nfirmation with the fingers when Benham still
fought against the facts. Her friends and relatives would come and
shriek too. Two of the dead man's aunts were among the best keeners in
the whole land. They could keen marvellously. It was raining too hard
to go on.... The road would be impossible in rain.... Yes it was very
melancholy. Her house was close at hand. Perhaps twenty or thirty women
would join her. It was impossible to go on until it had stopped raining.
It would be tiresome, but what could one do?...

7

As they sat upon the parapet of a broken bridge on the road between
Elbassan and Ochrida Benham was moved to a dissertation upon the
condition of Albania and the politics of the Balkan peninsula.

"Here we are," he said, "not a week from London, and you see the sort
of life that men live when the forces of civilization fail. We have been
close to two murders--"

"Two?"

"That little crowd in the square at Scutari-- That was a murder. I
didn't tell you at the time."

"But I knew it was," said Amanda.

"And you see the filth of it all, the toiling discomfort of it all.
There is scarcely a house here in all the land that is not filthier
and viler than the worst slum in London. No man ventures far from his
village without arms, everywhere there is fear. The hills are impassable
because of the shepherd's dogs. Over those hills a little while ago a
stranger was torn to pieces by dogs--and partially eaten. Amanda, these
dogs madden me. I shall let fly at the beasts. The infernal indignity
of it! But that is by the way. You see how all this magnificent country
lies waste with nothing but this crawling, ugly mockery of human life."

"They sing," said Amanda.

"Yes," said Benham and reflected, "they do sing. I suppose singing is
the last thing left to men. When there is nothing else you can still sit
about and sing. Miners who have been buried in mines will sing, people
going down in ships."

"The Sussex labourers don't sing," said Amanda. "These people sing
well."

"They would probably sing as well if they were civilized. Even if they
didn't I shouldn't care. All the rest of their lives is muddle and
cruelty and misery. Look at the women. There was that party of bent
creatures we met yesterday, carrying great bundles, carrying even
the men's cloaks and pipes, while their rascal husbands and brothers
swaggered behind. Look at the cripples we have seen and the mutilated
men. If we have met one man w