"Our little band had never shared in any of those atrocities. Therefore it would be better for us, if we could not escape capture, to fall into the hands of the foe as a separate detachment, than to surrender with the General. And this was my reason for attempting an escape, rather than any fair prospect of success in such a situation. But strange to say, by means of a tunnel in the cliff unknown to the enemy, and then some most perilous scaling of rocks--such as Englishmen delight in, but a native of the mountains prefers to do by deputy--and then some midnight rushes through blockaded passes and defiles, we contrived with the loss of two men only to regain our own abodes. But more than a month had thus been spent after we quitted Shamyl, in wandering, fighting, and lying close, going out of our way for sustenance, and being driven out of it by enemies and tempests. With 50,000 men to stop them, not a horse to help them, no supplies to start with, and no village-folk to provide them, nothing but the fruit the bears had left, to keep body and soul together--even veterans of Shamyl's training might have been proud to force passage thus. "Alas that we ever achieved it! For my men's sake I am glad, of course; but for my own, I would that God had seen fit in His mercy to lay me dead by a Russian gun, or stretch me frozen on the mountain side!" CHAPTER XXV IMAR'S TALE--CRIME "It was late of an October afternoon, when my heart, which had been low with hunger, hardship, and long weariness, began to glow with hope and love, as I stood at the bottom of our Karthlos steep. There was no fusilier on guard; and the granite steps and groins were choked with snow; but I sent my followers to their homes, as was only fair to them, with orders to come to a sheep-and-goat supper, if their appetites remained, when they had embraced their families. Then I sounded the great horn, fogged with cob-webs, hanging above the lower gate, and with only my faithful milk-brother Stepan, and one other trooper who belonged to our old tower, breasted the rugged and crooked ascent. "'How wild with delight will my Oria be!' I thought, as I laboured through the drifts, for there had been no opportunity of sending any letter. 'How lonely she must have been, sweet soul, and trembling with hope of a word from me!'