ily, she
directed her attention to the exterior. Renouncing all the habit of her
sex, she abandoned the veil and the distaff, and took up arms, under
pretext of maintaining the rights of her children. She collected round
her her husband's old partisans, whom she attached to her service, some
by presents, others by various favours, and she gradually enlisted all
the lawless and adventurous men in Toscaria. With their aid, she
made herself all powerful in Tepelen, and inflicted the most rigorous
persecutions on such as remained hostile to her.

But the inhabitants of the two adjacent villages of Kormovo and Kardiki,
fearing lest this terrible woman, aided by her son, now grown into a
man, should strike a blow against their independence, made a secret
alliance against her, with the object of putting her out of the way the
first convenient opportunity. Learning one day that Ali had started on a
distant expedition with his best soldiers; they surprised Tepelen
under cover of night, and carried off Kamco and her daughter Chainitza
captives to Kardiki. It was proposed to put them to death; and
sufficient evidence to justify their execution was not wanting, but
their beauty saved their lives; their captors preferred to revenge
themselves by licentiousness rather than by murder. Shut up all day in
prison, they only emerged at night to pass into the arms of the men who
had won them by lot the previous morning. This state of things lasted
for a month, at the end of which a Greek of Argyro-Castron, named G.
Malicovo, moved by compassion for their horrible fate, ransomed them for
twenty thousand piastres, and took them back to Tepelen.

Ali had just returned. He was accosted by his mother and sister, pale
with fatigue, shame, and rage. They told him what had taken place, with
cries and tears, and Kamco added, fixing her distracted eyes upon him,
"My son! my son! my soul will enjoy no peace till Kormovo and Kardiki
destroyed by thy scimitar, will no longer exist to bear witness to my
dishonour."

Ali, in whom this sight and this story had aroused sanguinary passions,
promised a vengeance proportioned to the outrage, and worked with all
his might to place himself in a position to keep his word. A worthy son
of his father, he had commenced life in the fashion of the heroes of
ancient Greece, stealing sheep and goats, and from the age of fourteen
years he had acquired an equal reputation to that earned by the son of
Jupiter and Maia.