great flat
masses.

The muezzin sounded from the many minarets, and twilight was on us.
Uskub, romantic, dirty, unhealthy Uskub, was soon shrouded in mist; a
vision of unusual beauty.

One thought of the awful winter it had passed through, when dead and
dying had lain about the streets. Typhus, relapsing fever, and typhoid
had gripped the town. Lady Paget's staff, while grappling with the
trouble, had paid a heavy toll, as their hospital lay deep on the
unhealthy part of the city. For a time the citadel was in the hands of
an English unit. Before they were there it was a Serbian hospital, and
the staff threw all the dirty, stained dressings over the cliff, down
which they rolled to the road. The peasants used to collect these
pestiferous morsels and made them into padded quilts. Little wonder that
illness spread! In the summer Lady Paget's hospital withdrew to some
great barracks on the hill. The paths were made of Turkish tombstones,
which were always used in Uskub for road metal.

The hospital staff was saddened by the recent death of Mr. Chichester,
who had, like ourselves, just returned from a tour in the western
mountains, where he caught paratyphoid and only lived a few days.

One of the doctors had been in Albania, on an inoculating expedition. At
Durazzo he had been received by Essad Pacha, who was delighted to have
his piano played, and to watch the hammers working inside. Like Helen's
babies, "he wanted to see the wheels go wound." The piano and piles of
music must have been a memento of the Prince and Princess of Wied and of
their unhappy attempts at being Mpret and Mpretess--or is it Mpretitza,
or Mpretina? The music was still marked with her name, and was certainly
not a present to Essad.

The stamp of the English was on Uskub. Prices were high. One Turk
offered us a rubbishy silver thing for fifteen dinars; and Jan laughed,
saying that one could see the English had been there. Without blushing
the man pointed to a twin article, saying he would let that go for five
dinars.

What caused us to feel that we had wandered enough? Was it the awful
cinematograph show which led us through an hour and a half of melodrama
without our grasping the plot, or was it that the large copper tray we
bought filled us with a sense of responsibility?

At this wavering moment Lady Paget held a meeting of her staff. We
lunched there, and part of the truth leaked out after the meeting.

The Bulgars really were coming in