"I think my father is a fool to come here, and you also, boss, that is what I think."
"Guess you've hit it first time. Are you hungry, Maryska?"
"Why, yes. Are you, boss?"
She imitated her father perfectly, and Faber laughed. They were in a street so narrow that his horse had a head in the window upon one side of the road and a tail in a window upon the other. A tremendous battlement of rock lifted a sheer precipice far up above this peopled gorge. In the shadows there moved a fierce people, savage, wild, hunted. They gathered round the strangers menacingly, and but for the old white-haired priest, even Louis' gift of tongues might not have saved them. The priest, however, liked the jingle of good Austrian crowns. Let the strangers come to his house, he said, the inn was not fit to harbour a dog.
So the party rode on a furlong—the men, the girl, the American valet and the Austrians. At every step the crowd pressed about them, black and scowling. It was good at last to enter an open courtyard and to see that none followed. Dark was coming down then and lights shining from the windows of the miserable houses. Faber remembered that he had communicated with the Turkish authorities before setting out and congratulated himself upon his prudence.
"They'll want my guns, and so they'll want me," he said.
But he was still mightily anxious about Maryska.
II
The priest's house was about as big as a cow-house and as filthy as a Spanish podesta. Of food there was little save coarse bread and villainous-looking brandy. Here the guests came to the rescue, for Louis had carried up victuals at Faber's expense, and now the good things were spread upon old "Pop's" table, to that worthy's exceeding satisfaction. None ate with better appetite than he; none smacked fine lips so loudly over the good white wine, unless it were Maryska.
Louis had christened him "Old Pop" immediately, and he talked to him in voluble Servian during the repast. Occasionally he interpreted at Maryska's request, and fragments of talk were tossed down to her as bones to a dog. They made the girl laugh, but Faber found them grim enough. He was asking "What does he say?" almost at every sentence. Louis picked out the tit-bits and passed them on.