An incident occurred one afternoon which came near terminating seriously for some of us, and it forms a good illustration of the dangers which the travelling Briton incurs as often as not through his own pig-headedness. S---- and I, with three or four more of the medical staff, were walking down the main street in plain clothes after lunch, when we noticed half a dozen Turkish soldiers engaged in cleaning the street. They were scooping up the liquid mud in great shovels, and throwing it into a cart drawn up near the footpath. A good share of every shovelful of mud came down on the footway, and as we approached S---- shouted to them in English to "knock off" whilst we went past. They either did not or would not understand, and before we had gone three steps farther my companion's Bond Street tweed suit received a liberal baptism of black mud from the shovel wielded by a dour old Turk, the ugliest of the party. S---- lost his temper, and sent in a heavy left-hander, which caught the old fellow on the point of the jaw, and landed him kicking on his back in the middle of the road. The whole gang at once raised a yell, and rushed us with their shovels, while we had to rely upon our fists alone for our defence. Matters were beginning to look very ugly indeed, when a Turkish lieutenant who knew us rushed up, and drawing his sword interposed himself between ourselves and our assailants, who retired in disorder under a vigorous volley of Turkish maledictions. It was a close thing for us all the same, and the adventurous career which I had marked out before me came perilously near to being abruptly terminated by an inglorious end at the hands of an infuriated scavenger. But this same S----, capable man as he was at his profession and good-hearted fellow to boot, had an unhappy knack of getting into difficulties, and his death resulted eventually as an indirect consequence of a mysterious quarrel which he had with a Turkish major under circumstances which I recollect with great distinctness. While we were at Nish, one of the British surgeons attached to the general hospital, Howard Keen by name, was quartered in a fine Bulgarian house, which he shared with a Turkish major, whose name it is not necessary to mention. S---- and I went up to spend the evening with them; and as it was a bitterly cold night with snow on the ground outside, Keen advised me to stop with him, and camp in his half of the house, which I did. At about twelve o'clock I wrapped myself in my heavy military overcoat lined with wolf-skin, and lay down to sleep on the floor in front of the fire in Keen's room, while Keen also went to sleep on his camp-bed. We left S---- and the Turkish major drinking _raki_ together in the major's room at the other side of the house.