But that Guebhard did get leave 'to search' was evident, as the two Englishmen saw him quitting the camp soon after, attended by two or three mounted Montenegrins, melo-dramatic looking cut-throats, armed with rifles, pistols, and yataghans, clad in tattered garments with sandals of cow-hide, unkemped, unwashed, black-bearded, and ferocious in aspect.
'By George!' said Pelham, 'I should not like my safety to be looked after by such fellows as these!'
CHAPTER XV.
ON DUTY.
After carefully loading his pistols, and scrutinising closely the trappings of his horse, a fine, fleet and active animal, Cecil bade adieu to the army of Tchernaeiff, and took his way westward on his lonely mission.
But for his forfeited position (forfeited, as he had always felt, by no fault of his own) and lost love—the lost life as it seemed—how exciting and joyous, to a young and ardent spirit, such a task as that he had in hand, with such adventures as it promised in wild Servia, would have been; for Servia, though nearly half the size of Scotland, is yet a kind of terra incognita to the world of Europe generally.
'What will be the end of it all for me?' he thought, as he looked around him on the strange land to which he had come to begin life anew—the world again.
Yet his spirit began to rise in spite of himself, as he proceeded at a hand gallop in the pure morning breeze, and he felt that life was not without some zest after all.
Here and there great forests bordered the way, with little valleys opening between, wherein, as being warm and sheltered, the tobacco-plant is cultivated. The country seemed lonely generally; more than once, however, groups of wild-looking and well-armed peasantry and workers from the salt and copper-mines, passed him; but during this part of his journey he met with nothing exciting, save at the little town of Tjuprga, for so it figured on his map, though he utterly failed to pronounce it, and into which he rode just as the sun, a great round globe of fire, was sinking behind the hills.
On repairing to the only cafane or hotel in the place, he found a Russian dragoon officer taking his departure therefrom, and prior to doing so, about to lash with his heavy whip a pretty little waitress, whom he accused of cheating him out of two copper piastres.