We halted at Gorni-Milanovatz, a kilometre off the track, because Colonel Guentchitch wanted to inspect a hospital in the town. So we ate a second breakfast at nine o'clock, outside a small hotel, on the street pavement, under acacia trees. The Prefect of the town sat with us, and rejoiced to know of our intention to help his people. He said the district was destitute of doctors. With the exception of the doctor in the Serbian hospital in the town, who could not leave his work to visit the country people, there was no medical aid available for the thousands of peasants in the scattered villages around. He went with us to Rudnik. The town Commandant also breakfasted with us, and, while Colonel Guentchitch was visiting his hospital, he told us terrible tales of the events which had taken place in Milanovatz during the preceding winter. In December the town was an inferno, filled with wounded, and with victims of typhus. The Austrians came within five kilometres, and the Commandant gained personal experience of their behaviour towards the women and children. His stories as an eye-witness corroborated the worst that has been told of Austrian atrocities in Serbia. One hundred and twenty women and children were tied together and mown down by machine-guns. Again, a crowd of women and children were driven into a building which was then set on fire; our Commandant saw their charred corpses the next morning. His own family was at that time at Kragujevatz, and, thinking that the onrush of the Austrians was inevitable, he was on the point of starting for home, to shoot his wife and children, to save them from a worse fate. But the unexpected happened; ammunition arrived in the nick of time, and Milanovatz, Kragujevatz and Serbia were saved, alas! only temporarily. Our Commandant was thus spared, by a narrow margin, from killing his family at the moment when it was no longer necessary. From Milanovatz to Rudnik, the mountain views were gorgeous. This country must not, shall not, fall into the hands of the enemy, was my constant prayer. The village only contained the inn and half a dozen cottages, the latter, as usual, models of picturesqueness. One especially was a great joy: one-storied, with whitewashed walls and red tiles. It contained two rooms, hung with hand-made tapestries, and carpeted with rugs from Pirot, near the Bulgarian frontier. I hoped when I saw the rugs that I might one day go to Pirot and see the rug-making industry. I little thought how soon I should be there; but not to see the rug-making. We chose for our dispensary site, the school's enclosure, from which there were glorious views towards Valievo, and the south and south-west. There was not enough level ground for the whole encampment, the dispensary and kitchen were therefore housed within the school building, and the staff tents, and mess tents faced a succession of mountains and valleys, which stretched, as it seemed, to the world's end.