THE BLUE BEAD WAS A CHARM AGAINST THE EVIL EYE (page [2])

Friends In Strange
Garments

BY
ANNA MILO UPJOHN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1927

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

When we go into foreign countries we eagerly look for those things that differ from our own, and if we do not find oddities in dress, food, buildings, and customs we are disappointed. But we are also disappointed if we do not meet, in the people, the honesty and kindliness that we expect from friends. We look for differences in surroundings, but for likenesses in people. We wish to find in people the traits that will make us feel at home among strangers in a strange land. We wish to find friends even though they are in strange garments.

The pictures in this book were drawn with the purpose of showing differences in externals among peoples of different nations. The stories were written to bring home to us the likeness in heart among the boys and girls of the world. A young Arab pommels his donkey’s sides for joy because he is going on a holiday in Jerusalem. A girl of Italy shares her Easter cake with a friend who has none. An orphan boy with younger brothers and sisters dependent upon him does his very best for them in Poland as in the United States.

If most of the pictures were made from children in poor circumstances, or from those living in rural districts, it is because the war left the countries of Europe greatly impoverished, and because the beautiful old costumes and habits are rapidly passing from city life and are to be found only in out-of-the-way places. More and more the differences among the children of the world are vanishing, while the likenesses are growing.

The year 1916 found Miss Upjohn, artist of child life and author of these stories, in Europe as a volunteer relief worker. She once remarked that the only time in her life when she had enough children to suit her was when she was daily serving breakfast to four hundred soldier boys in a Red Cross canteen in London. Later she served in France with the Fraternité Américaine and with the Fund for War Devastated Villages. While with the latter, during the German offensive of March, 1918, she helped to evacuate villages in the Canton of Rossières, near Montdidier, Somme. For her service in this connection she was decorated by the French Government. But there are memories which the author treasures even more than this—of the day, for example, when, after two years’ absence, she went back to one of those villages in the Somme and arrived to find the entire population celebrating a requiem for their fallen. Slipping into the church, she took a seat on a bench near the door, but the curé, recognizing her, came forward from the altar and asked her to come up among them because of all that they had been through together. ‘Such things made me feel,’ said Miss Upjohn, ‘that they regarded me as one of themselves, in sympathy at least.’

During the stress of this time, when often the inhabitants left their villages from one side while the opposing forces were entering from the other, she was deeply impressed by the pluck and helpfulness of the French children. A year later, while she was with the Red Cross Commission in Czecho-Slovakia, the same spirit among the Czech children, coupled with an active sympathy on their part for others in distress, revealed to her the latent power for peace in the children of the world, needing only the threads of contact to bring about widespread understanding.

No wonder, then, that when, in 1920, she was asked to enter the service of the American Junior Red Cross, she accepted. She was commissioned first to portray child life in those European countries which had been beneficiaries of the service of the children of America. She has since remained continuously with this organization, traveling widely, indeed encircling the globe, in behalf of world-wide understanding among children. The work of her pen and brush has been an important factor in the development of that children’s ‘league of friendship’ which now includes in its membership ten million boys and girls in the schools of forty nations.

The stories in this book do not tell of children’s sufferings. They bring before our eyes the children of many nations in their everyday surroundings, everywhere bravely and hopefully living and learning. Some of the stories are quite true; and all of them have a kernel of truth around which the artist-author, with the help of very real children, has built them.

Wherever it was known that the drawings were to take some message or story to the children of America, there was a scramble to get into the picture. Often a poor child would refuse to take payment for posing: ‘No, no, I want to do it for Them!’ Perhaps a boy had received a Christmas box or a letter; perhaps a girl had known the unfamiliar comfort of hot food or warm shoes during the pinched days of the war; or perhaps they had simply heard that other children of their country, poorer than themselves, had been helped.

‘It was a stirring thing to find,’ said Miss Upjohn, ‘that even in remote spots of the Balkans there existed an image of American school-children as something bright, kind, and companionable. In the heart of many a growing boy and girl in Albania or France or Czecho-Slovakia the sympathy of American children is being repaid a thousandfold in the golden gift of Friendship.’

Arthur W. Dunn
National Director
American Junior Red Cross

Friends in Strange Garments

∵

IN THE WILDERNESS

Rahmeh’s mother brought the smoking dish of mutton and cauliflower from the clay brazier where it had been cooking over a fire of thorns, and placed it in the middle of the rug, on a large round straw tray. Then she laid a little flat loaf of bread at each place and clapped her hands to call the family to their meal.

Yussef and his father came in quickly, but Rahmeh stayed outside to feed Nib, the camel, with the cauliflower leaves that she had saved for him.

Nib was Rahmeh’s pet, and the great awkward beast followed the little girl about like a lamb. He was on his knees now, tied down to a peg in the ground to prevent his wandering away. His melancholy, drooping eyes watched the little figure coming toward him with hands full of green; his loose gray lips trembled wistfully and his teeth slid slowly back and forth as he moved his jaws in anticipation. Close on Rahmeh’s heels came Jeida, her little donkey, thrusting his nose over her shoulder and sniffing enviously at the fresh leaves which Nib tucked under his long lips. He looked on sulkily as Rahmeh tied a blue bead to Nib’s collar and patted his head, which felt like a mat of spongy moss. The blue bead was a charm against the evil eye in the great city, where so many strange and perhaps envious people might look at Nib as he threaded his way through the crowded streets; for he was about to make a journey up to Jerusalem with his master and Yussef.

Rahmeh and Jeida longed for a real adventure like going to Jerusalem. Sometimes they made short trips to the orange groves of Jericho, or, with a load of vegetables, to the British soldiers encamped on the shore of the Dead Sea; but usually they herded sheep in the gullies.

Now Rahmeh helped her brother Yussef prepare for the journey. She brought a long coat to put over his white cotton garment. It was of striped black and yellow and reached to his heels; a girdle of wine-colored wool fastened it at the waist.

‘You must take your abyah, too, Yussef,’ said his mother, ‘it will be snowing, up in Jerusalem.’

Yussef, looking up at the hot, blue sky, which stretched over the Jordan Valley, laughed incredulously. But he took the abyah, or woolen cloak, from its peg, hoping that his mother might be right about the snow. It would add another excitement to the trip.

His father was already loading Nib with sacks of fruit and nuts. From the saddle hung beautiful bags richly woven by the children’s mother. Into these she now stuffed bread and cheese and figs for the journey. At last they were off over the white road that slipped away among the folded hills, ashen gray, dun and blue, soft as the wings of a dove.

Diab, the children’s father, was a rich man. Besides the orange grove on the Plain of Jericho, he owned large flocks of sheep and goats. In his house were fine rugs and great bins for grain, reaching nearly to the ceiling. The grain was poured in at the top and taken out through a round hole near the bottom. Diab had rings of silver and of gold, and his wife, the children’s mother, had such a weight of coins on her headdress that it made her head ache. On ordinary days she laid it aside and wore imitation ornaments, which were lighter. Rahmeh, too, had a string of coins across her forehead, and chains of silver, which, fastened to her cap in front of her ears, swung down under her chin.

Her mother had made her a little jacket of purple velvet embroidered with orange, and her skirt was worked with bands of flowers.

That night Ismail, the big brother, said: ‘Rahmeh, you will have to go with me to the hills to-morrow. There are too many little lambs for me to look after them alone.’

Rahmeh was delighted. She rode her own little donkey, Jeida, and carried a pocketful of dates and bread. Jeida was chubby and serious; like his mistress, he went unshod, and, like her, he wore gorgeous raiment, for his saddlebags were hung with tassels of orange and crimson and blue. He had, too, a necklace of large blue beads, and a silver and blue ornament was hung over his shaggy forelock for luck.

Ismail led the flock; and Rahmeh, mounted on Jeida, rounded up the straying sheep from behind. Wherever she saw a clump of thorns thick with Dead Sea apples, she slid from Jeida’s back and gingerly plucked them from the prickly mass. They looked like great beads of amber. But they were filled with pith, and, strung on a long strand of wool, would make a magnificent necklace for Nib on his return. There was not a tree in sight—only the pale sagebrush and the tangle of thorns and a great waste of sandy hills dipping down to the Dead Sea, which lay in its bowl of blue hills, a quiet, sunshiny lake with hardly a ripple. Along the roadside, patches of salt cropped to the surface and lay on the brown earth as white as hoar frost.

Ismail led the flock back into the hills away from the Dead Sea. He separated the little lambs from the rest of the flock and left them behind with Rahmeh in a hidden ravine, which ran like a streak of life across the immense gray wilderness. Rahmeh sat tossing and counting her lapful of Dead Sea apples, wondering whether father and Yussef had yet reached Jerusalem, that great walled city nearly four thousand feet above her, which to her imagination seemed to touch the sky. Was the ground up there covered with that white mysterious thing called snow, which never came to them in the Jordan Valley?

Suddenly over the edge of the ravine the wind swept a flock of small quail, all whirring and chirping, and dropped them into the warm hollow. There they lay, fluttering and bewildered, but so tame that Rahmeh could easily have caught them. She looked up at the sky. The wind must be blowing up there, she thought, and then she heard Ismail calling. He was coming over the top of the hill carrying three little long-legged black lambs, and behind him trooped the rest of the flock, black, white, and brown, tinkling and bleating and nibbling at the shrubs as they passed.

‘Rahmeh,’ said Ismail, ‘there’s a storm coming. You had better start ahead on Jeida and take these three little fellows who are too weak to walk. I can bring in the rest.’ Ismail dropped two of the lambs into the bags attached to Jeida’s saddle and gave the third one to Rahmeh to carry across her lap. ‘Take the Dead Sea road,’ he called after her.

