What right had I to be out of breath, after standing stock-still no one knows how long, like a cardboard dummy to be shot at? But there seemed to be a hollow where my heart in its duty should have been staunch and steadfast; and my brain (having never been wrought up like this) must have lost its true balance and standard. Otherwise could it have shocked me to know that a career of cruelty and wickedness was brought to an ignominious close?

"Marva is dead," I kept on saying; "the greatest woman of the age is dead! Not the best, not the purest, not even a true woman. But how grand was her attitude, and how she disdained me! And now a wretched SvÂn has shot her!"

Let any one despise me as he likes, with reason on his tongue and humanity in his eyes. For the world at large it might be better to have such a woman stretched beneath the turf; but a man with his heart in the right place—which the muzzle of her musket knew too well—could not help feeling for her grandeur.

However, it was not for me to lay down the law, or even to stand up for it against this crew of savages. To keep out of their way was my one desire, and at first there seemed to be some chance of it, with their leader a corpse, and superstition frowning at them from the dungeon-gate. Hoping thus, I stood back in a niche of granite, while a bullet or two sang along the vault, and I strove to recover the spirit of a man, by thinking of my country and the luck we have in turning the corner of situations, where others would lie down and breathe their last.

The bar to which SÛr Imar had been bound was still in place; but he was not in sight, neither could I see his son, the gentle youth sent to assassinate him. Then I heard the sound of heavy blows, and concluded that the younger man was striving to release his sister, while the father lay half-conscious still from brutal cruelty and want of food. There was none but myself to guard the entrance—for Usi and Nickols had not appeared—until our friends at the valley's mouth should have time to come to the rescue.

Glad was I to think, as I did at first, that the savage warriors, scared and puzzled, and without a leader, would now hang back; as they had done when the Lesghian chief brought their Prince Rakhan to account. And so it would have been, by their own confession, but for the ferocity of one young man, Karkok the brother of Lura, and the chief friend of that Hisar whom I had struck down. Karkok cannot have been stirred up by love, or loyalty, or any other noble motive,—for who could have regretted Hisar?—but by ambition of the meanest sort, and a dash at the mastery of the tribe, for he was now the last relative of Rakhan.

This upstart fellow brought the fighting men together; and they laid aside the bodies of Queen Marva and her son, in fear of their being trampled on; and then (with a screech that must have set all the teeth of the flintiest echo aching) at the prison-gate they rushed, and the valves being back there was only my poor body between them and the helpless inmates.

When I saw those fellows advancing upon me, capering, and flinging hairy arms about, and tossing white sheepskins, and flourishing long muskets, beyond any denial I was frightened, and would have given every penny I was worth to be in my own little saddle-room once more. My hand shook so badly that the blue revolver revolved without any mechanism; and the prudence which has been implanted in us all suggested that the bravest man must value his own bacon. When a friend assures me that I was gloriously brave, it would be a rude thing to contradict him; but what a different tale my conscience tells!

In a word, just presence of mind enough was left me to show that I must fight it out. To make a bolt of it was useless, for whither could I go? Anywhere across the cave would bring a bullet into me; and as for slinking along the dark wall, where would that take me, even if I could contrive it? Into the very arms of Dariel,—a truly sweet refuge, but not for a coward. All I could do was to say to myself that the lines were hard, but the Lord had made them so, and I must trust in Him to deliver me.

Whether it were faith, or sense of justice, or the love of woman, or something far lower than any of these, the brute element inborn in the sons of men,—no sooner did I see hateful eyes agoggle with lust for blood glaring at me, and great mouths agrin for a grab at me, than the like spirit kindled in myself.

"Blood you shall have, but it shall be your own first," I shouted in English, and leaped at them from the mouth of the cave, like the demon of Kazbek. They took me for that great power, and fell back, while a ball slit the tip of my ear off, and before they could rally there were two as dead as stones with bullets in their heads, and two more fell upon them with their skulls cracked by the swing of my toorak. "Want any more?" I asked, having two charges left, and many of them showed the better part of valour. But a kinjal was thrown at me down a lane of cowards, and stuck in my breast, and that rallied the crowd. Three or four made at me from behind, and I know not how it was, but down I went from a terrible whack on the back of my head, at the very same moment that I shot their new chief.

A very lucky shot, and one that governed all the issue. But of that I knew nothing until weeks had passed, my latest sense being of a white flash across me, and a plunge into a bottomless abyss of some one, who might be anybody. "There let him lay," as a great poet says—and never would he have stood up again, if his skull had been of Norman growth.

But a mighty champion just in time had rushed into the thick of it, and scattered a storm of sword-flash, as the lightning fires a forest. Two ruffians, poised for the final stab at my defenceless body, swung backward with their arms chopped off, and the blade that should have drained SÛr Imar's blood revelled in the gore of his enemies. For the fury of the mild and gentle "Hafer" (now that he had learned his wrongs and guessed his father's) swooped on those sheep-clad fiends, as a whirlwind leaps upon a drying-ground of tallow candles. Would that I had only kept sufficient sense to see, for they tell me that it was magnificent. Heads that are full of hate should have some of it let out, and several of the worst were stopped for ever from receiving any more misanthropy. All who knew anything about it said that Rakhabat himself, the worst man-hater of all the demons of Kazbek, was seen to come down with the wings of a black eagle, and enter the vesture of the white "Lamb-angel." That was the Osset name for this poor Prince; and now having broken bounds, he proved the irony of his claim to it. For soon the chief-justice of the court went down, and so did the foreman of the jury, and a pair of clerks who sought nothing but their living, and others who had come to see things out without any view to their own exit. Among them raged "Hafer," like Hector of Troy, with twenty years, and more than that, of goodness to let out; and no man could shoot straight at him, because he was in the right, while all their guns were crooked.

Nevertheless the force of numbers must have been too great for him,—for the conscience of Ossets still requires to be formed,—but for the rapid and resistless charge of Stepan and Strogue, and the Lesghians, and the miners, down the long valley, and over the moss reeking already with more blood than it could staunch. At the same moment Usi, the SvÂn, and Jack Nickols, who had been hampered by some tangle of the rope, shouting to their comrades, fell in upon the flank; and the noble tribe of Ossets, or at any rate that branch of it, split up and fell asunder like an unroped fagot. There can be no certainty of justice in this world; but even the races connected with them by the tenderest ties of co-robbery found it in their hearts, when the facts could not be altered, to pronounce the only verdict—"Served them right."