‘Ah,’ said Hussein Hilmi Pasha, as we sipped his coffee, ‘you went to Istip, and were prevented from visiting Garbintzi. I sent orders to turn you back. As I have often told you, effendi, it is dangerous in the interior; one cannot say where a “brigand”’--his excellency meant a Bulgarian insurgent--‘may be lurking to shoot the European. I have letters from the chiefs threatening to kill a consul. As you know, they hope to make trouble for us with the Powers.’ ‘But, excellency, you may give us an escort.’ ‘Even with escort one is unsafe. They can fire at you from a mountain side high up above. They are fiends, these brigands; they do not care if they are killed themselves.’ ‘But we were permitted to cross a most lawless section of the country, and were stopped only when we sought to visit the scene of a fight. Surely, your excellency, this is a mistaken policy on your part; we must gather that there is something to hide from correspondents.’ We had put down this argument before. ‘There is nothing to hide. Come to me, and I shall tell you the truth about all affairs. But I can permit no more travelling in the interior.’ The same old story. We left the pasha’s presence pretending disappointment. But his threat of Bulgarian ‘brigands’ did not disturb us, and we were willing to take the chance of encountering Albanians. We were going to Pschtinia. The game was not difficult; it required simply coolness and courage and a knowledge of the ways of the Turk. The Englishman possessed sufficient of the first two requisites, and I had dealt with the Ottoman authorities for more than a year. Late that evening we sent our dragoman for a Turkish coachman, and hired him to be on hand the following morning at nine o’clock, Turkish time, to take us to Kalkandele, an Albanian town about the same distance off as is Pschtinia, but in the opposite direction. We knew the native coachman’s ways. A jingle of many bells announced the arrival of our carriage next morning at ten o’clock Turkish (about 5.30), the hour at which we planned to leave. The bells were for the purpose of warning other vehicles coming the opposite way along steep roads, but they would also have the effect of disturbing sleeping guardhouses and apprising them of the fact that we were bound on a country journey. The danger of collision was the minor risk, and we ordered the driver to relieve his ponies of their noisy necklaces. The Turk protested, and commenced to discuss the matter, but there was no time for argument. Having got the bells safe under a seat, we told him to drive to Pschtinia. ‘You hired me to go to Kalkandele.’ ‘We have changed our minds.’ ‘But I have told the police you were going to Kalkandele.’ Exactly; and without doubt the first guardhouse on the road to the west had instructions to turn us back.