After eating a supper brought from the convent, and some potatoes, the only provision, except a little coarse maize bread which the house afforded, we went to bed.

The bedstead was abundantly provided with straw, but nought beside, and the fleas routed me from my first sleep and compelled me to evacuate the premises.

I took my mattress and went out where my pony was picketed, and, spreading it in his lee, to break the cold north wind fresh from the mountain, I tried to sleep.
The poor horse had supped miserably; a little barley from the convent and some musty hay furnished by the woman of the house, but which even in his hunger he refused to eat, left him ill-compensated for a hard day's walk, and he turned his head to me now and then with a coaxing whinney which was as plain a supplication for something to eat as I could have made myself, but the only effect of which was to break my doze as soon as begun, until I lost my patience with him, and gave him a sound box on the ear, when he turned his head from me, and lay down again.

It made my heart ache to be unkind to him, for he was the gentlest and most serviceable friend I had in Montenegro, but I could get nothing to give him if I had paid a guinea the pound for it, and he would not let me sleep.

The intelligent brute felt what language could not tell him, and ceased his complaint, though the blow I gave him would hardly have killed a gad-fly on his hair; but it sufficed, and gave me more discomfort than him, for I did not cease to reproach myself for the ungrateful return for his fidelity.