RUPERT’S JOURNAL—Continued.

May 4, 1907.

There is evidently something up in the country.  The mountaineers are more uneasy than they have been as yet.  There is constant going to and fro amongst them, mostly at night and in the grey of the morning.  I spend many hours in my room in the eastern tower, from which I can watch the woods, and gather from signs the passing to and fro.  But with all this activity no one has said to me a word on the subject.  It is undoubtedly a disappointment to me.  I had hoped that the mountaineers had come to trust me; that gathering at which they wanted to fire their guns for me gave me strong hopes.  But now it is apparent that they do not trust me in full—as yet, at all events.  Well, I must not complain.  It is all only right and just.  As yet I have done nothing to prove to them the love and devotion that I feel to the country.  I know that such individuals as I have met trust me, and I believe like me.  But the trust of a nation is different.  That has to be won and tested; he who would win it must justify, and in a way that only troublous times can allow.  No nation will—can—give full meed of honour to a stranger in times of peace.  Why should it?  I must not forget that I am here a stranger in the land, and that to the great mass of people even my name is unknown.  Perhaps they will know me better when Rooke comes back with that store of arms and ammunition that he has bought, and the little warship he has got from South America.  When they see that I hand over the whole lot to the nation without a string on them, they may begin to believe.  In the meantime all I can do is to wait.  It will all come right in time, I have no doubt.  And if it doesn’t come right, well, we can only die once!

Is that so?  What about my Lady of the Shroud?  I must not think of that or of her in this gallery.  Love and war are separate, and may not mix—cannot mix, if it comes to that.  I must be wise in the matter; and if I have got the hump in any degree whatever, must not show it.

But one thing is certain: something is up, and it must be the Turks.  From what the Vladika said at that meeting they have some intention of an attack on the Blue Mountains.  If that be so, we must be ready; and perhaps I can help there.  The forces must be organized; we must have some method of communication.  In this country, where are neither roads nor railways nor telegraphs, we must establish a signalling system of some sort.  That I can begin at once.  I can make a code, or adapt one that I have used elsewhere already.  I shall rig up a semaphore on the top of the Castle which can be seen for an enormous distance around.  I shall train a number of men to be facile in signalling.  And then, should need come, I may be able to show the mountaineers that I am fit to live in their hearts . . .

And all this work may prove an anodyne to pain of another kind.  It will help, at any rate, to keep my mind occupied whilst I am waiting for another visit from my Lady of the Shroud.