"'I have fought a good fight. I have held the faith. I have not striven for my own glory, but in the cause of God most High. If it is His Holy will to forsake us, there is no more for man to do.' "It was useless of course to argue with him. A man at all open to argument would not have done much against Russia. And when I met my few surviving friends among his gallant officers, they told me that his last defence was gone, his force reduced to four hundred men, and all his inaccessible retreats cut off. The enemy had blocked him in his last hole; for his own life he cared little, as he had proved a thousand times; but the few who still remained faithful to him, and were ready to die at his side, surely it would have been a mean requital to drive them like sheep into the butcher's yard. Therefore must he yield at last. "We were talking dismally about all this, and saying that the mountains would never again be fit for a gentleman to live in, when I received another call to Shamyl's room, and had another interview with him. He had spent some time in prayer, and been rewarded with a holy vision from on high, so that his eyes were full of fire, and his countenance shone with happiness. One would scarcely believe that gloom and ferocity so often darkened that wondrous face. "'I have received the word of the Lord, the holy voice of Allah, to whom be all praise and glory! Imar of the Kheusurs, it is not for thee to hear it, being but an outer infidel. It is commanded that thou shouldest depart from among the chosen warriors of heaven, that they who bear witness be of the true faith. If thou and thy men can escape, behold it is my duty to aid thee. And verily I rejoice, for thou hast been a faithful friend to us.' "If he rejoiced, I could tell him of some one who rejoiced a hundred-fold, to escape a Russian jail and exile from his wife and children, even if his life were spared; of which there was no certainty, after the many atrocities committed by my very noble friend. Perhaps it was not magnanimous on my part to decline--if good luck should allow it--the glory of being shot or starved for the sake of the beloved country. But a lot of cross tangles came into that question. Was it my country in the first place? If it was, should I help it by quitting it so? And again, would that beloved land show equal love to me when gone, by attending to my belongings? No land I have heard of has ever done that. Therefore I showed my love of my country, by deciding to remain inside it.