crime of the land.

[Illustration:  THE FEMALE PRISONERS]

A blushing and gratified array of staid matrons and coquettish girls faced the camera, again only one young maiden of fifteen or sixteen showing any sense of shame, and she fled into her cell, only to be ruthlessly ordered out by a warder.

Soon afterwards we took our leave, and as we crossed the small unenclosed square before the men’s prison we found it crowded by the late inmates of the courtyard, walking merrily up and down or chatting with friends on the outskirts, over which neither party may step.  Only the dismal clanking of a chain here and there proclaimed to the casual observer the fact that they were prisoners.  Lithe, active, and athletic men, none of whom fear death, and guarded by four warders in the loosest possible fashion, yet they never attempt a dash for freedom up the rocky slope which reaches down to their very promenade ground.  Flight would entail their escaping from their country altogether, never to return, and that no Montenegrin has ever been known to do.  Even though they work for years in strange lands, they invariably return to their rugged native mountains and end their days in peace.  And so they serve their time in patience, and go home at the expiry of the sentence “without a stain on their character.”

Many months afterwards we chanced to arrive in Cetinje on the occasion of a great feast.  A stranger happened to be with us, a German, and we were showing him the sights.  Naturally we also wended our way to the prison, hoping to be able to give him the unique spectacle of the prisoners strolling freely up and down their garden.  As we neared the square sounds of singing and music assailed our ears, and in front of the women’s quarters a large ring was swaying to and fro in the national dance termed “kolo.”  Men and women were performing together, otherwise the sexes are kept severely apart, while others sat around in groups partaking of wine and food which their friends or relations had brought them, and they all sat chatting and laughing together as though this were their natural state of existence.