By now it was midsummer and blazing hot. I stayed at Krsto's hut, and slept in a sort of outhouse called the "magazin," built to hold contraband goods by an ancestor. By day the cloudless sky closed down on us like a lid and shut out every breath of air. The little cabbages wilted in yellow rows and the inhabitants of Nyegushi, like true Montenegrins, spent the day smoking and vainly watching for the sign of a cloud, instead of fetching water for their gardens. At midday the limestone rocks glared and the shadows lay like ink blots. Only at night, when a soft wind stole up from the Bocche di Cattaro, did Nyegushi come to life. Then we gathered on a mound behind Krsto's hut and the neighbours flocked to hear the "monogram" as they persistently called my phonograph. So soon as its raucous voice arose, folk who had gone to bed emerged and joined the party just as they were. But this merely means that they were barefoot and revolverless, for no one undresses in the Near East. My repertoire was limited, and I played "God Save the King" till I realized what must be the sufferings of the Royal Family. For Montenegro was all agog about King Edward. When King Edward was last at Marienbad he had met and spoken with Prince Mirko and his wife Princess Natalie. Nor was it surprising, for the Princess was rarely beautiful, her figure as perfect as her face; and her lovely head was poised upon a flawless neck and shoulders. She would have shone in any court in Europe, and it was a hard fate which gave her to the second son of Montenegro. She, poor young thing, was one of the pawns in the game which the Petrovitch dynasty was playing for Great Serbia, and she dreamed of Queendom. Edward VII admired her and the news flashed through Montenegro. It was in the Glas and the Korbiro (correspondence bureau), the ne plus ultra of fashionable intelligence. Excitement reached boiling-point when it was reported that King Edward in person had seen "our Mirko" and his wife off at the station and promised to call on them in Montenegro. Montenegro felt it had not lived in vain. So the villagers called for "God save the King" endlessly, and under the stars at night tried quite unsuccessfully to learn it, for Montenegrin music is not on our scale and flows weirdly in semitones and less than semitones, and in spite of strenuous efforts our national anthem always trailed off into a hopeless caterwaul. But we all agreed that King Edward would be very much surprised when he heard the song and the "monogram" among the rocks of Nyegushi. He never heard it. For meanwhile strings were pulling and fortunes changing. I returned to England, leaving the Montenegrins hopeful that he would come some day, and extorting from me a promise to be there with the "monogram".