I was much interested in a retired brigand who lived at the monastery, and invited him and a committaji sojourning there to join us one evening at supper. We were a strange gathering that sat down to the monks’ good fare that memorable night. There were many monks, in flowing robes and headgear like stove-pipe hats worn upside down. In the centre of this sombre assembly was our party: the brigand, a powerful mountain fellow who had worn his weapons day and night for thirty years; a desperate revolutionist engaged in directing the passage of bands across the Balkans; a border officer who had been picked for his nerve and judgment to serve on the Turkish frontier; my Count and myself. It took much persuasion and many glasses of the monks’ good wine to make the brigand tell us of his adventures; but when he had fairly begun he went into most extravagant detail and gave us substantial demonstration of how he had done his many deeds of valour. He took his yataghan and wielded it about him in a desperate manner as he told us of how, when surrounded on one occasion, he cut his way through overwhelming numbers of Turkish troops; he drew his dagger at another period and crept stealthily along to slay an adversary by surprise; and he stretched himself full length on the floor and aimed his rifle over imaginary rocks when giving an account of what he considered the narrowest escape he had ever had. He and his band had been forced by a body of Turks up a mountain side at the back of which was a yawning precipice. Half of his men dropped behind rocks and held the Turks at bay while the others took off their long red sashes and tied them together into a rope, by which all but four managed to escape by sliding down the chasm into a thickly wooded valley below. The brigand told us that he had chopped off the heads of Turks with a single blow, and had to his credit in all seventeen dead men. He was an Albanian--a Christian Albanian--which accounts for the record he kept of his killings. Everybody at the monastery but myself was accustomed to such narratives as these, and no one else--not even the holy monks--showed the least emotion at the bloody recital. It was purely for my benefit.