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Count von Hern was watching you to-night at the Bridge Club. He has gone home; he is waiting now to receive you. Apart from that, the man Nisch, with whom you have played so much, is a confederate of his, a political tout, not to say a spy." "The brute!" Prince Albert muttered. "I am obliged to you, Baron, for having warned me," he added, rising slowly to his feet. "I shall sign nothing.
The country which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes, and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks should be driven out by violence.
This Nisch interrogator is a Hebrew commercial traveller, who has a smattering of English, and who after ascertaining during a short conversation that, when a range of mountains or any other small obstruction is encountered, I get down and push the bicycle up, airs his knowledge of English and of 'cycling to the extent of inquiring whether I don't take a man along to push it up the hills!
The roads to-day average even better than yesterday, and at six o'clock we roll into Nisch, one hundred and twenty kilometres from our starting-point this morning, and two hundred and eighty from Belgrade.
An avenue of thrifty prune-trees shades a level road leading out of Nisch for several kilometres, but a heavy thunder-storm during the night has made it rather slavish wheeling, although the surface becomes harder and smoother, also hillier, as we gradually approach the Balkan Mountains, that tower well up toward cloudland immediately ahead.
A few miles wheeling over very fair roads, next morning, brings me into Adrianople, where, at the Hotel Constantinople, I obtain an excellent breakfast of roast lamb, this being the only well-cooked piece of meat I have eaten since leaving Nisch.
It is much to the credit of the Servians that when they took Nisch in 1877 they wreaked no vengeance on the Mussulman population, but simply compelled them to give up their arms, and informed them that they could return to their labors.
Flowers, too, are here at our feet in abundance, forget-me-nots and other familiar varieties. The view from our position is remarkably fine, reminding me forcibly of the Balkans south of Nisch, and of the Californian slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, where they overlook the Sacramento Valley. The Asterabad Plain is spread out below us like a vast map.
A rain-storm is hovering threateningly over the mountains immediately ahead, but it does not reach the vicinity I am traversing: it passes to the southward, and makes the roads for a number of miles wellnigh impassable. Up in the mountains I meet more than one " Bulgarian national express " pony pack- trains, carrying merchandise to and fro between Sofia and Nisch.
Riding out of Nisch this morning we stop just beyond the suburbs to take a curious look at a grim monument of Turkish prowess, in the shape of a square stone structure which the Turks built in 1840, and then faced the whole exterior with grinning rows of Servian skulls partially embedded in mortar.
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