"This I signed with some hope of better feeling; for I knew that they had in this savage place no small piece of St. Anthony, and having three men who could make a cross, I secured all three as witnesses; and then we marched away from this inhospitable desert. But the worst of the business was not over yet, for when we returned to the spot where we had tethered our horses very carefully, not one of them was there except my own, and he was loose, but ran to me. Him alone those Ossets had not stolen, because he could bite as well as kick, and would let none but his master handle him. We ran back to the village, but there was not a soul there, except a few children yelling. All these we put into one hut far apart, and then set fire to all the rest. But being of stone they burned very unkindly, and having no time to make a good job of it, we shook the Ossetian dust from our feet, and made off in hope as well as fear of having all the mad savages after us. "How, among a people thus divided, could there be any chance of solid resistance to a mighty nation like Russia, acting in unity, and able to replace every man killed with a dozen just as good? There was not a tribe among us that would join its neighbour, for any other purpose than the plunder of a third; and when this was carried off, the victorious pair were sure to have another fight about the booty, before they were half-way home again. A quarrel was now set up between my people and those of Prince Rakhan, which would probably last for generations; not so much about my father's murder--for that was a matter of suspicion only, and chiefly concerned his next of kin--but about the theft of those well-bred horses, and the firing of that worthless village. And when I received a letter of insult in the Georgian language, from the man who had so injured me, the only thing that surprised me was his ability to write it. For though he spent much of his time at Tiflis, whenever he could scrape up coin enough, it was not for the purpose of improving his mind, even if he had any to embellish. That problem however was speedily solved; for the writing was my sister's.