It was well known that they were already only suspending hostilities until a fitting opportunity should arise.

Their desire for aggression had become acute after the refusal of the nation, and of the girl herself, that she should become a wife of the Sultan.
The dead girl had been buried in the Crypt of the church of St.Sava, and day after day and night after night, singly and in parties, the sorrowing mountaineers had come to pay devotion and reverence at her tomb.

So many had wished to have a last glimpse of her face that the Vladika had, with my own consent as Archbishop, arranged for a glass cover to be put over the stone coffin wherein her body lay.
After a little time, however, there came a belief to all concerned in the guarding of the body--these, of course, being the priests of various degrees of dignity appointed to the task--that the Voivodin was not really dead, but only in a strangely-prolonged trance.
Thereupon a new complication arose.

Our mountaineers are, as perhaps you know, by nature deeply suspicious--a characteristic of all brave and self-sacrificing people who are jealous of their noble heritage.
Having, as they believed, seen the girl dead, they might not be willing to accept the fact of her being alive.

They might even imagine that there was on foot some deep, dark plot which was, or might be, a menace, now or hereafter, to their independence.