Jeida chose a sheep track to the top of the ravine and from there a stony way, like the bed of a torrent, which ran down into the valley. He dropped nimbly from boulder to boulder until they came down to the sand-dunes which lie about the end of the Dead Sea, now dark as slate between its rocky shores.

The sky was heavy with gray clouds. As they came over a hill that was like a great bare dune, Rahmeh felt Jeida suddenly quiver under her; then snorting with terror he plunged down the hill, and, not stopping to pick his way, made straight for the valley road. Casting a swift glance backward, Rahmeh saw what seemed to be a large fierce dog just over the brow of the next sand-dune. He was following them in a crooked, skulking way, his head down, but his evil yellow eyes turned upward. He was striped with bands of yellow across his shoulders. A mane of coarse, bristling hair stood upright.

Rahmeh’s heart gave a great thump of fright, for she realized that this was a hyena and that he was after the lambs; after Jeida, too, perhaps; for though hyenas are great cowards, they do sometimes attack donkeys and other animals that cannot fight. Jeida, sweating and trembling and galloping wildly toward the valley road, was not more frightened than Rahmeh. All the dark stories she had ever heard about hyenas came back to her—that they stole lambs from the fold and babies from the cradle; that they even stole your mind, until you were forced to follow wherever they went. Rahmeh tightened her hold on the lamb in her lap until its little round head pressed tightly against her chest, and leaning over caught Jeida’s neckband with both hands. It is probable that if she had not been an Arab child she would not have held on at all. Of course if she had dropped the lamb on the road the hyena would have stopped following, in order to devour it; but Rahmeh was too good a shepherdess even to think of such a thing. Her one idea was to protect and save the lamb.

Until now Jeida had kept ahead, but he was winded and trembling, and suddenly stumbling, he came down on his knees, almost throwing Rahmeh over his head.

At the same time the hyena, leaving the shelter of the sand-dunes, circled about to head them off. He was very near now, humping his shoulders in an ugly fashion, and showing his fangs. The lambs bleated with terror.

Then, as Rahmeh shut her eyes in a spasm of fright, and Jeida, regaining his feet, jerked backward on quivering flanks, there came the sharp crack of a rifle, and with a yelp the hyena rolled over in a cloud of dust.

A man in khaki came running over the dunes, rifle in hand. He was an English soldier who, on his way to camp, had seen the peril of the little shepherdess.

‘All right,’ he cried, ‘don’t be afraid!’ But Rahmeh and Jeida were already fleeing toward the gray house where there were sheltering walls, a well of cold water, and mother.

The next day Rahmeh stayed at home and strung the Dead Sea apples into a magnificent necklace, not for big Nib, but for brave little Jeida.

THE PIGEON MOSQUE

‘If I could write like that,’ thought Omar enviously, ‘I’d send a letter to my brother in America, telling him how I went out on the Bosphorus in a boat and caught seven fish.’

He was watching the spectacled old Turk, who sat all day in the court of the Pigeon Mosque, writing for those who did not know how. Omar had been to school, where, sitting on straw mats with the other boys, weaving his body to and fro as they recited in unison, he had learned parts of the Koran by heart; but he had never learned to write. If the fat merchant who was dictating to the scribe could not write his own letters, why should Omar? And if every one knew this art, how would the old man earn his living?

Fatima, Omar’s sister, did not worry about such things. None of the girls whom she knew ever went to school. She sat feeding the pigeons, glad of every day before her mother should make her hang a thick black veil across her face when she went for water. But the big brother who had gone to Chicago wrote home that there all the children could read and write, even the little ones. He was shocked at Omar’s ignorance. That was why Omar hung about the old Turk every day, watching him make the quick little marks that meant words.

When the merchant in the red fez had paid his money and gone, Omar ventured timidly. ‘I think I could make those letters,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know what they mean.’

‘Boy,’ answered the Turk, ‘you must not come here to pick up crumbs like the pigeons. If you wish to learn, I will teach you; but you must work.’

After that, every day for months Omar might have been seen sitting on the step at the feet of the scribe, laboriously penning quirls and dots and dashes, and learning to form them into words. Gradually he came to know the meaning of the texts written in white and gold on the green and blue tiles of the mosque, and to love the place as he never had before.

It was a pleasant school, under the sky. In the center was a beautiful covered fountain with a tiled roof resting on white columns. The doors of the mosque were of dull green bronze, and its walls were a blend of ivory and apricot-tinted marbles, with rich tiles let into them. Beyond the gateway of the court a white minaret shot toward the turquoise sky, and an old plane tree covered with button balls harbored hundreds of pigeons which drifted down to the court in search of food.

WRITING FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT KNOW HOW

The mosque had a quaint story, too. The Sultan Bajesid, who built it to be buried in, was a stingy man, and although he wished the mosque to be very beautiful, the money gave out long before it was finished; so the people of Constantinople were asked to contribute. One poor widow, who had nothing to give but a pair of pigeons, brought them as her offering. The Sultan was pleased, and ordered that the birds be left in the court as an example of generosity. That was four hundred years ago, and now the gray pigeons, descendants of the original pair, hover in clouds about the mosque and give it its name. But though the old Sultan was a miser, he was no coward. In token of that, when he was at last buried in his mosque, his people placed under his arm a brick made of the dust shaken from his garments—a sign that he had been no slacker, but had fought in the dust of battle.

‘That was Bajesid’s idea of playing the game,’ said the scribe. ‘Now, your battle is to learn to read and write, and you must not be a slacker either if you use Bajesid’s mosque as a schoolhouse.’

When Omar was not learning these things from the old Turk, he was studying the signs on the shops and the numbers on the street cars. He had no paper or books, but he copied letters and figures on bits of brick and plaster, and worked hard.

One day he saw a man, poorly dressed and carrying a package, looking anxiously at the signs over the bazaars. Now and then he stopped people to show them a written paper, but they shook their heads and hurried on, for they could not read. Omar approached the man shyly.

‘Let me see if I can read it,’ he said. As he looked at the characters they seemed alive, for he had studied the same words and numbers on a signboard in another part of the city.

‘Yes, I know what it means and will take you to the place,’ said Omar.

The man was so grateful that when he delivered the package to the merchant to whom it belonged, he said, ‘Had it not been for this boy, who can read, I should not have found you.’

‘Ah, you can read, can you?’ said the merchant thoughtfully. ‘That is good. If you wish a job with me I can give you one.’

Omar replied that he did not yet know enough to stop studying. ‘But,’ he added, ‘if you will employ me half a day I will study the other half.’

‘Very well,’ said the merchant, ‘the more you know, the greater value you will have for me.’

So at last Omar could write proudly to his brother in Chicago, ‘See! I have begun, and now I do not intend to let those American boys get ahead of me!’

THE ROAD TO ARCADIA

Five boys sat matching pennies on the floor of a temple—the ruined temple of Hera in the ancient Greek city of Olympia. They were little boys, all in short trousers, and Theo and Alexander in the long-sleeved blue aprons worn by boys in the primary grades of school. Spiro and Andreas, a little older, wore brown woolen capes and little caps with tassels. Adoni, the oldest, had finished the primary school and wore a fustanella, that is, a full white kilt, which stood out like a ballet dancer’s skirt. On his shoes were black pompons like his father’s.

The ruined temple was a favorite place to play, for the boys were very proud of the fact that it was one of the famous spots of the earth. Among the blackberry vines and the daisies, great blocks of marble lay about, like fallen checker towers on a carpet. The boys knew the stories about the wilderness of buildings, which were now marked only by foundation lines or rows of broken columns. Here the great Olympic Games had been begun more than two thousand years ago—the games that have been revived in our time, and in which it is such an honor to take part. To these boys the olden games seemed very real and the ancient place very living.

FIVE BOYS SAT MATCHING PENNIES ON THE FLOOR OF A TEMPLE

Tired of matching pennies, they took off their shoes and sprang to a paved spot near by, where they began to wrestle. In the gymnasium that had once stood here, the Olympic athletes had begun their training. The pavement of tile was grooved, to keep the wrestlers from slipping, and as the five boys tussled, their bare feet gripped the friendly tiles.

When they stopped their play, out of breath, Theo caught sight of the figure of a stranger, and all of them turned to look, abashed. From where they stood they could not tell whether it was that of a man or a woman, for the person sat low in the grass. A gray coat collar was turned up to the ears and a black cap pulled down, against a keen breeze that set the delicate iris aquiver and rippled the daisies on their stems.

The boys stood for a moment full of curiosity, then began to jump forward from stone to stone, pretending to look for blackberries, but really closing in on the stranger. When they came near they saw that it was a woman, and that a paint box lay open at her side. She looked up and smiled, and a sigh of relief went up from the boys. She was not going to drive them away. Instead, she held out her hand and said ‘Good day’ in their own tongue. This greeting appeared to be all the Greek that she knew, so the boys could only smile back at her and shake hands.

They would have liked to talk to her and tell her the stories about the ruins. They pointed to a fallen archway to show her the entrance to the famous stadium where races had taken place—a stretch of level ground now covered with wheat fields and olive trees, beneath which lay the great race course where the chariots had whirled and the spot where the victors had received their olive branches.

In the old days there had been no money prizes and no decorations. No professional runners or boxers or wrestlers were allowed to take part in the Olympic Games. It was a fair contest, for all the players had the same training, ten months in the gymnasium where the boys had just been wrestling. July was the month for the Games; and no matter what quarrels or wars there might be between the states of Greece, during that month they were forgotten. Peace was sworn, and all Greeks came together as brothers. It was not only the Greeks who gathered; people from other countries were welcomed, too, for in Olympia the word ‘stranger’ was sacred. To harm or cheat a guest was the meanest of crimes.

