"
At last the luggage train came. We sat on the step dangling our legs and
peering down at the country below us.
We were again held up at Krusevatz and bearded the officials. They
promised to put on a special carriage for us when the next luggage-train
should come in, some time that evening.
[Illustration: BIG GUN PASSING THROUGH KRUSEVATZ.]
Nothing for it but to lunch and to kill time. We watched the mountain
batteries pass on their way to the Bulgarian frontier. One or two big
cannon trailed by, drawn by oxen. Many horses looked wretched and
half-starved.
The Englishmen built a camp fire by the rail-road. Soon tea was brewing;
we drank, and chewed walnuts, stared at by crowds of patient Serbian
soldiers.
We travelled with the treasurer of the district, a charming man who
revelled in stories of a mischievous boyhood spent in a Jesuit
establishment. The fathers had stuck to him nobly until he had mixed red
paint with the holy water, and one of the fathers, while administering
the service, had suddenly beheld his whole congregation marked on the
forehead with damnatory crosses like criminals of old time.
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