From the little group of low, stone buildings, men who must have sprung from a race of giants, rushed out in answer to the voice of our motor. I had never seen such wonderful men, unless, perhaps, Mr. Barrymore might be like them, if dressed as they were. Not one of the splendid band was under six feet in height, and many were much taller. On their handsome, close-cropped heads they wore gold-braided turbans over one ear. Their long coats, falling to the knee, were of green, or red, or white, open to show waistcoats crusted with gold embroidery. Round their slim waists were wound voluminous sashes stuck full of sheathed knives and huge pistols. Some had richly ornamented leather boots reaching half way up their long, straight legs, while others wore white leggings, with knitted stockings pulled up over them.
In a moment these gorgeous giants and their mean village were gone for us; but our road took us past persons walking towards the town; men, young and old, tall, beautiful boys, and white-clad women driving sheep, who knitted their husbands' stockings as they walked.
Here and there in a deep pit among the tumbled grey rocks would be a little vivid green dell, with a fairy ring of cultivated vegetation. This would be guarded, perhaps, by a hut of stone, almost savage in the crudeness of its construction. It was as if the proud people of this remote, mountain world, wishing to owe their all to their own country, nothing to outsiders, had preferred to make their houses with their own hands out of their own rocks, hewing the walls and roofing them with thatch from grass grown in their own pastures.
Impressed, almost terrified by the loneliness of this desolate land of giants, lit fiercely now by the lurid glow of sunset, I searched the distance for some towering hill crowned by a castle which might be Hrvoya. But there were no castles, even ruined castles, in this region of high rocks and lonely huts, and the red horizon was hemmed coldly in by a range of ghostly, snow-clad mountains.
"What mountains are those, far away?" I could not resist asking.
"They are the mountains of Albania," the Prince answered.
"Why, but that sounds as if we were at the end of the world!" I cried, startled.
He laughed over his shoulder. "And I am the last man in it! What did I say to you yesterday?"
This reminder brought back the anger I was forgetting in my need of human fellowship, and I did not speak again, but hugged little Airole the closer, nestled under the warm rug.
At the end of a long, straight road that stretched before us I could see a single, pale yellow light suddenly flash up in the twilight like a lonely primrose, and farther on a little knot of other lights blossomed in the dusk.