The five boys stood around the artist, and their courteous bearing seemed to show that they kept to the great tradition of the Games. Adoni jerked his head back scornfully and pointed to a row of large stones near by. On those blocks had once stood statues called zanes, paid for by the fines of contestants who had not ‘played the game.’ The largest one perpetuated the shame of a boy who had run away the night before the race in which he was to take part, because he had been afraid of failing. That was more than fifteen hundred years ago! The artist nodded and said ‘Zanes!’ and the boys knew that she understood.

They drew closer to watch her as she sketched. Along the road to Arcadia, on the embankment above them, a broken line of people, on foot and on donkey-back, were passing on their way home from market. It made a bright moving picture in the sunlight, but it was not easy to paint. Before one donkey was finished, another had trotted into his place in the picture. The boys laughed when the waggly ears of one donkey were placed on another one that had passed out of sight. Orange and black saddlebags took the place of a wooden saddle that had been hung with bunches of onions and carrots; and one woman was painted with another woman’s baby.

Quite as fascinating were the materials with which the artist worked—sticks of charcoal, a soft eraser, which could be squeezed like putty between the fingers, and a box full of tiny porcelain dishes filled with bright colors, besides tubes from which soft paint could be pressed on a tin plate and mixed with water. The box lay on the grass close by the artist’s knee, and the boys longed to look it over, but were too shy and too well-bred to touch the things.

Andreas, looking up from watching this diverting business, spied two older boys coming toward their group. Uneasily the younger boys recognized Petro Negroponte, who was always bullying them on the school playground and elsewhere. The big boys lounged onto the scene and stood staring, their hands in their pockets. To show that they were not impressed by what was going on, they began to make scornful remarks, at which the little boys grinned nervously, hoping that after all they might be allowed to stay.

But Petro had no intention of letting them enjoy themselves. ‘Here, get out of this, you!’ he said roughly. As the five stood irresolute, he raised his arm threateningly.

‘Go!’ he commanded.

Reluctantly the little boys turned away and began to play leap-frog in an open space where once had stood an altar to the great god Zeus. Looking back wistfully, they saw something that made them stop their game in horror.

The big boys, too, had moved away. One of them was halfway up the embankment, but Petro Negroponte had slipped behind the tree under which the artist sat. Suddenly his hand shot out, and the next instant he and his pal were dashing up the embankment and along the road to Arcadia.

‘My paint box!’ cried the artist, springing to her feet. She spoke in English, but the little boys understood. Their own particular stranger had appealed to them for help! Forgetting their fear, they started in full cry after the thieves.

Along the stony road to Arcadia they ran, the artist panting far behind. Shepherds waved to show which direction the fugitives had taken. Men in the field shouted encouragement, but no one joined the chase.

What the boys feared, happened. Petro and his companion made for a thick wood on a cliff above the road. There, rocks and brush made pursuit almost impossible. With thumping hearts and dry throats, the little boys scrambled up the steep incline and out of sight of the artist on the road below.

It was a long half-hour before they came sliding down the hill, dusty and sweating. Andreas carried the paint box, but it was empty. All of the boys were silent and ashamed, because they had failed, but, most of all, because a Greek boy had betrayed a stranger. There were still zanes in Olympia!

The sun was dropping low. It touched the sheep in the meadows, rimming each one of them with silver. The road to Arcadia still lay in sunshine, and over it the little procession turned back.

Suddenly Spiro pounced on something lying in a rut—a stick of charcoal! Instantly five pairs of eyes sharpened, searching the edges of the road. Patiently they went over the course step by step, and shouts of triumph punctured the twilight when a lead pencil or a tube of paint was found among the rocks. At the top of the embankment, where Petro had stumbled over a pine root, they found the most. The box had slipped and, having no cover, many of the paints had dropped from it.

Eagerly the boys gathered the lost tubes. Not the very smallest piece of charcoal was withheld, not even the fascinating lump of rubber which trembled in Alexander’s grimy little hand, nor the empty porcelain pans which Adoni picked out of the moss. At the end of the search, a handful of odds and ends had been gathered, precious little bits of red and yellow and green saved from the wreck.

Then, since words meant little between them and their stranger, boys and artist smiled at each other in the dusk, in perfect understanding as they all shook hands again.

The honor of Olympia was clear when the wind and the sun went down at the end of the valley.

THE CHRISTMAS LANTERNS

Nikola usually began his day by fetching two jars of fresh water for his mother. He filled them at the public fountain, loaded them on his donkey, and then he and the donkey trotted home along the sea wall.

Nikola lived in a village of stone, which led up the side of a cliff to a plateau of rocks and thistles. Ages ago the sea had raged through here and had worn big caves in the cliff. In some of these caves people lived, having made them into houses by building walls in front of them, with windows and a door, and sufficient roof to hold a chimney, which was really nothing more than a big water jug the bottom of which had been broken out. Up the stone stairs, which served as a street, women toiled daily with similar jars on their shoulders. If they were tired, all they had to do was to sit down and rest on the flat roof of a house.

Over these steps Nikola skipped one hot winter’s morning to lead out his little flock of sheep, penned in a cave higher up. What a place of stones and thistle it was! But farther back from the sea there was more grass, and thither Nikola guided his flock. From below they were plainly visible against the dark sky.

HE AND THE DONKEY TROTTED HOME ALONG THE SEA WALL

A boy coming along the road saw them and smiled craftily. ‘I’ll get ahead of that fellow,’ he said to himself. It was Philippu, coming from the town with a roll of colored tissue paper in his hand. Nikola on the hilltop, unmindful of Philippu’s presence, stretched himself vigorously, flinging out his arms against the sky. One arm pointed toward Mount Ida, where the Greek god Zeus was born, the other toward Mount Jukta where he died. But that meant nothing to Nikola. He was so used to the glorious mountains that he paid no attention to them. He sat down and considered what could be done about the holidays. The Greeks have a different calendar from ours, so that Christmas and New Year’s come thirteen days later with them than with us. Consequently it was a day in early January When Nikola was thus making plans for Christmas.

It is the custom in Greece for boys to go about from house to house, singing carols on Christmas and New Year’s Eve just as the waits do in England. They carry lanterns, usually fancy ones, which they make themselves in order to show that they have taken pains to attract and please and are not begging. Rather, they are carrying a little portable show, and they sing so lustily that people are either pleased to hear them or glad to pay them a few pennies to move on.

Nikola had learned to his disgust that Philippu, besides making a bagpipe from a sheep’s bladder, was planning a large lantern in the shape of a boat. This was just what Nikola himself had thought to do, and for which he had already made a rough drawing from a ship going to Alexandria, which had lain off the harbor for a day. But now there was nothing left for him but to make a lantern in the form of a house. Or should it be a church, with two towers and a dome?

In his heart Nikola felt that he would make a failure of the dome. So after all it must be a house. But he would make a very large one indeed, and put five or six candle ends in it. A green house with red windows and a big yellow door! Over the door he would put a flagpole and hang out the Greek flag, a white cross on a blue ground. Superb! He rolled on his back for joy, his feet high in the air. His thick brown burnous kept the thistles from pricking his back.

And then what should he buy with all the money he would earn? As he thought it over he seemed to have few needs. Goat’s milk in the morning, plenty of olives with his bread at noon, and at night a dish of hot greens with oil and the juice of a lemon poured over them. What more could one wish?

On the whole a cake for his mother, such as was customary at this time, brown and drenched with honey and studded with nuts and candied fruits, would be the best. He fondly hoped that it might be big enough for the whole family.

Nikola had a few coppers, which he had earned by carrying luggage down to the dock, and with these he proposed to buy tissue paper to cover the framework of his house. The next day, with a bundle of sticks, some glue and strings, he repaired to a windless cave and there began the fabrication of the wonderful lantern, while the sheep browsed among the rocks outside. The size and magnificence of his project Nikola kept secret, hoping to stun Philippu with it on the final night. But as he worked, he thought with envious concern that Philippu had not only his bagpipe with which to win fame and wealth, but the boat, too.

However, one cannot pipe and chant at the same time, and Philippu must find someone else to do his singing for him. Nikola had a good voice. He sang in the choir and knew the fine old carols. This was a great advantage over the boys who had only jazz to fall back on.

Philippu and Nikola were in reality good friends. It was only the competition in the matter of lanterns that had brought a sharp rivalry between them. They lived just outside the town of Candia on the Island of Crete. The town was surrounded by great walls, built by the Venetians when they were masters of the island centuries ago. Inside the walls were modern shops and hotels and market-places. A big restaurant, a few small ones and many coffee-houses were the hope of the boys.

Secretly each of them reconnoitered the field before the great night, and each decided that about half-past seven would be the most favorable time to sing before the big restaurant. It would be a mistake to go too early, for then the place would not be full; but if it was too late people would have parted with all their small change.

Accordingly, soon after dark on Christmas Eve, Nikola set forth with his wonderful house. His mother had given him four good candle ends, and he had two more in his pocket when these should have given out. He lighted his lantern before leaving home, in order that his parents and Daphne might see it, and then proceeded triumphantly down the road, carrying the brilliant fabrication in both arms, with an admiring retinue of small boys following.

When they reached the top of the town wall their pride met a check. Philippu had gone ahead in the dark, his lantern unlit; but here, before entering the town, he had stopped to light the candles; and now he stood with the wonderful ship in his arms, his bagpipe hung round his neck by a string. He was waiting for his singer, who was late.

The ship was a marvel. The boys gaped at it in amazement. It had four smokestacks and an imposing double row of portholes. On either side of the bows blazed the name ‘Hellas’ in letters of fire, and the rigging was thickly festooned with tiny pennants of many nations. Nikola’s house was bigger and brighter, but the ship was an artistic triumph.

‘Hello!’ said Philippu coolly; ‘made a house, did you?’ There was something patronizing in his tone that irritated Nikola. Besides, the fickle crowd was pressing around Philippu’s boat in unfeigned admiration, and Nikola decided to move on before they all left him.

