'The wood-cutters said no; but I'll ride to Palenka and make inquiries, if Tchernaeiff accords me leave,' he replied, turning away. 'Why is _he_ so solicitous in the matter?' observed Pelham; 'his dislike of our absent friend has been pretty apparent to me.' 'The devil only knows his object; but I don't like his smile.' 'With his cunning black-beady eyes and bistre-hued visage, this Guebhard reminds me of a half-nigger fellow who was gazetted to the Dragoon Guards, when I was in them before joining the Coldstreams. We were anxious to get rid of him; but he was sly as old Nick, slippery as an eel, and cautious as a lawyer. At last one evening we all came to mess with our faces painted copper-colour or black, and with huge stick-up collars, to the astonishment of the waiters and of him too; but he took the hint, and sent his papers in to the Horse Guards next day.' So Cecil's fate remained as yet involved in mystery. But that Guebhard did get leave 'to search' was evident, as the two Englishmen saw him quitting the camp soon after, attended by two or three mounted Montenegrins, melo-dramatic looking cut-throats, armed with rifles, pistols, and yataghans, clad in tattered garments with sandals of cow-hide, unkemped, unwashed, black-bearded, and ferocious in aspect. 'By George!' said Pelham, 'I should not like my _safety_ to be looked after by such fellows as these!' CHAPTER XV. ON DUTY. After carefully loading his pistols, and scrutinising closely the trappings of his horse, a fine, fleet and active animal, Cecil bade adieu to the army of Tchernaeiff, and took his way westward on his lonely mission. But for his forfeited position (forfeited, as he had always felt, by no fault of his own) and lost love--the lost life as it seemed--how exciting and joyous, to a young and ardent spirit, such a task as that he had in hand, with such adventures as it promised in wild Servia, would have been; for Servia, though nearly half the size of Scotland, is yet a kind of _terra incognita_ to the world of Europe generally. 'What will be the end of it all for me?' he thought, as he looked around him on the strange land to which he had come to begin life anew--the world again. Yet his spirit began to rise in spite of himself, as he proceeded at a hand gallop in the pure morning breeze, and he felt that life was not without some zest after all. Here and there great forests bordered the way, with little valleys opening between, wherein, as being warm and sheltered, the tobacco-plant is cultivated. The country seemed lonely generally; more than once, however, groups of wild-looking and well-armed peasantry and workers from the salt and copper-mines, passed him; but during this part of his journey he met with nothing exciting, save at the little town of Tjuprga, for so it figured on his map, though he utterly failed to pronounce it, and into which he rode just as the sun, a great round globe of fire, was sinking behind the hills.