also, and I yielded regretfully to his request, for the first time, to hurry on. At midday we reached another collection of huts, the village of Mlantza, not quite so primitive as the last one, but all of wood. A man with a revolver and cartridge belt, one of the gendarmerie, was resting here and nursing his rifle. Two very tall and incredibly ragged men came out of a hut, and at my guide's request made us some black coffee and boiled us some eggs. We off-saddled, and our ponies were soon blowing themselves out with grass and water, and there seemed every prospect of the girths fitting better after lunch. My guide said we must rest an hour, and inquired the way from the man with the rifle. I wondered that anyone knew it, for there was no track to be seen anywhere. There are not enough people even to wear a footpath. And folk live and die in these lonely spots, and a grave, quite fresh made, with a gaudily painted gravestone, stood close by. One or two men, black-eyed, barefooted, and in clothes that were torn to ribbons, sauntered up. None of them made an attempt to speak to me, and they scarcely exchanged a word with my guide. They were too far removed from the outer world to take any interest in it. They seemed part of the wild, dumb rocks and forests, and only the cluttering of the hens that came to pick up the crumbs I had dropped broke the heavy silence. My guide re-saddled the ponies, and we started off again. Downhill most of the way, often very steep, and there was a good deal of dismounting and leading to be done. For some way the rocks were all of green serpentine in wildly contorted strata. A very tiny church stood high on a ledge, far up the mountain side, that looked quite inaccessible from below; one of those built as a retreat by the early kings; a lone wilderness in which some soul had wrestled with temptation, or more probably striven to expiate guilt. And this and the primitive wooden huts of the morning were the only buildings I saw on that long ten hours' ride, until at last, in the valley below, the little white church and the monastery of Studenitza came in sight. Down past the back of the monastery buildings we joggled, and round to the door of the little inn, where I dismounted thankfully, stiff and somewhat dazed. The kindly peasants who thronged the little bare room made a place for us, and refrained from questioning me till I had eaten a huge meal of rye bread, red wine, onions and kaimak, which was all that the place afforded, and I ate with an appetite that delighted everyone.