casia as a newspaper correspondent. As you know, I
often wrote articles for some of the more precious papers when at
college. Well, one of them sent me out to travel through the disturbed
Kurdish districts. I had a tough time from the start. I was out with a
Cossack party in Thai Aras valley, east of Erivan, for six months, and
wrote lots of articles which created a good deal of sensation here in
England. You may have seen them, but they were anonymous. The life of
excitement, sometimes fighting and at others in ambush in the mountains,
suited me admirably, for I'm a born adventurer, I believe. One day,
however, a strange thing happened. I was riding along alone through one
of the mountain passes towards the Caspian when I discovered three wild,
fierce-looking Kurds maltreating a girl, believing her to be a Russian.
I called upon them to release her, for she was little more than a child;
and, as they did not, I shot two of the men. The third shot and plugged
me rather badly in the leg; but I had the satisfaction that my shots
attracted my Cossack companions, who, coming quickly on the spot, killed
all three of the girl's assailants, and released her."

"By Jove!" laughed Murie. "Was she pretty?"

"Not extraordinarily--a fair-haired girl of about fifteen, dressed in
European clothes. I fainted from loss of blood, and don't remember
anything else until I found myself in a tent, with two Cossacks patching
up my wound. When I came to, she rushed forward, and thanked me
profusely for saving her. To my surprise, she spoke in French, and on
inquiry I found that she was the daughter of a certain Baron Conrad de
Hetzendorf, an Austrian, who possessed a house in Budapest and a chateau
at Semlin, in South Hungary. She told us a curious story. Her father had
some business in Transcaucasia, and she had induced him to take her with
him on his journey. Only certain districts of the country were
disturbed; and apparently, with their guide and escort, they had
unwittingly entered the Aras region--one of the most lawless of them
all--in ignorance of what was in progress. She and her father,
accompanied by a guide and four Cossacks, had been riding along when
they met a party of Kurds, who had attacked them. Both father and
daughter had been seized, whereupon she had lost consciousness from
fright, and when she came to again found that the four Cossacks had been
killed, her father had been taken off, and she was alone in the brutal
hands