This had been the whole spirit of his journey, and it did not desert him now when the gypsies set out upon the mountain road and he understood that he was a helpless hostage in their hands. As for Arthur Kenyon, he, with English stolidity, still chose to regard the whole scene as a jest and to comment upon it from such a standpoint. To him the picturesque environment of height and valley, forests of pine and sleeping pastures, were less than nothing at all. He did not care a blade of grass for the first roseate glow of dawn in the Eastern sky; for the shimmer of gold upon the majestic landscape, or the jewels sprayed by the stream below them. He had met an adventure and he gloried in it. Begging a cigarette from the nearest gypsy, he thanked the fellow for a light, and so fell to the thirty words of German bequeathed to him by that splendid foundation of one William at Winchester. There were "havenzie's" and "Ich Wimsche's" enough to have served a threepenny manual of traveller's talk here. Neither understood the other and each was happy. "The man's a born idiot," Arthur said to Gavin at last. "I ask him where the road leads to and he says 'half-an-hour.'" "Meaning we are half-an-hour from our destination." "Then why the deuce can't he say so in plain English?" "He might ask you why the deuce you can't ask him in plain Hungarian." "That's so--but how these fellows don't break their jaws over this gabble, I can't make out. Well, I suppose we shall get breakfast somewhere, Gavin." "Are you hungry, Arthur?" "Not much; I'm thinking of that poor devil of a Greek." "Yes, they are brutes enough. What could we do?" "Oh, I knew that! What I am hoping is that they will get it hot after we have told the tale at Bukharest. The authorities----" "Authorities, in the Balkans, Arthur! Do you forget our escort?" "Oh, those blackguards. They ought to enter for the mile championship at the L.A.C. In the matter of running, they are a glory to their country." "They will tell some cock-and-bull story and make it out that we dismissed them. Chesny told me not to put too much reliance upon them. Well, they're no loss. We can see it through without them." "Good old pronoun. Would you define that 'it' for my benefit?" "Oh, there I'm beaten. We are going up a mountain and may go down again. That's evident. Two Jacks and no Jills to speak of. There's a house also, I perceive--across the torrent yonder. That must have been built when the witches were young. The flat tiles speak of Julius Caesar, don't they? I wonder if they know we're coming?"