"Take care you be not mistaken, Colonel. Ammalát is, after all, an Asiatic; and that name is always a proof. Here words hide thoughts--the face, the soul. Look at one of them--he seems innocence itself; have any thing to do with him, he is an abyss of meanness, treachery and ferocity." "You have a full right to think so, my dear Captain, from experience: Sultan Akhmet Khan gave you a memorable proof in Ammalát's house, at Bouináki. But for me, I have no reason to suspect any mischief in Ammalát; and besides, what would he gain by murdering me? On me depends all his hope, all his happiness. He is wild, perhaps, but not a madman. Besides, you see the sun is high; and I am alive and well. I am grateful, Captain, for the interest you have taken in me; but I entreat you, do not suspect Ammalát: and, knowing how much I prize an old friendship, be assured that I shall as highly value a new one. Order them to beat the march." The captain departed, gloomily shaking his head. The drums rattled, and the detachment, in marching order, moved on from its night-quarters. The morning was fresh and bright; the road lay through the green ramparts of the mountains of the Caucasus, crowned here and there with forests and underwood. The detachment, like a stream of steel, flowed now down the hills, and now crept up the declivities. The mist still rested on the valleys, and Verkhóffsky, riding to the elevated points, looked round frequently to feast his eyes with the ever-changing landscape. Descending the mountain, the detachment seemed to be swallowed up in the steaming river, like the army of Pharaoh, and anon, with a dull sound, the bayonets glittered again from the misty waves. Then appeared heads, shoulders; the men seemed to grow up, and then leaping up the rocks, were lost anew in the fog. Ammalát, pale and stern, rode next to the sharpshooters. It appeared that he wished to deafen his conscience in the noise of the drums. The colonel called him to his side, and said kindly: "You must be scolded, Ammalát; you have begun to follow too closely the precepts of Hafiz: recollect that wine is a good servant but a bad master: but a headache and the bile expressed in your face, will surely do you more good than a lecture. You have passed a stormy night, Ammalát." "A stormy, a torturing night, Colonel! God grant that such a night be the last! I dreamed dreadful things." "Aha, my friend! You see what it is to transgress Mahomet's commandments. The conscience of the true believer torments you like a shadow." "It is well for him whose conscience quarrels only with wine."