usso-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried eastward in
time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had telegraphed to
Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the Danube below Belgrade.
Bazias is the place where the railway used to end, and where we took
steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly on hand, ready and
serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a trifle more consequential
than when we had last parted. He was, if possible, rather more at home
in Bucharest than he had been in Belgrade, and recommended me to
Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with which the charges of the Brunswick in
New York are infinitesimal. He bought my wagon and team, he found riding
horses when they were said to be unprocurable, he constructed a most
ingenious tent, of which the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he
laid in stores, arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a
coachman in the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a
distant connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could
survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took
the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
London _Graphic_, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a
slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his
bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of
affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he
thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really it
was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat Andreas as a
servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of the
confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable. Villiers
had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at Andreas.

I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back across
the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London;
but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be
alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest
best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and
count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely
filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure--to
overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the
base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in
round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapi