The troop train left us to meditate for two or three hours on a siding, but toward noon we renewed acquaintance with it—at Chatalja. That name had yet to become a household word. Nevertheless I looked with considerable interest at Chatalja, where the rumoured concentration should by this time have taken place, where already existed the line of fortifications that was to save Constantinople in 1912, and where of old a Byzantine wall ran from sea to sea. Of Byzantine walls however, of modern fortifications, or of concentrating armies, there was no sign. There was merely a red-brown wooden station, a dusty road, a scarce less dusty coffee-house beyond it, a group of quarantine shanties farther away, and on a low rim of green that lifted itself against the April blue something that looked like a ruined watch-tower. For the study of this simple _mise en scène_ not less than five hours were afforded us. The slightest incident, accordingly, assumed a grave importance. A plump person in shoulder-straps rattled down the dusty road in an ancient landau. Was he the generalissimo of the investing army? I later had occasion to learn that he was not. A naval officer appeared from somewhere and was fervently embraced by the officers of our troop train. He might be bringing them assurance of the loyalty of the fleet. In fact, I believe he did. Two individuals in black robes and white turbans were brought in under guard of a new kind of soldier, smart fellows in lightish blue. I was told that the priests were agitators who had been caught trying to corrupt the soldiers, while their captors belonged to the famous Macedonian gendarmerie. And after our troop train had gone another one came, gaily decorated with boughs and flags. The men were all volunteers—Albanians, Bulgars, Greeks, Jews, Vlachs. But there was nothing of the tyro in the way they carried their rifles and cartridge belts. I have no doubt that many of them were ex-brigands and _komitajis_, turned into patriots by the mutiny at Constantinople. And excellent patriots they made, poor fellows, many of whom were killed four days later in the city to which they went so light-heartedly.