Towards midnight the conversation turned to combats to come, and both the officer and the committaji assured me there would be no lack of blood-letting as soon as the snows melted. Ammunition was going across the frontier nightly, and preparations for the revolution were being prosecuted vigorously under the very noses of the Turkish authorities. But it was necessary in some districts, where the Government officials were keenly on the alert, to adopt curious means of getting arms into the towns. The insurgent told this story of how a supply of dynamite bombs was got into Monastir. A funeral parade started from an ungarrisoned village near by, and marched into the town to the solemn chant of a mock priest, attired in gilded vestments, and acolytes swinging incense. Mourners, men and women, followed the corpse, weeping copiously. The Turks did not notice that the dead man was exceptionally heavy, and required twice the usual number of pall-bearers. The insurgents buried their load in the Bulgarian cemetery with all due dust to dust and ashes to ashes. The local voivodas were apprised of the fact, and the following night a select delegation robbed the grave. There were no refugees at Rilo on the occasion of my first visit. Several months had elapsed since the search for arms in the Struma and Razlog districts, and the fugitives who had come to the monastery to escape this inquisition in Macedonia had now moved on to the towns and villages further from the frontier. But six months later, when I returned after the revolution in Macedonia, the place was crowded with refugees. There were nearly two thousand quartered in the main building and in the stables and cornbins round about, and more were arriving daily. Some reached the monastery driving a cow or two, and others leading ponies and donkeys heavily laden with all their poor possessions; but many came with only what they carried on their backs. The special burden of the little girls seemed to be their mothers’ babies, borne in bags strapped to their backs. Some of the young mothers bore between their eyes peculiar marks which attracted my attention. They were crosses tattooed there. They told me that these life marks were for the purpose of preventing the Turks from stealing them; but I am of the opinion that the sign of the Cross would not prevent a Moslem from taking a Christian woman. A caravan of pack-ponies arrived at Rilo every morning, bringing bread, which was supplied to the refugees by the Bulgarian Government. Besides this they received soup from the monastery once a day.