‘HELL HOLE,’ KRUSHEVO ” 274 THE MACEDONIAN ” 280 COMMITTAJIS OFF DUTY ” 292 MAP OF THE BALKANS ” 296 THE BALKAN TRAIL CHAPTER I THE BULGARIAN BORDER Men of position are proud and prejudiced. In humble Sofia, where there is little pretence, the judge of a supreme court, whose salary was 72_l._ a year, declined an offer of double that wage to serve me as interpreter. An officer in the army, and other Government officials to whom I made approaches, displayed similar pride and lack of enterprise. I was bound for the border, and the only individuals willing to accompany me were two fallen stars of feeble age, in circumstances of despair; and at last I was obliged to choose between these luckless linguists. One was an anarchist, light of head and heavy of heart, the other a bankrupt viscount with a bad eye. I selected the nobleman, but a word for the anarchist; he is dead. He was a very dirty anarchist, with long, shaggy, unkempt mane, and a hungry, haunted look. He wore a silk-lined frock coat of ample capacity, a pair of trousers of doubtful suspension, shoes in which his feet flapped, a silk hat of bygone glory, no collar, no cuffs. He was of small stature, but his outfit had been created for no little man. A wonderful ‘gift of gab’ had he; in a few moments I knew his whole history. He had acquired his knowledge of English in the States, where in the ’sixties he had served (probably soup) with the Stars and Stripes when the Stars and Bars were in the field. But--and the veteran is unique in this regard--he could not procure a pension from the United States Government. Nevertheless he loved my country. He had never gone hungry there, while he had often felt the pangs in Bulgaria. What had Bulgaria done for him? Even the clothes he was wearing had been given him by an Englishman. For his country’s neglect of her travelled son, he had acquired the Irish complaint, he was ‘agin’ the government.’ He was for sending Prince Ferdinand to the hereafter, and favoured the fashionable dynamite bomb. He was a simple soul; before he could execute his plot he was sent to eternity himself--though not quite hoist by his own petard. He was shot, one bright summer evening, in the public park in front of the palace. Old Barnacle had not known David Harum’s precept, ‘Do unto the other feller what he would do unto you--but do it furst.’ Barnacle was an honest man, and he would have been faithful; all he needed to make him generous was a little success. I knew him well before he died. But in selecting my interpreter I felt compelled to act on the principle that a clever crook is sometimes a safer companion than an honest simpleton.