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 morning, glimpses of meadows, covered with a fragrant carpet of flowers untrodden by the foot of man.  The pathway at one time lost itself in the depth of the thicket; at another, crept forth upon the edge of the rock, below which gleamed and murmured a rivulet, now foaming over the stones, then again slumbering on its rocky bed, under the shade of the barberry and the eglantine.  Pheasants, sparkling with their rainbow tails, flitted from shrub to shrub; flights of wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes in an horizontal troop, sometimes like a column, rising to the sky; and sunset flooded all with its airy purple, and light mists began to rise from the narrow gorges:  every thing breathed the freshness of evening.  Our travellers were now near the village of Aki, and separated only by a hill from Khounzakh.  A low crest alone divided them from that village, when the report of a gun resounded from the mountain, and, like an ominous signal, was repeated by the echoes of the cliffs.  The travellers halted irresolute:  the echoes by degrees sank into stillness.  “Our hunters!” cried Sultan Akhmet Khan, wiping the sweat from his face:  “they expect me not, and think not to meet me here!  Many tears of joy, and many of sorrow, do I bear to Khounzakh!” Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in the face of Akhmet Khan.  Vividly does every soft and every savage sentiment play on the features of the Asiatic.