H——­ had done his duty by the fire; he had even persuaded the water to boil, which I looked upon as the beginning of soup.  Happily for us I had my co-operative stores with me.  From the depths of one of my saddle-bags I drew out a small jar of Liebig’s meat—­a spoonful or two of this gave quality to the soup.  I added ten eggs and some small squares of bread, flavouring the whole mess with a pinch of dried herbs, salt, and pepper—­all from “the stores.”  The result was a capital compound:  in fact I never tasted a better soup of its kind; we enjoyed it immensely.  We had barely finished when in came the woman of the house; she looked very much surprised, grumbled at our making such a large fire, and made no apology for her absence.

No one came in to clean and feed our horses, and though I offered a liberal trinkgeld to any man or boy who would attend to them, not a soul could I get, they all slunk away.  I believe they are afraid of horses at Dognacska.  Self-help was the order of the day, and we just had to look after the poor brutes ourselves.

We slept in the inn.  My bed was made up in the place where I had found the eggs and bread.  I imagine it was the “guest-corner.”  I do not wish to be sensational, and I am no entomologist, therefore I will not narrate my experiences that night; but I thought of the Irishman who said, “if the fleas had all been of one mind, they could have pulled him out of bed.”  Fortunately the summer nights are short; we were up with the early birds, and started before the heat of the day for Moravicza, another mining village.

It was a pretty ride.  We went for some way alongside a mineral tramway, which followed the bend of a charming valley.  Then we came upon a new piece of road, made entirely of the whitest marble; it looked almost like snow.  Afterwards our track lay through a dense forest of majestic trees.  We could not have found our way unassisted, but one of the mine inspectors from Dognacska had been sent with us.  It was a delicious ride, the air still cool and fresh.  Sometimes we were in the forest, and later, skirting a rocky ravine, we followed for a while a mountain stream.  It was rough work for the horses, and once, when leading my horse over a narrow foot-bridge, he slipped off and rolled right over in the bed of the stream.  Luckily he was none the worse for the accident:  these small Servian horses bear a great deal of knocking about.  It was surprising that the baggage did not suffer, but except getting a little wet, there was no harm done.

This district is famous, I believe, for several kinds of rare beetles and butterflies.  I saw some beautiful butterflies myself during our ride.