‘That’s a fine ship,’ he said carelessly. ‘Well, come on, boys; we’ll hurry up to the restaurant.’

‘Second turn for you,’ cried Philippu hotly. ‘I got here first!’

‘But you’re not ready, and I am,’ retorted Nikola. ‘Come on, boys.’

In dismay Philippu saw his rivals rushing past him, and though still without a singer he joined in the race for the best position. But he moved too swiftly. A wind-blown tongue of flame licked at the ship’s rigging and instantly the Christmas lantern shot up in a blaze. Despairingly Philippu flung it from him. The masterpiece fell to the ground, where it blazed and curled and blackened and went up in smoke. With a cry of rage Philippu sprang at Nikola; but Nikola had foreseen this and had set his house on the wall. He met Philippu halfway and caught him by the wrists. Both were muscular boys, and for a moment they rocked back and forth, grinding their teeth, while the small boys cheered for joy.

‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Nikola above the noise, still holding Philippu by the wrists. ‘I didn’t hit you and I’m sorry your boat is burned. But you’ve still got your bagpipe. You play and I’ll sing. We’ll go halves.’

Philippu knew that the proposition was a generous one, considering that Nikola now had the field to himself and could make a good thing of it. There would be other bands of singers, of course, but they would probably carry Chinese lanterns and it was not likely that anyone could outdo Nikola’s house and his fine voice. He dropped his arms and stood back panting.

‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘and next week I’ll make another stunner.’ He bent over the wreck of the ‘Hellas’ and extricated the candle ends from the smouldering rubbish. They would serve another day. So Philippu really gathered himself together finely after his disaster, though he could not restrain a groan as he turned away from the ruin of his masterpiece.

Outside the restaurant the boys looked the field over carefully, before beginning their campaign. Through the lighted windows they could see that the large room was nearly full of people eating. Philippu tested his bagpipe and Nikola looked well to his candles, that none of them should topple over. Then they engaged a small boy who had a pair of copper cymbals to clap for them, promising him five cents from their earnings. Thus they had the rudiments of a brass band. Nikola set the illuminated house on the sill of the restaurant window where it made a magnificent showing in the dark street. Then he opened the door a hand’s breadth and the concert began. Strong and clear the young voice rang out in the night. Philippu piped and the small partner clashed his cymbals with terrific energy. People stopped eating to listen, and every one craned to get a look at the glowing house in the window. At last Nikola with a flushed face and beating heart advanced into the restaurant with a little saucer, which he had slipped into his pocket from his mother’s cupboard. He had not thought that he should mind so much. But as he went from table to table and people dropped pennies smilingly into his plate, he forgot his shyness and thanked everybody joyfully, not trying to conceal his delight and surprise.

Outside, the boys counted their gains by the light of the Christmas lantern. Over three drachmas had come to them from their first attack. Up the street they went to further triumphs, followed by an ever-increasing train of admirers.

At last, all their candles burned, they sat down on the edge of the old fountain in the square, and again took stock. Nine drachmas and sixty lepta, after the cymbalist had been paid! Visions of cake now became possibilities. Rushing to the still open cake shop, they sang and piped lustily to the baker, and then throwing their coins on the counter ordered the best cake they could get for their money.

That is how it happened that on Christmas Day the members both of Nikola’s and of Philippu’s families ate their fill of sticky brown cake, thick with plums and almonds, with figs and dates and currants, all trickling with honey.

DRAGA’S ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS

One evening Draga and her brother Dushan squatted on the kitchen floor, eating their supper of stewed peppers smothered in clabbered milk, while their mother prepared the thick, sweet Turkish coffee over a stone brazier. Above them spread the hearth-hood, dark and velvety as a bat’s wing. Wisps of blue smoke from their father’s pipe floated toward it.

Of late many exciting things had happened. Father had come back from America with new clothes, a new language, and new ideas. Now the family sat silent in the grip of a great decision.

Dushan and Draga were to go to the American school in Monastir to learn English and other things not taught in their village. Father had been to town to make arrangements, and, since Dushan and Draga could show good reports from their home school, they were to be admitted on trial, Dushan to live with friends and attend as a day pupil, Draga to live in the dormitory as a boarder. Mother acquiesced bewildered, but her dark eyes lingered on Draga, who was her baby. She listened with considerable distrust to the tales of American women who went where and when they liked—tales even of girls who went to and from school alone on street cars, carrying their books under their arms!

The preparations were finished. They were to start the next morning. It would be a three days’ journey in the ox-cart, and provisions stood ready in the shape of baskets of grapes and cheese, and a great loaf of brown bread, almost as big as a cart-wheel, wrapped in clean linen. The heavy white tunics with their flowered borders were folded between home-woven blankets.

After coffee, taking two baskets, Draga went to the stream which bounded down toward Lake Prespa, to gather succulent leaves and grass for the goats. The village houses were deep ochre in color, some with jutting windows faced with turquoise blue. Above the walls which shut the gardens from the street rose cypresses and matted vines and the wide tops of fig trees. Scarped blue mountains climbed behind the village, and below it lay Lake Prespa, holding in its bright waters a tiny island on which could be seen the ruins of a tower where long ago the Bulgarian Tsars had hidden their treasure from the Greek Emperors of Constantinople. That was before the time of the Serbian Tsars who conquered Macedonia, or the Turks who took it from the Serbs.

In this country Alexander the Great had lived as a boy, and since then it had known so many masters and was still claimed by so many nations that people continued to live in fortress-like houses whose doors were barred at night with heavy stanchions.

Draga’s home was one of these houses. All its doors and windows opened on the inner court. On the ground floor were stalled the oxen, the hens, and the goats. Above the stables projected a wide veranda hung with gay Serbian rugs and strings of tobacco and beans. Below, in the open space of the court, was piled husked corn, which glowed like a heap of gold when the sun struck it.

Draga’s thoughts rushed back to the familiar scene the next day, as the ox-cart creaked through the sere and dusty country, over a road that had once been a great Roman thoroughfare. It was really a continuation of the famous Appian Way from Rome to Brindisi. There it disappeared in the Adriatic, to emerge on the other side at Durazzo, in Albania, where it took another name, of Via Egnatia, and continued across country to Salonica. Monastir, where Draga and Dushan were to go to school, was the halfway station. The old Roman road was still the great highway, but the merchant caravans and the trampling legions had disappeared. Military trucks, white with dust, sometimes lumbered by, carrying stores to some outlying garrison, and the mail car was sure to be met sooner or later jacking up its wheels for new tires. For the most part, people went by on foot or on donkey-back, all burden-laden.

There were brigands back in the hills. Sometimes they disguised themselves as Turkish women, with long, black veils over their faces, and flowing garments, which concealed weapons; but persons traveling in an ox-cart driven by a barefooted boy had nothing to fear. Nevertheless, they spent the nights near some small village that looked like an outcrop of stones on the hillside, and after coffee and sour milk at the inn, stretched themselves out on the floor of the wagon and pulled the blankets over them.

On the third day they came to Monastir—to Draga and Dushan a bewildering, beautiful place. The next day was market day, and their mother could go back in company with friends. So, on the threshold of the school, with many hurried embraces, she left Draga, who felt small and alone in spite of the crowd of new faces around her.

A month went by and the first examinations were over.

Draga’s parents were to come that day to learn whether or not she had passed. Draga did not know and was afraid to ask. One moment she trembled with hope that she had not passed, so that she might travel back in the ox-cart with her parents to the golden-lighted court, the shadowy kitchen, and the sweet, musty smell of grapes. Then she shriveled with shame at the thought of failure. Besides, she was beginning to love the school life; the fresh clean dormitory, where they slept with open windows; the team work of study and play; and the evening hour, when they all sat on the floor and told stories before going to bed. Also, she had learned with surprise that Bulgarian girls are as kindly as Serbians. There were several in the school, and one of them, Boiana, had been her friend from the start. This seemed strange, for she had always heard that Bulgars were evil and hostile people.

Fearing that her mother might find her strange because of her bobbed hair and straight gingham dress, Draga put on her Macedonian garments. The embroidery on her tunic was of an ancient pattern called ‘Marko, the King’s Son,’ so named in honor of the Serbian prince, Marko, the national hero of chivalry and romance, who had lost a crown rather than tell a lie. His home had been in Macedonia over five hundred years before Draga’s time, but ‘Marko’s pattern’ had been handed down from one generation of Serbian women to another, each proud to wear it, as Draga was to-day. The sleeveless jacket which she wore over her tunic was of a clear red, like the peppers strung against the white walls of her home; and wound around her waist was a rope of black wool to keep her brilliant girdle in place.

Behind the school playground there was a high brick wall with a small green door. It led into a quiet, neglected garden like a scene from a book. There was a well in the center; gourds and spiked flowers, purple and white, grew in the rank grass, and crooked plum trees traced blue shadows on the walls which shut the garden away from the clatter of the streets. This was the paradise of a large family of rabbits, and when Draga felt homesick she slipped away to feed them with scraps of red peppers, which she begged from the cook; for all Macedonians down to the rabbits love peppers.

Draga had begun to feel the charm of order and cleanliness, but she missed the animals which were a part of the family at home, and which she had fed and cared for all her life. She was torn between a longing to go back to her home and a real love for the life in school. Her examination marks would decide which it was to be. Of her Serbian studies she felt fairly sure. It was the strange English language that staggered her—its incomprehensible verbs, its spelling without a clue. Some of the Serbian girls spoke it well, and from them she learned more than from her books. The queer names for food and clothes and the objects in the schoolroom she was beginning to master.

STRINGING PEPPERS

While the rabbits were nibbling their peppers someone came running to the green door. ‘Draga, your father and mother are here!’

