y
our party and the Albanians, and found him a pleasant-looking young
man; his breath was coming in great gasps from his heaving breast, but
otherwise he showed no traces of excitement.

"Save me," he said in broken Serb. "They fired at me as I was working
in my field. I am blood-guilty."

All this time his pursuers were evidently debating if our lives must
be sacrificed as well, for to shoot the man meant killing some of us
at any rate.

At this juncture several Albanians came to us and ranged themselves on
our side, and amidst still greater excitement we began again moving
forward.

"It is all right," laughed the adjutant, who throughout preserved the
same air of utter indifference. "They daren't shoot, the cowards, and
we shall take him to Velika with us, and then decide what to do with
him."

"You don't seem to mind this sort of thing much," I said, "but for a
beginner like myself it appears rather nervous work."

"Oh no," he answered. "I live here, and have been in many border
fights. They always make a noise like that, and they very seldom shoot
at big people."

"But if they do?" I queried.

"Oh, well, we must all die once," he laughed.

In another half-hour we passed the second landmark, and were informed
we were again in Montenegrin territory. Our friendly Albanians left
us, and rifles were more carelessly carried.

"What hast thou done?" I asked the fugitive at my stirrup. "Tell me
thy story."

"I am a doomed man; my days are numbered," he said, smiling, and
rolling a cigarette. "But life is sweet, and I wish to live a little
longer."

Strange, this man who was at death's door barely an hour ago, was
smiling and smoking happily as he walked by my side. He had a most
fascinating smile and laughing eyes, and now that the immediate danger
was over he had forgotten it.

"Some months ago in my village, many hours from here, a woman fell in
love with me," he said. "She was beautiful and I loved her too, but
not so much as she loved me, for I feared her. She hated her husband,
who beat her. One evening she came to me when her husband was away and
told me that she loved me and that we would fly together. 'I love thee
as I hate my husband, and see, if thou wilt not do this, I will break
my spinning-wheel before thee.' And I trembled, for now I knew that my
life was doomed. For should I not take her, she must kill me as sure
as there is a God in heaven, and if I fled with her, her husband and
his rela