"Aye, aye! perhaps I have been more successful than the learned doctors of Dunaj" (Vienna) "or Benetke" (Venice); "still, shall I tell you the secret of my cures?"
Mara opened her eyes in wonder. "I thought it was only a death-bed secret transmitted from one dying monk to his successor," said she.
"We are not wizards," said the old man, with a pleasant smile; "we make no mystery of the herbs we seek on the mountains, and even the youngest lay-brother is taught to concoct an elixir or make a salve for wounds."
"But the secret you spoke of?" said Mara.
"It is the pure life-giving air of our mountains, the sobriety of our life, our healthy work in the open fields or on the wide sea. Our sons have in their veins their mothers' blood, for every Serb or Montenegrin woman is a heroine, a brave juna-kinja, who has often suckled her babe with blood instead of milk. These are the secrets with which we heal dying men."
Then, turning to Milenko, he added:
"You, too, must be a brave young man, and wise even beyond your years. You have the courage of reason, for you do not lose your head in moments of great danger. We have already heard how you saved several precious lives from the waves, and now, if your friend does recover—and, with God's help, let us hope he will—it is to you, far more than to anyone else, that he will owe his life. A practised surgeon could surely not have bandaged the wound and stopped the hemorrhage better than you did. Your father should have sent you to study medicine in one of the great towns."
Mara stretched forth her hand and clasped Milenko.
"You never told me what you had done, my boy," said she, while the tears trickled down her cheeks.
"What I did was little enough; besides, did Uros ever tell you how he saved my life and dragged me out of prison at Ragusa?" and Milenko thereupon proceeded to tell them all how he had been accused of manslaughter, and in what a wonderful way he had been saved by his friend.