Youth and hunger alone made him relish the plate of hot _paprakash_, or chicken soup with tomatoes dressed with hot pepper, bread, cheese, and black coffee _à la Turque_, served up in pottery, the form of which indicated a vast antiquity in its design--for the jars, vases, and plates, glazed white and green, were all Roman in style, and might have been used by the Emperor Trajan. But little archæology was in Cecil's mind then; he was thankful to his hostess for the meal she gave him, and was intent on the host's description of the route he must pursue on the morrow, and was in the act of accepting from the hands of the former a tiny dish of the famous sweetmeat of Kirk-kelisie (near the Balkans), boiled grapes formed in a roll with walnut-kernels, when a strange sound like a distant 'whoop' caught his ear, together with the tramp of horses' hoofs. Then he felt his heart leap and his colour change, or fade. 'Horsemen are coming up the hollow way,' said a peasant, entering in haste. 'Horsemen!' exclaimed Cecil, starting up and looking at once to his pistols. 'Armed, too--Montenegrins--I saw them by a glimpse of the moon.' 'Guebhard and his gang--my pursuers. I am lost!' cried Cecil, leaping from the table and buckling on his sword, as he looked hurriedly around him for concealment, defence, or escape. His evident emotion and admission that he had pursuers renewed at once the inborn mistrust of the Servian household, who all shrank from him. Despite his uniform and the gold cross of Takovo, they imagined he must be a culprit, and felt neither disposed to conceal nor defend him. Even the gentle hostess eyed him now with horror, mistrust and affright. Cecil saw in a moment that he had nothing to hope for from his host, or the servants, among whom were four stalwart Servians; and just as he heard the noise of horsemen dismounting at the door, and the unmistakable voice of Guebhard summoning the house, he hurried away to the upper story, and locking two doors behind him, resolved with his sword and his pistols to sell his life as dearly as possible. By the noise and din below he became aware that his pursuers had greatly increased in number, and now indeed a violent death seemed close to him--terribly so, and his heart beat wildly. 'One can die but once,' thought he; 'and why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?' he added, involuntarily quoting Byron. If he perished in that obscure and secluded place, who would there be to regret him, save Mary? And then he thought of his comrades of the old Cameronians; but none would ever know his fate. There was something very bitter in that reflection, yet the memory of the regiment, and of his comrades, seemed to nerve him anew at this terrible crisis.