donkey-boys, and it was from their lips came the dismal wailing. Never
have we seen so ragged and wretched a crew. The boys were evidently the
"unfits," and they looked it, every face showed the wan, pallid shadow
of hunger and disease. A few old men in huge fur caps, with rifles on
their backs, stumbled along, guarding the precious convoy. "Glue pot"
led us all to a large empty building, once a Turkish merchant's store,
where the cases were to be housed. The bullock carts with the heavier
packages came in in the evening, and we sent the men five litres of plum
brandy to put some warmth into their miserable bodies. This moved them
once more to singing, but we think the songs sounded a little less
dreary.

The Commandant asked for, and got, half a dozen sheets from us as a sort
of superior backsheesh, and promised us horses for the morrow.

The next morning dawned dismally. Miss Rawlins and her companions were
to go on by post cart, and their conveyance arrived first, only two and
a half hours late. It was a sort of tinker's tent on four rickety
wheels. There seemed to be barely room for one within the dark interior,
but both Miss Rawlins and the little Russian climbed in somehow.
Charlie, the orderly, clung on by his eyelids in front, and off they
went. We last saw two faces peering back at us beneath the fringe of the
tent. They had no luck. Half-way to Uzhitze the cart upset and they were
all rolled into the ditch, missing a precipice of sixty feet or so by
the merest fraction.

Our own horses arrived later, we mounted, and with cheers from the
assembled authorities, we rode off.

The rain came down in a steady drizzle; we discovered that the