Night was falling in the leafless beech forest which covered a spur of the Balkans. There was a thin sprinkling of snow on the rocky ground, but it was frozen hard, and showed no trace of the leather moccasins of the two men who were climbing the slope. Both wore unobtrusive uniforms of dull grey, almost concealed by huge brown greatcoats with hoods, and carried rifles slung across their backs; but while one was a stolid peasant, the other had a keen intellectual face, not devoid of a certain tincture of what may without offence be termed “slimness.” It was a face familiar to many Emathian mountaineers, and to a few startled Roumis, as that of Lazar Nilischeff, a prominent leader of revolt.

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