English, and shook his head vigorously when she tried to explain that she wanted to get back to Drinitza, he offered her a seat on the wood in his waggon, and actually lifted her up there when she hesitated. She made no further opposition after that. Where he might be taking her, she had no idea, but presumably it was to his home, and possibly to some place where she might find the means of communicating with Usk. The oxen tramped on patiently, and the waggon began to jolt again as the road became worse, but Helene dozed spasmodically on her rough couch. It was not until the waggon came to a standstill that she really awoke, to find herself in the one street of a little Dardanian frontier village, the white walls and dark roofs of which were glorious in the after-glow of sunset, and made a kind of theatrical background for the gigantic men and strapping women in red and blue and gold-embroidered white garments who were crowding round to hear of the strange adventure which had happened to Petros. Before Helene was fairly awake, the smallest man in the crowd asked her in broken German for her papers, and it was evident that a bad impression was produced by her confession that she had none. The small man had something to do with the customs, apparently, for she gathered from the cross-examination which followed that he suspected her of smuggling, though it was not clear what she had to smuggle, with the exception of her worn and weary self. Moreover, he fastened upon her statement that her husband was English as his own excuse for not understanding her German, and they argued at cross-purposes for some time, while the listening villagers made remarks that were evidently uncomplimentary in their nature. To Helene’s horror, he succeeded at last in making it plain that she would be detained for the night as a suspicious character in the hut in which the customs business was carried on; and already she saw herself led to prison before the eyes of the crowd of curious villagers, and locked up hungry and tired, and, above all, alone. In despair, she turned to the tallest man in the crowd, who also seemed to hold some position of authority, and fortunately remembering the word used by the Dardanians to designate their ruler, did her best to explain that the Prince was her cousin, and would hold the villagers responsible for their treatment of her. She could not be sure that she was really understood, but the people seemed to be impressed, and the tall man and the small man consulted together. Presently she distinguished a sound sufficiently like the Illyrian word for “telegraph” to assure her that they were talking of telegraphing somewhere for directions, and she seized upon the proposal with almost hysterical joy. “Oh, let me telegraph to my husband!” she cried to the little man, “and just let me rest somewhere till he comes, and he will pay anything you like.”