Her mother bent over her, enveloped her in the soft white folds of her headdress, and smothered her with kisses. ‘Oh, what a clever girl to pass in everything, even the strange English!’ she whispered, and her father’s eyes shone proudly upon her.

Suddenly Draga knew how glad she was to stay, how proud that she could hold her place among the other girls; and she realized that her parents too, as much as they missed her, would rather leave her than take her back. Together they were all working for the future.

THE TRUCE

When Rastem was born his father hung a gun and a cartridge belt on the wall for him. There they were to stay until Rastem was fourteen years old, when he would take them down himself and wear the belt and carry the gun for the first time. Meanwhile, he began his life in a little painted cradle, into which his mother strapped him so tightly that he could move neither legs, arms nor head, but lay like a little mummy, completely covered with a rough homespun blanket.

Rastem lived in Albania, the land of the mountain eagle. His home was in a strange old town perched so high on a mountain-top that the clouds hung over it like a dark flat roof so that the cocks crowed all day, as they do when calling the hens to shelter from a storm.

Rastem’s father was a well-to-do man, and the family lived in a pleasant house the plastered walls of which were painted with birds and foliage. There were many slatted windows and a cheery tiled roof with broad eaves.

Next door to Rastem lived Marko, a boy of about his own age. Though their families never visited each other, and though the gate between the two yards was kept locked, the two little boys had discovered one another as soon as they began to walk; and gazing through the openings in the fence of woven branches that separated them, they had quickly come to an understanding. Later on, they worried a passage under the hedge through which they crawled freely to pass long hours of play together. They did not understand why at first Marko was scowled at when he went to Rastem’s house and Rastem was scowled at when he went to Marko’s house; but as neither of the boys was contented long without the other, their elders soon let them go and come as they liked.

When they grew older and mingled with other children they found out what the trouble was. Between the two families there was what in Albania is called a blood feud; that is, someone in Marko’s family had shot someone in Rastem’s family during a quarrel, and had killed him. It had happened a long time before. The man who had shot the other had fled to a foreign country and his children had grown up there; but until someone in Rastem’s family shot a man in Marko’s family the feud could not end, nor was the honor of Rastem’s family clear.

That old quarrel of the grown people seemed a far-off, foolish thing to the boys, and no concern of theirs. They looked into each other’s eyes and grinned in perfect comradeship when the larger boys urged them to fight it out together. There was too much fun to be had out of life to waste time in quarreling; and Kruja, that strange old town, was not a bad place to grow up in. Its one long, curving street, which skirted the mountain-side like a tail, was crowded with open booths and was so narrow that the roofs met overhead. Here on market days were the clack and tap of little hoofs as the donkeys pushed through the crowd with broad loads of hides and wood or with saddlebags stuffed with lambs or a baby or two. And there the coppersmiths beat out trays and water pots before one’s eyes. The shoemakers cut the delicately curved slippers from scarlet or orange or black leather, the hatters shaped a white or red fez over a block of wood, and artificers in silver polished pistol handles as thickly set with bright stones as a plum pudding is with raisins.

There was also the barber, a white bearded Turk in a heavy turban and a robe of gold-colored silk, sitting on green cushions amid basins and jars of polished copper. Then, too, there was the amusing Mohammedan who called to prayer from the white minaret. He came at certain hours into the tiny balcony that swung out under the spiked roof of the minaret, took hold of his ears in a comical manner and uttered a harsh and dismal shout, which was echoed by the wall of rock behind him.

Far above the point of the minaret towered a cliff, on the summit of which a battered castle with one square tower was blocked against the sky. There were strange tales about the castle, which Rastem learned when he began to grow up, and here the boys played at the game of defending the castle against the Turks, sending stones thundering into the depths of the ravine below as their ancestors had done in the days of Skanderbeg, when the Turks had conquered the country, to rule it cruelly for hundreds of years, until at last, through the great War, Albania regained her freedom.

The boys realized dimly that something glorious had happened; but they did not know how great a change had come over their country, for life in Kruja had not changed much since the war, except to grow harder. Every one was poor and wore old clothes, which was a hardship for the Albanians, who love their gorgeous costumes. Fortunately they have strong homespun, which lasts for years. Rastem wore trousers of rough white woolen material braided with black, a Skanderbeg jacket, and sandals of cowhide.

A few days before Rastem’s fourteenth birthday his father found him looking longingly at the gun on the wall. ‘I am sorry, Rastem,’ he said gravely, ‘that you and Marko are such friends. It can bring you nothing but sorrow.’

‘Why sorrow?’ asked Rastem, startled.

‘Why? Because of the feud between us,’ said his father. ‘It rests with you to clear the family honor. You don’t take it seriously now, but when you and Marko are men, either you will shoot him or he will shoot you.’

‘Shoot Marko? Never!’ exclaimed Rastem with flaming cheeks and eyes.

‘It is the law of your country and your tribe. You cannot change it,’ said his father; ‘it is written in the Canon of Lek.’ And he left the room.

Rastem was angry and excited. All the pleasure in his gun was gone.

In order to get away from the sight of it, he went into his mother’s room. It was a homelike place. The wooden ceiling was painted green, with bunches of flowers. There was a warm-colored rug on the floor, and a divan covered with carpets ran the length of one side, under a row of latticed windows. In the little open cupboards in the walls Rastem’s mother kept spices and perfumes and sweets. There were no chairs, but two sides of the room were skirted by a low platform of brickwork, over which were spread mats and cushions. On the bricks stood a brazier of glowing coals. Rastem sat down cross-legged and spread his hands to the warmth. The room was fragrant and drowsy. Outside, the rain slapped against the window and a mass of cloud surging up from the valley blotted out the world.

RASTEM AND MARKO

The boy was very wretched. He had been taught to do many things that seem strange to us, but were quite right to him, such as taking off his shoes when he entered a house, keeping his hat on at the table, and eating his mutton and rice with his fingers. So when he was told by his father that he must shoot his best friend he had a sickening fear that after all he might be forced to do it if he could not find a way out.

‘Skanderbeg kept his sword for his enemies,’ he reasoned, ‘not for his friends.’ Now that Albania was at last free from the Turks, it would be a fine thing indeed for Albanians to begin to kill one another! It was unthinkable that he should shoot Marko. He must find a way out!

There were the two men from Tirana and Kruja, he pondered. They had had a feud, but they had sworn a besa or truce for six weeks, in order to carry out a cattle deal; and they had laughed together and visited like good friends. To be sure, when the six weeks were up, they had shot at each other and one of them had lost two fingers. Why had they not done business and enjoyed each other for a longer besa?

And then an idea came to Rastem! He struck his hands together and rushed out of the house. ‘Marko!’ he called, tearing at the gate. And Marko met him halfway, under the big olive tree.

‘Look here, Marko,’ said Rastem, ‘why can’t we end this feud, not by shooting each other, but by swearing a besa for the rest of our lives? The old quarrel isn’t our affair, but the besa will be, and we’ve got to keep it. So long as we do, no one can hurt us.’

‘So long as we keep the besa, no one can hurt us,’ repeated Marko slowly. ‘Why, of course! Why did we never think of that, Rastem?’ he cried, excitedly.

Under the olive tree, the two boys clasped hands and swore eternal friendship while far above them two mountain eagles circled slowly on flat wings round the Skanderbeg tower, and through the breaking clouds the Adriatic gleamed like a streak of silver on the horizon.

THE SKANDERBEG JACKET

Five hundred years ago a boy named George Kastriota leaned over the wall of his father’s castle and peered into the depths of the gorge below. He could see a little white goat far down, just above the line of mist that hid the bottom of the chasm. She was cropping the fresh leaves of a bush, which had taken root in a cracked rock. George watched her, fascinated. Would she try to come higher? Yes, she did. At least she raised her head. But when she saw the wall of sheer stone that rose above her, she flicked her tail and bounded downward instead. George laughed, and shouted back to his brothers, who were playing in the courtyard, that not even a goat could scale the walls! There was a merry romping troop of children in the castle. How safe they felt up there under the sky!

Their father was a Prince of the Albanian mountain tribes who call themselves ‘Men of the Eagles.’ His fortress stood on the Rock of Kruja, with the mountain dropping steeply from it. Only on one side a rugged path led up to the gateway. Over this went and came a stream of wiry mountain ponies and their riders, bringing provisions and arms and messages to the inmates of the castle.

Most of them wore short jackets of rough white wool with tight sleeves to the elbow, large white pompons in front of their shoulders, and square collars with fringe, which hung to their waists behind. When it rained heavily, as it often does on the Rock, they drew the heavy collars over their heads, crossing the fringe and holding it firmly between their teeth. This left both hands free for weapons, and weapons were needed in those days. Prince Kastriota was away fighting most of the time, and with him the Men of the Eagles, trying to press back the Turks who more and more were mastering the country.

But the people in the castle felt safe, though they knew there were enemies in the land. George and his brothers and sisters often played at defending the fortress, dropping stones over the wall and listening to hear them thud in the depths, or they amused themselves by looking down on the village people as they gathered around the great ‘Kruja,’ or fountain, with their water pots, and stopped to talk about the army of Turks who were conquering the lowlands.

AN ALBANIAN STORY-TELLER

At one corner of the castle a great tower of white stone stood out against the background of gray rock. This was the watch-tower. From it the young Kastriotas could see clear across Albania, from the sharp mountains, over the hot plain and the steaming marshes to the sea, which seemed to lie forever in sunshine, no matter how dark it might be on the Rock.

Every road and trail was visible from the tower, for the mountains were bare, except where olive groves had been planted just below the castle. For miles around no enemy could approach unseen. Sometimes the watchers saw dark patches moving across the plain, and knew that they were troops of Turkish soldiers.

