and fighting in front of the entrenched line,
which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas and I
were among the trees trying to find a position from which something was
to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance, plumped right
into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks. They tore me out of
the saddle, and I had given myself up for lost--for the Turks took no
prisoners, their cheerful practice being to slaughter first and then
abominably to mutilate--when suddenly Andreas dashed in among my
captors, shouting aloud in a language which I took to be Turkish, since
he bellowed "Effendi" as he pointed to me. He had thrown away his
billycock and substituted a fez, which he afterwards told me he always
carried in case of accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of
parchment with a seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some
obsolete firman. The result was truly amazing, and the scene had some
real humour in it. With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped
me to mount, and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's
head, called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
back among the Russians--I don't remember seeing much of the Servians
later on that day--Andreas explained that he had passed himself for the
Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the Padishah delighted
to honour, and that, after expressing a burning desire to defile the
graves of their collective female ancestry, he had assured my captors
that they might count themselves as dead men if they did not immediately
release me. To his ready-witted conduct I undoubtedly owe the ability to
write now this record of a man of curiously complicated nature.

When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas went
back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade. Before
leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his nuptials,
a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by the violent
incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all claiming to have
prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They were, however,
placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast in the great arbour
behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to come to me to the ends
of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I should require his services,
and he were alive.

[Illustration: "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."]

Next spring the R