I attempted to enter some of the Bulgarian homes at Krushevo, but they were still tightly barred. The inmates pleaded with me to pass on lest the Turks should come after me and punish them for telling tales. But the Vlachs were bolder; they besought me to enter and see the havoc the Turks had wrought, to see the wounded women, children, and infants lying on the floors, their injuries barely tended, the wounds of many mortifying, as the stench told too well. And men, women, and children died from wounds not vital. Each evening at sundown the awful stillness of Krushevo was shocked by three long-drawn, triumphant shouts from a thousand throats. They were Turkish cheers at evening prayer for Abdul Hamid, the Padisha. We were mounted ready to leave Krushevo when a native woman came out of the crowd bringing a small boy. She went up to the interpreter and spoke to him in a whisper. ‘She wants you to take the boy back to Monastir,’ said my man. ‘She says no native is allowed to leave Krushevo, and she wants to get her boy to a safer place.’ ‘We can’t do that,’ I replied. I was apprehensive about the journey back. But the woman wept, so I took the boy, and she kissed my hand. He was about eight years old. He had no luggage but a loaf of heavy bread, and he wore but a single garment, a gabardine. He sat quietly behind my saddle and did not bother me much, and towards sundown we reached Monastir safely. The horses picked their way slowly over the rough cobble stones. As we wound into a side street the grip about me loosened, and I turned to see the youngster slip down from the horse. He waved his hand to me and ran like a hare down a narrow lane. ‘That is all right,’ said the dragoman, as we went on our way to the mission. We never saw the boy again. CHAPTER XV THE LAST TRAIL Late in September, when the snows began to fall upon the Balkans, the insurgents called a conference, and Damian Grueff, the supreme chief, and many of the high chiefs of the Internal Revolutionary Committee, met on Bigla Dagh. About six hundred committajis were gathered with the voivodas. A triple line of sentinels cordoned the mountain, and for ten miles in every direction outposts watched the roads. The fighting season was over. The revolution had not accomplished its purpose; all it had brought about was a beggarly extension of the Austro-Russian reforms. But there was no use continuing to fight. The peasants were beginning to return to their villages--or the sites of them--and what arms they still possessed had better be taken from them and stored in safe hiding-places for another year. The organisation was reduced to a winter status, Damian Grueff remaining in active command of some sixty bands of a thousand men in all. The other insurgents were parolled until summoned again.