"He did not follow the proverb—" added Bellacic, "'Consult your purse, then buy.' His passion for arms ruined him; debts must be paid."
"We were once on board the same ship with Radonic," said one of the friends; "so he asked me to be the Stari-Svat."
"And I," added the other, "as Zwillievic is a kinsman of mine, I must be voivoda."
"Ah, poor Milena! the year will be a black one to her."
"After all, she'll henceforth be able to sit in flour."
"And we all have our Black Fridays."
By this time Markovic had been shaved, the two friends wended their way homewards, and the crowd dispersed.
"And now," you evidently ask, "who is this Milos Bellacic and his friend, Janko Markovic?"
Two well-to-do citizens of Budua, the last of all Austrian towns, two gospodje, but, unlike most of the Buduans and the other Dalmatians, they were real Iugo-Slavs, Illyrians of the great Serbian stock.
As children they had clung to one another on account of the friendship that existed between their fathers; as they grew older this feeling, of almost kinship, was strengthened by the many trials they had to undergo in common, for Fate seemed to have spun their lives out of the selfsame yarn. At fourteen they had left home, on a schooner bound for distant coasts; later, they got shipwrecked, and swam—or rather they were washed—ashore, clinging to the same plank. Thus they suffered cold, hunger, "the whips and scorns of time" together.