But after a bottle of the Chief's light wine--a dozen of which would not have turned a British hair--I had the presence of mind to fill my pipe and pouch with some very fair tobacco of the mountains, and to follow him over a clever little bridge of his own construction into the heart of the grey old wood. There we sat upon a mossy log, and he poured out his story, while the sunshine came in slants sometimes, and I wished there had been more of it. I cannot repeat Sûr Imar's tale with any of his self-commanding strength, much less convey the light and shade of a voice alive with memory of whatever the soul has suffered. However, to the best of my belief, the import of his words is here. Feebly, but never falsely, have I set down his remembrances. Only his foreign turns of language have escaped my memory; and he must tell what he has to tell like an ordinary Englishman. Which means without long words, whenever short ones serve the turn as well. CHAPTER XXII IMAR'S TALE--WAR "That which I have always admired in your nation, and that which has made you what you are, under the guidance of the Lord, is your natural gift of self-command. The race to which I belong has always been very scant of that great quality; and this fault has been from age to age the cause of misery and conflict. Not that we are by any means so turbulent and vindictive as other tribes around us; for we almost alone are guided, when in our proper state of mind, by any sense of Christianity; most of the others who call themselves of that creed, such as the Ossets, Imeritians, and barbarous Suans, have made a strange jumble of the true faith with Mohammedanism, paganism, and even stark idolatry. But the Lesghians, with whom we have most to do, and who claim us as of their affinity, still are of Islam, and mainly of that bigoted and aggressive form of it which is known as Muridism. Even so, they are nobler, braver, more patriotic, and loyal to their chiefs, as well as of finer presence, and greater activity and industry than most of their neighbours on the west and south, who suppose themselves to be Christians. "My father, Sûr Dadian, as hereditary Chief of the Kheusurs--a tribe now dwindled from its former strength--commanded for many years their division in the army of the gallant Shamyl. Our people did not share of course that fury of Islam, and blaze of the crescent, which scorched the Russians by the thousand out of the dark ravines of Daghestan. Nevertheless we stood up for ourselves, with the muzzle of a gun at every elbow of the rocks; and if all the sons of Islam had been as faithful to their great Imaum, as the Cross was, the Russian flag would never have waved over Guinib, in Shamyl's lifetime.