national hymn, "God save Montenegro," which was sung with a wild fervour about which there was no mistake. Glasses were filled for the final toast, and we drank to the Gospodar and all his family, and to the speedy restoration of the ruler of Great Servia to his rightful throne at Prisren. "Now, my falcons, go!" said the Voyvode. The party abruptly dispersed, and the bonfire died away. But the wave of patriotism had surged too high to subside at once. The musical talent of the neighbourhood flocked to the guest-room at the baker's, the gusle passed from hand to hand, and each man in turn vied with his comrades in long historic ballads. Those who meant to go home brought their rifles with them, "for it is dark"; those who meant to stay hung up their revolvers and took their belts off. How those fellows sang!--sang till the sweat glistened upon their brows, their faces flushed, and the veins stood out upon their throats. Nor did there seem to be any end to the number of verses each man knew. The gusle has but one string, and as a musical instrument it is about as poor a one as has ever been devised; it was monotonously on one or two minor notes varied only by a curious trill that recurs perpetually, but to the Montenegrin it is what the bagpipes are to the Highlander. It calls up all that is Montenegrin within him. They sang of Kosovo and of the Servo-Bulgarian war and of the border fights of the neighbourhood. The song ended often in a yell of triumph, and the singer threw himself back exhausted by the emotions he had lived through. Djoka, the man from Gusinje, took his turn and varied the subject of song by singing the sorrows of a Turkish woman whose husband the Montenegrins had killed. He sang in a clear high voice, and manipulated the gusle more skilfully than any other man I have heard. "Dost thou hear the wailing of the cuckoo till the city echoes to her woe? The snow is falling and the earth is frost-bound. That that thou hearest is no cuckoo; it is the voice of a woman that cries for her murdered man," etc., and the Montenegrins retorted with a similar song in which the conditions were reversed. When everyone had sung himself hoarse we suddenly discovered it was one o'clock in the morning. The boy began hastily strewing mattresses, and I retired into the back bedroom with the baker's wife, to find there the tired-out Botanik, who was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion and had to be aroused.