Behind them rode the others scared and hurrying.

The sunlight had become the light of hell. There was no air but horror.
Across Benham's skies these fly-blown trophies of devilry dangled
mockingly in the place of God. He had no thought but to get away.

Presently they encountered a detachment of Turkish soldiers, very greasy
and ragged, with worn-out boots and yellow faces, toiling up the stony
road belatedly to the village. Amanda and Benham riding one behind
the other in a stricken silence passed this labouring column without a
gesture, but presently they heard the commander stopping and questioning
Giorgio....

Then Giorgio and the others came clattering to overtake them.

Giorgio was too full to wait for questions. He talked eagerly to
Benham's silence.

It must have happened yesterday, he explained. They were
Bulgarians--traitors. They had been converted to the Patriarchists by
the Greeks--by a Greek band, that is to say. They had betrayed one
of their own people. Now a Bulgarian band had descended upon
them. Bulgarian bands it seemed were always particularly rough on
Bulgarian-speaking Patriarchists....

9

That night they slept in a dirty little room in a peasant's house in
Resnia, and in the middle of the night Amanda woke up with a start and
heard Benham talking. He seemed to be sitting up as he talked. But he
was not talking to her and his voice sounded strange.

"Flies," he said, "in the sunlight!"

He was silent for a time and then he repeated the same words.

Then suddenly he began to declaim. "Oh! Brutes together. Apes. Apes with
knives. Have they no lord, no master, to save them from such things?
This is the life of men when no man rules.... When no man rules.... Not
even himself.... It is because we are idle, because we keep our wits
slack and our wills weak that these poor devils live in hell. These
things happen here and everywhere when the hand that rules grows
weak. Away in China now they are happening. Persia. Africa.... Russia
staggers. And I who should serve the law, I who should keep order,
wander and make love.... My God! may I never forget! May I never forget!
Flies in the sunlight! That man's face. And those six men!

"Grip the savage by the throat.

"The weak savage in the foreign office, the weak savage at the party
headquarters, feud and indolence and folly. It is all one world. This
and that are all one thing. The spites of London and the mutilations
of Macedonia. The