waterproof cloaks which we had borrowed from Nish were not very
weathertight. We climbed right up into the clouds, but still the rain
held on. From the floating mist jutted great boulders and huge red
cliffs. Our guide put up an umbrella and rode along crouching beneath
it. At 1400 metres we reached an inn, where we lunched. A Montenegrin
commissioner insisted on paying our bill, and said that we would do the
same for him when he came to England. Every one in Serbia or Montenegro
is interested in ages. They were astounded at ours. They said that Jo
would have been seventeen if she were Serbian; and one rose, shook Jan
warmly by the hand and said he must have "navigated" the marriage well.

We rode over the frontier, but we were not yet in the real Montenegro.
This is not the black mountain where the last dregs of old Serbian
aristocracy defied the Turk, this is still the Sanjak, three years ago
Turkish, and with pleasant pasturages spreading on either hand.

At last we came up over Plevlie. To one corner we could see the town
creeping in a crescent about the foot of a grey hill, far away on the
other side was a little monastery, forlorn and white, like a shivering
saint, and between a great valley with four purplish humps in the midst
of the corn and maize fields, like great whales bursting through a
patchwork quilt.

Our horses were thoroughly cheered up, and we passed through the long
streets of the town at a lively trot, a thing Jo was taught as a child
to consider bad form.

A semi-transparent little man in a black hat stood on the hotel steps
beckoning to us. But we had no use for hotel touts, and waved our sticks
saying, "Hospital." He seemed curiously disappointed.