‘She wants you to take the boy back to Monastir,’ said my man. ‘She says no native is allowed to leave Krushevo, and she wants to get her boy to a safer place.’
‘We can’t do that,’ I replied. I was apprehensive about the journey back.
But the woman wept, so I took the boy, and she kissed my hand. He was about eight years old. He had no luggage but a loaf of heavy bread, and he wore but a single garment, a gabardine. He sat quietly behind my saddle and did not bother me much, and towards sundown we reached Monastir safely. The horses picked their way slowly over the rough cobble stones. As we wound into a side street the grip about me loosened, and I turned to see the youngster slip down from the horse. He waved his hand to me and ran like a hare down a narrow lane.
‘That is all right,’ said the dragoman, as we went on our way to the mission.
We never saw the boy again.
CHAPTER XV
THE LAST TRAIL
Late in September, when the snows began to fall upon the Balkans, the insurgents called a conference, and Damian Grueff, the supreme chief, and many of the high chiefs of the Internal Revolutionary Committee, met on Bigla Dagh. About six hundred committajis were gathered with the voivodas. A triple line of sentinels cordoned the mountain, and for ten miles in every direction outposts watched the roads.
The fighting season was over. The revolution had not accomplished its purpose; all it had brought about was a beggarly extension of the Austro-Russian reforms. But there was no use continuing to fight. The peasants were beginning to return to their villages—or the sites of them—and what arms they still possessed had better be taken from them and stored in safe hiding-places for another year.