id fatalist.

An Albanian found his enemy in vendetta, working in a field. Hiding
himself, he prayed to God and S. Nicholas to direct the bullet.

"Lord," he prayed, "should I hit this man in the breast, then I shall
know that I do this deed by Thy Will."

He laid his rifle on a stone, took careful aim, and the other fell
dead shot through the breast.

"By God's Will I killed him," he answered, when the priest endeavoured
to impress upon him his crime.

The lighter side of nature was given us by another story.

Shortly after the priest's arrival at Zatrijebac a half-naked man came
to him. The worthy friar took pity on him and gave him a clean white
shirt of his own.

On the following Sunday during the Mass, as he turned to his
congregation to give the Benediction, to his horror he saw the man
with the shirt drawn over all his ragged clothes, in a front row. It
was with the greatest difficulty, he concluded, that he could restrain
a smile.

We were afforded a novel and striking scene before we left Zatrijebac
in the form of an open-air Mass on Sunday.

The church being in the course of rebuilding, a rough altar had been
hastily constructed, or rather knocked up--for it was of most crude
workmanship--of wood planks on a small grass plot.

From nine a.m. onwards the people began to assemble, coming from all
parts of the large and straggling district, and sat about in groups
gravely talking. Towards eleven o'clock a large number of peasants had
arrived, and the altar was covered with not a fair white cloth as
usual, but with something suspiciously resembling a long and not
overclean towel. A tiny crucifix was placed upon it, and the young
priest robed himself there in sight of the whole congregation.

A group of elder men knelt or squatted on the small open space
immediately in front of the High Altar, but the majority of
worshippers ranged themselves under the shade of some small trees and
on the low surrounding walls.

These same trees bear weekly a strange and incongruous fruit, for they
are used as pegs whereon the Albanians hang their rifles during
service. All round, the walls are stacked with rifles, for, like the
Puritans of old, they come to church fully armed with rifle, handjar,
and revolver, and round their waists, the inevitable bandolier of
cartridges.

[Illustration: AFTER MASS AT ZATRIJEBAC]

On approaching the altar every man pushed back the cloth which is
swathed round his half-shaven he