"Some months ago in my village, many hours from here, a woman fell in love with me," he said. "She was beautiful and I loved her too, but not so much as she loved me, for I feared her. She hated her husband, who beat her. One evening she came to me when her husband was away and told me that she loved me and that we would fly together. 'I love thee as I hate my husband, and see, if thou wilt not do this, I will break my spinning-wheel before thee.' And I trembled, for now I knew that my life was doomed. For should I not take her, she must kill me as sure as there is a God in heaven, and if I fled with her, her husband and his relations would surely track me down. And she was very beautiful, and we must all die. So we fled here that same night. What could I do?" he asked, smiling again.
VELIKA
"But why stay here?" I asked.
"Because," he answered, "my brothers live here and I must stay here till I die. If I am not to be found, then my brothers must die for me. It will not last long, for there are many bags of money on my head. My enemy is a rich man."
"But," he went on, "wilt thou ask the Voivoda, who is a good man, to give me a magazine rifle and some cartridges? See my rifle, it is old, and I have but five cartridges left. For thee he will do it, and so I can die fighting a good fight, and perhaps can kill two or three of my enemies first. To-day I have wounded one."
"I will ask the Voivoda," I replied, "though I doubt if I have any influence with him. Ask him thyself."
I did ask the Voivoda, but he said the thing was impossible. He had no rifles to give away. But our fugitive continued his request at intervals for the rest of the time that he was with us.
At Velika, a collection of half a dozen houses, very charmingly situated in a valley, we halted and rested for many hours while the Voivoda transacted business and received reports from a very young officer who held this dangerous command. We commented on his youth, and were told that his father, recently dead, had held the position, and that he had inherited it. "Besides," continued our informant, "he is quite up to his work."