So things went for years. At last when George was nine years old, a terrible thing happened. The dark patches grew larger and came closer, until the people of the castle, looking anxiously over the wall, could see bands of Turkish cavalry driving the Men of the Eagles before them toward the mountains. On they came, until Prince Kastriota, riding hard with only a handful of men, reached the castle to tell his family that Albania was lost, and that he should have to make such terms as he could with the Turks; it was useless to try to hold the castle against them.

The Sultan agreed to let the Prince go on living in the castle at Kruja, but he would have to give up his four sons as hostages, and the Albanians would have to pay a yearly tribute.

Kastriota took his boys aside and explained to them what it meant to be a hostage; that so long as he, their father, did not rebel against the Sultan, the boys were safe, but if there should be an uprising in Albania they would be put to death; also, that if they did not obey the Sultan and keep faith with him, the Men of the Eagles would be made to suffer. The boys bravely promised to play the game, but it must have been a sad day at Kruja when the Sultan rode away with his young captives.

The boys were treated honorably; they were given fine horses, and perhaps they enjoyed much of the journey, for they were used to hard travel in the saddle, and did not tire easily. Once beyond the barrier of their own mountains, they crossed the great tableland of Macedonia, more open than any country they had known, where firm roads made by the Romans centuries before led past cities and castles, and by beautiful churches and convents built by Bulgarians and Serbs, but now all under the hand of the Turk.

At last they entered Thrace and came to Adrianople, where the Sultan lived—if you wish to look for it on the map you will find it south of Bulgaria. The palace at Adrianople was very different from the castle at Kruja. It stood on the hot plain instead of among the cool mountains, and it was filled with a soft luxury that did not exist in the home on the Rock. It was beautiful with marbles and mosaics, with gardens and fountains. There were rugs and hangings, silks and perfumes such as George had never before known.

George was a kind, brave boy, quick to learn. He won the heart of the Sultan, who was kind to him and brought him up with his own children. He never forgot his parents on the dear Rock, but since he was only nine years old when he was taken as a hostage, he soon lost his homesickness and began to make friends about him. The Sultan gave him a new name, Skanderbeg, from Skander, which means Alexander, because the mother of Alexander the Great had been an Albanian, and beg or prince, because he was of high rank.

So Skanderbeg began his new life. He learned to ride and hunt and fight. When he was eighteen years old the Sultan put him in command of an army and sent him into Asia Minor, which, you will see, is not far from Adrianople.

Perhaps Skanderbeg would always have remained the Sultan’s friend if his brothers had been treated kindly. But when his father, John Kastriota, died, the Sultan poisoned all three of them and annexed Albania to his empire. After that, Skanderbeg went about with an angry heart under his armor, and when the Sultan had a new war on his hands and sent the young captain to fight the Hungarians, he looked for his chance to escape.

He had no quarrel with the Hungarians. All he wanted was to be free; free to go back to his own people, whom he now knew to be unhappy and oppressed. He wanted to escape from the soft life of Adrianople and to be back in Albania among the rocks and the Men of the Eagles in their white jackets, helping them to regain their freedom. In his army there were many Albanians who, like him, had been taken to Turkey as prisoners and made to fight for the Sultan. These men joined Skanderbeg, and together they escaped across Serbia and through the dangerous mountain passes into Albania.

The people came down from the mountains and flocked to Skanderbeg. The Turks were driven out of the country and for twenty-five years—as long as Skanderbeg lived—Albania was free.

So George Kastriota came back to Kruja to be the helper and the hero of his people. When he died the grief of the tribesmen was so great that they dyed their white jackets black, and so they are worn to this day.

You will see the Skanderbeg jacket everywhere in Northern Albania—on the shepherds of the hills; on the men of the many tribes who come riding to market on their wiry ponies, their deep collars drawn over their heads to protect them from rain or sun; and on the metal workers and the farmers of Kruja, who linger about the great fountain which still gushes out from the rock below the ruined castle.

MIRKO AND MARKO

Mirko and Marko were two gay little Montenegrin pigs. They had the freedom of the Ivanovitch kitchen, where they lived in peace and plenty, and as they were plump and handsome, every one admired them. Zorka alone did not think of them in terms of bacon and sausage. To her they were playfellows.

Zorka’s father worked in the sawmill, her grandmother kept the house, and Zorka kept the pigs. The length of their life was one bright summer, spent for the most part with Zorka under spreading beech trees or along roadways thick with tufted clover.

One evening, as they came home through the shady village, an old blind man sat in the square singing as he strummed on a one-stringed fiddle. He was a wandering minstrel or gouslar, and he sang the deeds of heroes and the triumph of courage over loss and suffering.

ZORKA WITH HER PET PIGS

The song was as wild and sad as the hills that are dark with firs, but the villagers crowded about the singer, for they loved the brave tales of their people, who had never lost their strip of bare mountain or their freedom. Zorka tiptoed closer and gazed at the old man. He had only one eye, but that was as keen as a hawk’s. A flat skullcap slanted over his gray hair. He wore a long, dark green coat edged with silver braid, blue knee breeches and a crimson waistcoat, faded but heavy with rich embroidery.

Fascinated, Zorka hovered on the edge of the circle, listening to his shrill chant. The pigs trotted on contentedly toward home.

On the way their greed led them into a wild adventure. A plank bridged the swift mill-race, which skirted the road and led to the watermill on the opposite side.

The pigs had passed this plank every day of their lives, and had always longed to cross it, for they could smell the fresh meal from afar; but if they so much as pointed their greedy, pink noses in that direction someone appeared in the doorway brandishing a stick and Zorka jerked them anxiously back by their tails. Now Zorka was not with them and there was no one in the doorway. It stood open, and the sunlight fell on a silvery heap of meal on the floor under the mill stone. Its fragrance floated to them. Their stiff little hoofs tapped across the gangway and they plunged up to their ears in the soft, delicious mess. Then, as they wallowed blissfully, there came a sudden whack, whack, on their plump backs, and the angry voice of the miller’s wife drowned their terrified squeals. In a cloud of flying meal they scurried back over the plank out of reach of the cudgel, making a bee line for the safety of their own kitchen.

But the miller’s wife had other ways of reaching them than with a stick. She stopped Zorka’s father as he was going home to supper. ‘The next time,’ she cried angrily, ‘I’ll cut their throats and hang their hams in the chimney!’

The threat troubled Zorka’s father, who feared that he might have to pay for the spoiled meal. He went home with a deep frown between his brows. ‘That settles it,’ he said, ‘those pigs must go to market to-morrow. They are as fat as young geese now, and should bring a good price, but another scrape like to-day’s would wipe out all the profit.’

Zorka, crossing the threshold, heard the fatal words, and her heart stood still. The five minutes that she had spent in listening to the gouslar had perhaps cost the lives of her playmates. She took her place at the table speechless with dismay. There was a nice mutton stew, with beans and gravy, but Zorka could swallow hardly a mouthful. Her gaze was fixed on two sleek forms sleeping in the shadow of a bench by the door, their sides rising and falling peacefully.

Her father made plans quickly. He himself could not go to market, for his work at the sawmill kept him, and the grandmother was too old for the hard journey. Zorka’s aunt was going, but she had two donkeys laden with firewood, and a third on which her baby in one saddlebag would balance a young kid and some turnips in the other. She could not be expected to look after two frisky pigs. Zorka must go with her and take Mirko and Marko safely to the market at Podgoritza.

This filled Zorka’s heart with tumult. The journey was an event. She had made it only once in her life, and that once so long ago that she could hardly remember it. The market town lay almost at the other end of Montenegro. It would take two days on foot to reach it. They would have to go down, down from the wooded valley where the village of Kolashin lay, through bare, rocky gorges, crossing and recrossing a wild river many times, with the gray walls of the mountains towering high above them.

There would be many people going from the village, and others would join them on the road, coming from high places in the hills and deep places in the blue valleys. They would eat their meals along the way—meals of leeks and milk-white cheese, with black bread, and sometimes they would stop at a tavern or a friend’s house to drink thick, sweet Turkish coffee from little brass cups.

There would be gossip and music and laughter all the way down to Podgoritza, but Mirko and Marko would not return from the fair. Their blithe life spent in hunting for the best fodder along the brook would be over.

So the next morning big tears stood on Zorka’s cheeks as she tied a yellow handkerchief over her head and bound her sandals. She let Mirko and Marko out of their comfortable pen, fed them an exquisite breakfast of boiled potatoes and milk, then washed and dried them before she joined her Aunt Basilika on the edge of the village. There a group of people were loading their donkeys under the beech trees. As most of the wood for building and burning in Montenegro comes from the Valley of Kolashin and the mountains behind it, many people were carrying firewood or charcoal for sale. Others had potatoes or walnuts, eggs and cheese or great sacks of wool. There were droves of sheep and goats, and a few cows. The cattle had to be driven slowly in order not to run all their fat off before they reached the market.

Mirko and Marko joined the procession in high spirits. The smell of garden stuff and grain was enticing to them, and Zorka had to put them on a string to keep them from racing ahead under the feet of the donkeys. Long after the sun had risen for the rest of the world, the path that the market-goers followed lay in twilight, for eastward the mountains rose in a sheer wall that seemed to touch the sky.

In half an hour they had left the cool, green valley hung like a hammock between wooded mountains, and were winding their way through a stony land where there was no sprig of grass, but where the wild pomegranate bushes springing from crevices splashed their flame-like blossoms over the rocks. The mountain-sides were so steep that no soil clung to them, or if any did the first rushing rain washed it away. Here and there were what are called pot-holes, where long ago some whirling stream had kept a stone spinning round and round until it had ground a hollow in the rock. The stream had dried up or found a new course, but the hollow remained, like a stone bowl. Such soil as caught there was not washed away, as on the slope. People living near such pockets brought baskets and aprons full of earth and made precious little gardens of the hollows. Zorka could look down from the road and count the number of cabbages and potatoes growing in them.

