ther can,
nor ought to live."

"You ought _not_ to talk such nonsense, dear Ammalat:--and nothing but
fever can excuse you. We are created that we may live longer than our
fathers. For wives, if one has not teazed you enough, we will find you
three more. If you love not the Shamkhal, yet love your own
inheritance--you ought to live, if but for that; since to a dead man
power is useless, and victory impossible. Revenge on the Russians is a
holy duty: live, if but for that. That we are beaten, is no novelty for
a warrior; to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls to us. Allah gives
fortune; but a man creates his own glory, not by fortune, but by
firmness. Take courage, my friend Ammalat.... You are wounded and weak;
I am strong from habit, and not fatigued by flight. Mount! and we may
yet live to beat the Russians."

The colour returned to Ammalat's face ... "Yes, I will live for
revenge!" he cried: "for revenge both secret and open. Believe me,
Sultan Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I accept your generosity!
Henceforth I am yours; I swear by the graves of my fathers.... I am
yours! Guide my steps, direct the strokes of my arm; and if ever,
drowned in softness, I forget my oath, remind me of this moment, of this
mountain peak: Ammalat Bek will awake, and his dagger will be
lightning!"

The Khan embraced him, as he lifted the excited youth into the saddle.
"Now I behold in you the pure blood of the Emirs!" said he: "the burning
blood of their children, which flows in our veins like the sulphur in
the entrails of the rocks, which, ever and anon inflaming, shakes and
topples down the crags." Steadying with one hand the wounded man in the
saddle, the Khan began cautiously to descend the rugged croft.
Occasionally the stones fell rattling from under their feet, or the
horse slid downward over the smooth granite, so that they were well
pleased to reach the mossy slopes. By degrees, creeping plants began to
appear, spreading their green sheets; and, waving from the crevices like
fans, they hung down in long ringlets like ribbons or flags. At length
they reached a thick wood of nut-trees; then came the oak, the wild
cherry, and, lower still, the tchinar,[41] and the tchindar. The
variety, the wealth of vegetation, and the majestic silence of the
umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary adoration of the wild
strength of nature. Ever and anon, from the midnight darkness of the
boughs, there dawned, like the morni