He laid his rifle on a stone, took careful aim, and the other fell dead shot through the breast.
"By God's Will I killed him," he answered, when the priest endeavoured to impress upon him his crime.
The lighter side of nature was given us by another story.
Shortly after the priest's arrival at Zatrijebać a half-naked man came to him. The worthy friar took pity on him and gave him a clean white shirt of his own.
On the following Sunday during the Mass, as he turned to his congregation to give the Benediction, to his horror he saw the man with the shirt drawn over all his ragged clothes, in a front row. It was with the greatest difficulty, he concluded, that he could restrain a smile.
We were afforded a novel and striking scene before we left Zatrijebać in the form of an open-air Mass on Sunday.
The church being in the course of rebuilding, a rough altar had been hastily constructed, or rather knocked up—for it was of most crude workmanship—of wood planks on a small grass plot.
From nine a.m. onwards the people began to assemble, coming from all parts of the large and straggling district, and sat about in groups gravely talking. Towards eleven o'clock a large number of peasants had arrived, and the altar was covered with not a fair white cloth as usual, but with something suspiciously resembling a long and not overclean towel. A tiny crucifix was placed upon it, and the young priest robed himself there in sight of the whole congregation.
A group of elder men knelt or squatted on the small open space immediately in front of the High Altar, but the majority of worshippers ranged themselves under the shade of some small trees and on the low surrounding walls.
These same trees bear weekly a strange and incongruous fruit, for they are used as pegs whereon the Albanians hang their rifles during service. All round, the walls are stacked with rifles, for, like the Puritans of old, they come to church fully armed with rifle, handjar, and revolver, and round their waists, the inevitable bandolier of cartridges.