It was the evening of an autumn day, late in the year. A golden light lingered on the mountain-slopes, and a soft, silvery mist rose from the oak and pine forests that clothed them. The salmon were leaping from rock to rock in a tributary of the Morava, that flowed through the camp, and cattle were herding peacefully in the valleys under the shadow of Mount Mezlanie; and the fields of Indian corn, rice and maze were being reaped in places where the wild Turkish Timariots had many a time in the days of old swept in furious bands from Thrace to Belgrade, slaying the stalwart and young, the aged and helpless; sparing the lovely alone as their spoil; and where, in later times, the standard of Black George had led so often to victory, but never to defeat. It was a glorious autumnal evening, and, seated there by the camp fire with pleasant English comrades, and enjoying what had long been a rarity to him, a good cigar, Cecil felt all the joyous impulses of the time--a change or relaxation of mind, after all he had so lately undergone. 'Here,' said Pelham, as he lounged on the grass at full length, a tawny beard of imposing aspect flowing over the breast of his brown infantry tunic, and smoking his briar-root with the marked laziness that follows a day of hard work and excitement, for he had been foraging in the vicinity of the enemy--'here we have to do without the thousand and one trifles that seem so necessary to one's existence in the atmosphere of Tyburnia and Belgravia; and yet, somehow, we don't seem to miss them.' 'Your rescue of Tchernaieff and Palenka in the cavalry charge, and your decoration with the Takova cross, and so forth, have all been duly chronicled in the London papers,' said the dapper little correspondent (before mentioned) to Cecil; 'and doubtless they have been the means of sending a thrill through the breasts of the listless, _nil admirari_ and languid snobs of society.' Has she heard of all this? was Cecil's only thought; and the dear old Cameronians, too? As these heedless spirits had got hold of Margarita's name, and knew--but not how far, exactly--she had been woven up in the network of Cecil's late adventures, he had to undergo some raillery on the subject, and somewhat to his annoyance. 'It is an established fact in fiction and in real life--in history and in poesy,' said Stanley, twirling his long moustache and adopting a sententious tone, 'that a fellow must inevitably fall in love with the pretty girl who nurses him after a spill in the hunting-field, after a wound received in action, and more especially if she actually saves his life; and this girl did yours, and she is downright lovely! I saw her in the iron church, on the day that Tchernaieff distributed so many crosses and medals to the troops. And you know, as Sancho Panza says, "as days go and come, and straw makes medlars ripe," in the fulness of time we may expect to see----' 'Stanley, how your idle tongue wags!'