we came upon further traces of them,--
several fires where they had stopped to cook some food. As the sky was
clear, we pushed on all that night.

Shortly after dawn we reached a sequestered dell. The road being curved
at the place, we came on it suddenly, and here, under the bushes, we
discovered the lair of the Bashi-Bazouks.

They kept no guard, apparently, but the sound of our approach had roused
them, for, as we galloped into the dell, some were seen running to catch
their horses, others, scarcely awake, were wildly buckling on their
swords, while a few were creeping from under the low booths of brushwood
they had set up to shelter them.

The scene that followed was brief but terrible. Our men, some of whom
were lancers, some dragoons, charged them in all directions with yells
of execration. Here I saw one wretch thrust through with a lance,
doubling backward in his death-agony as he fell; there, another turned
fiercely, and fired his pistol full at the dragoon who charged him, but
missed, and was cleft next moment to the chin. In another place a
wretched man had dropped on his knees, and, while in a supplicating
attitude, was run through the neck by a lancer. But, to say truth,
little quarter was asked by these Bashi-Bazouks, and none was granted.
They fought on foot, fiercely, with spear and pistol and short sword.
It seemed to me as if some of my conceptions of hell were being
realised: rapid shots; fire and smoke; imprecations, shouts, and yells,
with looks of fiercest passion and deadly hate; shrieks of mortal pain;
blood spouting in thick fountains from sudden wounds; men lying in
horrible, almost grotesque, contortions, or writhing on the ground in
throes of agony.

"O God!" thought I, "and all this is done for the amelioration of the
condition of the Christians in Turkey!"

"Ha! ha-a!" shouted a voice near me, as if in mockery of my thought. It
was more like that of a fiend than a man. I turned quickly. It was
Andre Yanovitch, his young and handsome face distorted with a look of
furious triumph as he wiped his bloody sword after killing the last of
the Bashi-Bazouks who had failed to escape into the neighbouring woods.
"_These_ brutes at least won't have another chance of drawing blood from
women and children," he cried, sheathing his sword with a clang, and
trotting towards his comrades, who were already mustering at the bottom
of the dell, the skirmish being over.

The smooth-faced, tende