Sometimes the travelers stopped at a spring to rest. Then Zorka would take Mirko and Marko by turns in her lap. The little pigs slept soundly, tired out by the rough trot over a rocky road instead of over the sod that they were used to.

When night came Aunt Basilika knocked at the door of a friend who lived near the road. A woman came out, throwing her arms wide in welcome. She kissed Zorka and Basilika on both cheeks and pulled the baby joyfully from the saddlebag.

There was room for the donkeys and the pigs in the sheepfold, which was a snug cave in the side of the hill. Shepherd boys brought straw and corn and water, and when the beasts were comfortable the family went into the house.

Zorka looked at it in amazement, for it was very different from her own home. That was built of wood with a shingled roof and a border of carving below the eaves. This valley house was of the rough stones of the hillside without mortar or plaster. The thatched roof was held in place by logs and stones. There were no windows and there was no chimney, but the smoke from the hearth, which was in the middle of the floor, found its way through the loose weave of the thatch.

The boys built a wood fire and their mother put over it a pot of soup. They were very poor people, but eager to share everything they had with their friends. They gave them their mattresses, spreading Zorka’s near the fire; they themselves slept on the ground.

The next night the market-goers camped on the edge of the town of Podgoritza. Zorka fell asleep to the stamping and grunting of animals and the jingling of bridles. At dawn every one was up, preparing coffee and putting on holiday clothes. Aunt Basilika took a long black skirt and white linen blouse from her saddlebags. Over them she wore a long sleeveless coat of robin’s-egg blue with a border of pale gold balls. She tied a dark handkerchief over her head, and on it set a tiny skullcap of black silk. Most of the women wore bright blue coats that had been a part of their wedding outfit. Their finery was shabby and faded, for no one had had new clothes since the war. As for the children who had outgrown their good garments, they were dressed for the most part in gunny sacks sewed together with ravelings.

Zorka was better off. She wore a gray homespun dress and had an orange-colored handkerchief over her head, and sandals of cowhide on her feet. The journey from Kolashin had been so gay that she had forgotten the purpose of it. Now it came over her with fright.

Mirko and Marko were restless and hungry. They rooted about, seeking the juicy clover of home in the sparse grass and weeds of the market place. Zorka watched them with an aching heart. If she saw a business-like man approaching, she stood in front of the little pigs to hide them or gathered them into her lap drawing her skirt over their heads, determined not to sell them. But as the day wore on and no one offered a price for them, she grew indignant. Were they not the most beautiful pigs in the market? How could anyone pass them unnoticed?

As evening drew on she began to wonder what her father would say if she had to take Mirko and Marko back with her. She knew that he was counting on the money that they would bring. This was probably the last chance before spring to sell them. How could they be fed during the long winter?

Aunt Basilika had only a few fagots left. When those were sold she would pack her bags with the winter store that she had purchased, and she and Zorka would climb into the wooden saddles and begin the long homeward journey that very night. How would the short fat legs of Mirko and Marko make the uphill grade?

Twilight was already flooding the Plain of Podgoritza when a man rode up looking for firewood. Seeing Basilika’s fagots he went toward her, and then, peering through the dusk, exclaimed, ‘Why, it’s Basilika Ivanova!’

He was an old friend of Zorka’s father, a well-to-do merchant of Podgoritza. ‘And so this is Ivan’s daughter,’ he said, smiling at Zorka; ‘but what fine pigs you have! Are they for sale?’

Zorka began to cry. ‘They’re not just pigs,’ she said. ‘They’re Mirko and Marko, and I don’t want them killed.’

‘Oh, I don’t kill such wee piggies,’ said the merchant. ‘They will grow to be grandfathers if you sell them to me; and I promise you they will live in a fine pen.’

Zorka dried her eyes, and under her breath named the price that her father had told her to ask. The merchant counted out silver and copper coins in her hand. She stowed them carefully away in the pocket of her petticoat, and then going down on her knees she hugged each little pig and kissed him on the top of his silly head before their new owner dropped them into his big saddlebags. They squealed wildly at first, but when Zorka patted them they settled down quietly on the straw with which the bags were lined.

The merchant took an orange and a shilling from his pocket. ‘Zorka Ivanova,’ he said gently, ‘you have taken good care of your pigs, and made them worth a fine price.’ With that he rode off in one direction, and soon Zorka and her aunt had packed their possessions and were turning in the other. Basilika went lightly, having sold her wares, but Zorka climbed the mountain with a pocketful of money, an orange, and a heartache.

TODOR’S BEST CLOTHES

The adventures of Todor began suddenly, one day, when he was going home from school with a strapful of books over his shoulder. He had almost reached home when a dog chasing a white kitten rushed madly from an alley. Instantly Todor swung his load of books into the dog’s face. The kitten escaped up a tree, but the angry dog sprang at Todor tearing his coat and biting his arm. At that moment two men appeared pursuing the dog, one with a pistol. There was a sharp crack and the dog rolled over dead.

‘He was mad!’ cried the frightened men. ‘You’ve no time to lose, Todor.’

They rushed the boy home, and within an hour, dressed in his best clothes, with his arm bandaged, he had boarded an express train for Sofia. His father was with him. In Bulgaria it is the law that when anyone is bitten by a mad dog, he must go straight to the Pasteur Institute in Sofia, for treatment at government expense.

In Sofia, Todor was placed in a cottage near the hospital, where he was to live while he took the treatment. The cottage was kept by a kind woman named Martha, who had two boys of her own, Bogdan and Boris. There Todor’s father left him and went back to his home in Sliven, a town in Eastern Bulgaria.

Then began a strange and exciting life for Todor. Never before had he been out of his home town; and now, except that he had to report every day to the doctor, he had his time to himself and a great city to explore. It was jolly to have Bogdan and Boris to talk things over with in the evening, but they were in school most of the day. So Todor wandered the streets of Sofia alone, amazed at the great buildings and the shop windows full of beautiful things. But sometimes he glanced uneasily at his clothes, for he realized that he was differently dressed from the people about him. Usually, however, he was too much absorbed in what he saw to think much of what he had on. The Sunday suit that he wore was the fashion in Sliven. It had the wide, homespun brown trousers almost like a Dutch boy’s; a close-fitting sleeveless jacket of brocaded silk, in old rose, black and white, with handsome silver buttons; a crimson sash and a jaunty brown woolen cap. When he could find a flower he stuck it in his belt. In Sofia, where the men and boys dress much as they do in America, Todor made a vivid spot of color in the gray streets, and people noticed the fair-haired boy as he wandered about alone. And in the end it was his clothes that helped him most in his adventures.

One day he happened to be passing a schoolhouse just at recess time, and stopped to watch the boys. He would never have dreamed that the great beautiful building was a schoolhouse had it not been for the game of ball that was going on. As he was watching it excitedly, the ball flew over the wall, and Todor, springing into the air, caught it dextrously and hurled it back. A cheer went up from the boys. ‘Come on in and play!’ they cried, for they had seen his bright garments over the wall. But just then the bell rang and the pupils stormed up the steps, Todor with them, for he wanted to see the inside of that fine school building. As the boys slipped into their classrooms, Todor was left alone in the great corridor. He was stealing away shyly when one of the masters caught sight of him.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you are from Sliven! So am I!’ and he invited Todor into his classroom, where the pupils were studying a great raised map of the Balkan Mountains. It was easy to see how they ran across Bulgaria, nearly up to the Danube, and down into Macedonia and Greece. When the master explained that Todor came from Sliven, his own home town, every one wanted to find it on the map. There was the famous Pass of the Wild Rose, too, where the attar of roses is distilled, and where a great battle for Bulgarian freedom was fought; and there was Tirnovo, the old capital of the kingdom. Todor went home much pleased with this, his first adventure.

In the midst of Sofia there is a handsome house with bright awnings and a beautiful lawn. It stands behind walls and large trees, but on one side, in a curve of the street, there is a gate that stands always open, and on each side of it a soldier in a sentry box. Over the gate are the arms of Bulgaria, for the house is the home of Boris, the King.

Todor had a great desire to see the King, and spent hours on the corner opposite the gate, waiting for him to appear, but in vain. One morning he took up his post as usual, and as he did so a young man in gray riding-clothes came down the drive on a bay horse. He was slight and kindly-looking, with a clipped black moustache. As he turned into the street, Todor, bright against the stone wall, caught his eye. He reined in quickly, and as he did so his riding-crop slipped to the ground. Todor sprang forward and handed it up to him. The man smiled pleasantly.

‘Aren’t you a Sliven boy?’ he asked.

‘I am, Sir,’ replied Todor.

‘And what are you doing here?’

‘Waiting to see the King come out, Sir.’

‘Well, I’m the King. Are you satisfied with me?’

‘God keep you, Sir,’ said the lad simply; ‘I had thought to see you more bravely dressed.’

The King laughed. ‘That’s for the men of Sliven,’ he said. Then he leaned down and shook hands with Todor, and was off.

Todor stood rooted to the spot. He had seen the King, and picked up his riding-whip, had talked with him and shaken hands!

That was adventure enough for one day. He spent the afternoon in the vacant lot behind the cottage, telling the boys of the neighborhood about it.

One day, with a feeling of awe, Todor came in sight of a great white church with gilded domes. It was all perfectly new, without a stain of soot or age, and its marble and gold glistened in the sunlight under the hot blue sky. Inside, the walls and ceilings were covered with great paintings and mosaics. Todor tiptoed over the polished marble floors, subdued by the lofty grandeur of the place; yet he did not feel like saying his prayers in it. It was all so new that it seemed to him as though God had not yet got used to it.

On his way home, passing a dusty square, he turned in at a gateway in a wall to see what might be behind it. To his surprise he found himself in a large, quiet courtyard, on one side of which was a tiny low church. It was so low that the roof came down almost to the ground, with only a row of small windows below the eaves. Through a covered porch, steps led downward to the church, which was mostly underground.

