ent,
the _mallisori_, the mountain tribes, did not acknowledge any. The
Englishmen swore softly. Liosha nodded her head and agreed with them.
What was to be done? The Englishmen, alter giving her food and drink
which she seemed to need, offered their escort to a place where she
could find relations or friends. Again she laughed scornfully.

"All my relations lie there"--she pointed to the smoking ruins. "And I
have no friends. And as for your escorting me--why I guess it would be
much more use my escorting you."

"And where would you escort us?"

"God knows," she said.

Whereupon they realised that she was alone in the wide world, homeless
and penniless, and that for a time, at least, they were responsible to
God and man for this picturesque Albanian damsel who spoke the English
of the stockyards of Chicago. Again what was to be done? They could take
her back to Scutari, whence they had come, in the hope of finding a
Roman Catholic sisterhood. The proposal evoked but lukewarm enthusiasm.
Liosha being convinced that they would turn her into a nun--the last
avocation in the world she desired to adopt. Her simple idea was to go
out to America, like her father, return with many bags of gold and
devote her life to the linked sweetness of a gradual extermination of
her enemies. When asked how she would manage to amass the gold she
replied that she would work in the packing-houses like her mother. But
how, they asked, would she get the money to take her to Chicago? "It
must come from you!" she said. And the men looked at each other, feeling
mean dogs in not having offered to settle her there themselves. Then,
being a young woman of an apparently practical mind, she asked them what
they were doing in Albania. They explained. They were travellers from
England, wandering for pleasure through the Balkans. They had come from
Scutari, as far as they could, in a motor-car. Liosha had never heard of
a motor-car. They described it as a kind of little railway-engine that
didn't need rails to run upon. At the foot of the mountains they had
left it at a village inn and bought the ragged ponies. They were just
going ahead exploring.

"Do you know the way?" she asked with a touch of contempt.

They didn't.

"Then I guess I'll guide you. You pay me wages every day until you're
tired and I'll use the money to go out to Chicago." And seeing them
hesitate, she added: "No one's going to hurt me. A woman is safe in
Albania. And if I'm wi