"No Turks? Dear God, it is a marvel!" And so on and so on. Attempts to start a new topic brought back the old one. "What a pretty child!" elicited only "He has no father. The Turks killed him." And all these things are trivial details; but "little straws show which way the wind blows," and their dull "everydayness" is more eloquent of helpless suffering than are columns of disputed atrocities. And through it all these people cling with a doglike fidelity to their Church and the belief that the God of their fathers will one day give them back the land which should be theirs. I remember few grimmer things than these wretched women and their Turk-haunted lives. Tired out, damp and chilled right through, I shrank from facing the ceaseless downpour, and to the great relief of my two men, stayed the night at Berani. The trouser-legged landlady made me a very respectable bed in a room with a lock on the door. Supper--which was always on the point of coming, but did not arrive till ten o'clock--consisted of a great chunk of flesh in a large tin dish full of funny stuff. The lady tore the shoulder-blade off with her fingers and offered it me to begin on. It was a failure as a meal. I dismissed the whole company, to their infinite regret, locked the door, ate all my "siege ration" of chocolate, went to bed, and slept like a log. In the middle of the night a violent attempt to open the door woke me. I was too tired to worry at first. Then I cried, "What is it?" No answer and stillness. It was pitch dark, and there were no matches. In a little while the attempt began again. Then I recognised that the sound was inside the room, and grasped the situation. The cat I had been nursing was shut up inside the room, and her two kittens were squealing outside. She was making wild efforts to get to them. I let her out, and saw by a flickering lamp that the rain was streaming through the roof and the whole landing was a lake. Next morning my landlady said the cats had frightened her very much in the night. Midnight noises were more alarming to her than to me, and probably for very good reason.