Todor knew that it had been built long ago when the Turks had first come into the land and had made it unlawful for Christians to build their churches more than a few feet high. There were churches like that all over Bulgaria. Often, because the people were forbidden to make the exteriors beautiful, they put all the more loving thought inside. So in this little church there were a beautiful screen of carved wood, lovely lamps and soft, faded hangings on the walls. The stones of the floor were worn by the knees of many generations.

The little church was empty now, and dusky in the waning light. Todor, feeling at home there, knelt in a dim corner. An old man came in, moved about and went out shutting the door behind him; but until Todor got up to go, he did not realize that the old man was the sexton, and that he had locked the church for the night and gone home for his supper.

Todor banged loudly and called for help, but there was no reply. He was very near to tears as he went to the end of the porch and crouched there, wondering what he should do. The church was almost dark now, lonely and silent as a tomb. Suddenly a rustle in a red curtain, which hung across a corner, brought his heart into his mouth. He was sure that the curtain shook, and now that he fastened his eyes on it, was there not a bright eye gazing at him through a slit? As he watched breathlessly, a little old man suddenly popped out a bald head.

‘So you got locked in, too?’ he chuckled. He came out and stood before Todor, a dry, wheezy, ragged, old man, the beggar who sat at the church door during the day, asking for alms.

‘How can we get out?’ gasped Todor. ‘Help me!’

‘I don’t want to get out,’ said the beggar. ‘You see, I share the Lord’s House with Him.’ With that he brought out a paper bag, and, settling himself on the flags beside Todor, took out a lump of bread and some cheese.

‘Do you sleep here?’ asked Todor, amazed.

‘Yes, in summer. It is a safe, quiet place; and the Lord, being a good, kind God, does not object. He’s glad to save an old man from the street.’

‘Look here!’ said Todor. ‘Put your hands on your knees and let me get on your shoulder and see if I can open a window.’

The old man did as Todor requested, but the windows were as tight as if they had been soldered, and an iron bar across the middle of each of them would have prevented Todor from squeezing through even if he could have opened them. The church was quite dark now, and after Todor had gone back to the porch disconsolately, the beggar lighted a candle and with a few drops of hot wax sealed it to the floor.

‘Have a pear,’ he said, kindly, wiping one on his dirty sleeve; and Todor, who was thirsty, peeled it carefully with his pocket knife and ate it with relish. The old man then began telling Todor stories of the strange eastern city in which they were staying—stories of refugees and bandits, of their secret meeting-places, and their caves in the mountains, until Todor forgot that he would have to spend the night on the cold stones. But as they were talking there came the shuffle of feet on the steps outside, and the murmur of voices.

In a flash the beggar knocked over the candle. ‘Don’t tell on me, don’t tell on me!’ he squeaked, as he flew to the curtain.

But Todor was already shaking the door. ‘Let me out!’ he cried. When the door swung open, there stood Martha and Bogdan, under the light of the sexton’s lantern.

TODOR AND THE SQUASHES

How had they known where to look for him? It was because a policeman on duty had noticed Todor’s gay costume as he turned in at the church that evening. So, when Martha sent in an alarm, the policeman told her to go first to the sexton.

As they went home through the hot, dusty night, Todor was careful to say nothing about the beggar, for he was sure that the old man would be turned out if it were known that he slept in the church.

Todor was so grateful to Martha for coming after him that next morning he said, ‘Let me go to the market for you to-day. What do you need?’

‘Get me a basket of peppers,’ said Martha, ‘and a good pink squash—I will bake it for you boys for supper.’

Todor knew how to select a squash, for he grew squashes himself. While he was choosing one, an artist passed through the market.

‘What a picture!’ she cried, as she saw Todor in his rich costume.

Then, because she did not speak Bulgarian, she found an interpreter to ask Todor to sit for his picture in a near-by garden; and Todor, who by this time expected something new to happen every day, sent his basket of peppers home by another boy, and tucking the pink squash under his arm, set off willingly, wondering what this new adventure would be like.

By means of signs and a word or two, the artist made Todor understand that she wished him to pose as if he were selecting a squash as he had done in the market. But that was not Todor’s idea of a portrait. When persons had their pictures taken, they sat down and looked properly dignified. He was willing to sit against the wall and hold the squash in his lap, though to his mind a squash had no place in a picture. But that is how the artist finally drew him. And what did Todor care when he saw the five lev piece in his hand at the end of the sitting?

With a bright smile of thanks he raced off to buy something to take to his mother when he should go back to Sliven.

And now, if Todor could see himself in an American book, he would probably think it the greatest adventure of all.

KOSSOVO DAY

It was Kossovo Day, the 28th of June. Since sunrise people had been dancing the kola. Round and round they went, holding one another’s hands high in the air and stepping backward and forward with a swaying movement, as they turned in a great circle to the sound of a drum and a fiddle.

Any one could take part in the kola when he liked. He had only to break into the ring, seize the hands of those next to him, and fall into step; or if he had gone round until he was dizzy, he could drop out as suddenly as he pleased, and fling himself on the grass to watch the fun.

From every little hamlet in the hills the people had come in their best clothes, bringing baskets of cherries or cheese or mushrooms to sell in the town; so there were always new ones to take part when the others were tired.

Peter and Pavlo had started early, in fresh white linen suits, with gay girdles. Between them they carried a great basket of cherries slung on a pole. The money from the sale of the cherries they must take home, but their grandmother had given them each two groschen to spend on sweets.

First, however, they went to the schoolhouse, where the children were assembled to march in procession to the church. Mary was there too. She had managed to come, although she had had to bring the baby with her. Mary’s parents were Serbian, but she had been born in America and had gone to school there until she was ten years old. That was nearly a year ago. Then her father had brought the family back to his Serbian home to see his old mother. She had written to him in his American home: ‘The war is over. I live alone. Before I die, bring the wife and child, whom I have never seen,’ and she had sent money for the passage. So Mary’s father had taken her mother and her across the sea. There was no little brother then. He was born soon afterwards, and not many months later Mary’s grandmother had died, and left the cottage and the fruit orchard to her son. Now it seemed as if they might stay in Serbia.

PETER AND PAVLO

Mary was not happy. She was homesick for her friends and her school life in Ohio, where she had always lived. Gutcha, her Serbian home, was a little mountain village where every one led a simple, out-door life, raising cattle and sheep and enough corn to make bread for the family. The house in which Mary lived was better than most, for it had a roof of tiles instead of thatch; the floors were of wood, and there was a built-in stove of brick and cement. But in Ohio Mary had lived in a flat with a bathroom, an ice-box and a gas stove in the kitchen. All those comforts she missed, and it often seemed to her that they did things in a poor way in Serbia. Most of all she missed Mamie Barnes. She and Mamie had begun life together in Kindergarten, and had been in the same class ever since. Here in Gutcha Mary did not go to school regularly, because of the baby. She adored him and had almost sole care of him, but that care kept her out of school.

The girls in Gutcha were shy and gentle, and stood in awe of Mary because of her fine clothes and because she spoke English. She was the only girl in Gutcha who did not own a distaff and knitting needles. All the others spent most of their time on the hillsides with the sheep, spinning and knitting the wool into stockings. They grew quiet and dreamy, and did not play in the romping way that had made life a joy in America. Mary liked the boys better. They were ready for fun, and they were not so rough and teasing as American boys. Besides, they honestly admired her.

Mary made herself ready for the Kossovo celebration with great care. She had heard that it was the Serbian Fourth of July and she hoped that there might be firecrackers and ice cream. She put on her white dress with embroidered ruffles, which had been bought in a department store in America, and which her mother had let down. She tied one big bow in her blue sash, topped her dark curls with another, and put on her white straw hat. She wore long white stockings and white shoes, and looked like any little American girl who was going to Sunday School. She had put a clean slip on the baby, and brown sandals with his white socks.

In the school yard Mary waited with the other children. The crowd of little girls smiled at her but stood apart, abashed by her elegance. They did not know how sweet they themselves looked under their pale yellow kerchiefs, in their beautiful homespun linen chemises embroidered on sleeves and front, their heavy skirts and silk aprons, all of such good stuff that only people of wealth could have bought them in America. They looked upon Mary as a princess, in her store-made clothes; but in reality she was a lonely little girl, longing to be friends and not knowing why the other girls did not like her. She felt that somehow she was different.

‘Hello!’ cried Peter, briskly, bursting in upon the girls, and Mary in her heart blessed him for it. The church bell was ringing now; or rather, since the bell had been carried off during the war, the priest came to the church door and banged on a pan with a great key, which did just as well. The church was so full that none of the children could set foot in it, but they all stood in a line on the grass, and caught the gleam of the women’s yellow handkerchiefs and the music of strong voices. After that they were free to go where they would and see the fun.

Mary put the baby on the grass and joined the dancers. She liked the plaintive Serbian music; but she felt that it was sad, and she longed for something rollicking and gay. How she had loved to spin about on the sidewalk with Mamie, to the rattle of a hurdy-gurdy!

She soon dropped out from the ring and sat down with a group of girls to listen to an old man who was singing and playing the gousle. The gousle is an instrument like a one-stringed fiddle. It has but a few notes and those are mournful, but when it is well played, to the airs of the old Serbian songs, there is something stirring and heart-searching in it. Mary felt it without being able to explain it to herself. She was fascinated and troubled, for though she could not understand all that the old man sang, it seemed to her to be the tale of a great disaster connected with the Plain of Kossovo.

‘What is Kossovo?’ she asked the girls about her. Eagerly they explained, ‘It was a great battle with the Turks, in which the Serbs were beaten.’

‘Did you say beaten?’ exclaimed Mary, shocked.