It was a vendetta. A man had been missing overnight,
and this morning his brother who had been prowling and searching
with some dogs had found him, or rather his head. It was on this
side of the ravine, thrown over from the other bank on which the
body sprawled stiffly, wet through, and now growing visible in the
gathering daylight. Yes--the voice was the man's wife. It was
raining hard. . . . There would be shrieking for nine days. Yes,
nine days. Confirmation with the fingers when Benham still fought
against the facts. Her friends and relatives would come and shriek
too. Two of the dead man's aunts were among the best keeners in the
whole land. They could keen marvellously. It was raining too hard
to go on. . . . The road would be impossible in rain. . . . Yes it
was very melancholy. Her house was close at hand. Perhaps twenty
or thirty women would join her. It was impossible to go on until it
had stopped raining. It would be tiresome, but what could one do? . . .
7
As they sat upon the parapet of a broken bridge on the road between
Elbassan and Ochrida Benham was moved to a dissertation upon the
condition of Albania and the politics of the Balkan peninsula.
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