One man I noticed who had not spoken was fingering the hilt of his knife, as though itching to join in the fray. “I’m going out of this,” I told Palok, whereupon he only laughed. “There’s really nothing to fear, signore. It is always so. They ask double, and Salko is teaching the fellow manners. You are a foreigner, and you don’t understand.” I admitted that I did not. The argument continued, and in the end the fat-faced eunuch was bundled out by Salko into the dirty alley and his goods thrown after him. Nobody smiled. Such treatment seemed usual, and on the following day I bought the dresses. The next was a little old Turk with a long white beard, who had an old silver ornament for sale, one of those triangular boxes which women wear round their necks containing scraps of the Koran, supposed to protect them from the influence of the Evil Eye. Though he came meek and humble, Salko glared at him. No. The Englishman was his guest, and he would see that only what was just was paid. He took the ornament from me, and weighing it in his hand, judged its worth. Two other men agreed, and the old man, without being consulted, was handed the money and told to be gone. Assuredly business methods are quaint in the town we Europeans call Scutari. Another after another—shopkeepers, all of them in the same category as Salko himself—was interviewed. Those who offered rubbish were promptly ordered out. And so, before me, seated upon my box, was unfolded the treasures of the bazaar. And assuredly some of the curios offered were fit to grace any museum. Seldom does a foreigner visit Skodra, therefore it still contains many real antiques; and there being no sale for them, prices are not exorbitant. It is, indeed, one of the few places left where one can obtain anything worth having. A long, lean Christian, in his flat round fez and enormous tassel, offered me nine early Greek gold coins that had only a week before been discovered in a tomb. I doubted the tomb part of the story, but I was afterwards shown it half a mile away, and could also have bought the actual vase in which they had been found. I am not a collector of coins, so I declined them. One day, however, those coins will, no doubt, find their way into one of our European national collections, for they were so perfect that they looked as though just fresh from the matrix. I was turning over in my hand a number of antique gem rings, when of a sudden, just outside, not a dozen yards from where I sat, there was a loud shout, followed by a pistol-shot. Then more shouting, and a little crowd gathered. In alarm I sprang to my feet, and I saw outside a mountaineer, in white felt skullcap, lying in a pool of blood with part of his face blown away. A man in black-and-white trousers stalked past, flourishing his big pistol and threatening to shoot anybody who dared to stop him. He was the assassin.