"You must try to make the best of it, Mr. Cranleigh," he went on, as if he understood my thoughts. "You have been horribly slandered, no doubt; and the sweet young lady has swallowed wicked lies, all the more readily because she is a sweet young lady, and for that reason credulous and jealous. But there are a lot of things in your favour still, if you will let me set them before you. I have not the least idea what you are charged with, any more than you have. But whatever it may be, the charge will grow fainter, and the faith in it weaker, as time goes on; and the inventor of it will become more hateful. Probably Hafer has invented it; and even while she listens to it, her heart will turn against him. I know what a good woman is, because I have had to deal with them. A man who runs women down, is either a bad lot himself, or a most unlucky fellow. Moreover, she dislikes that cousin of hers, if he is her cousin, for his violence, and roughness, and haughty ways. All that will increase, when he gets home again, and contrasts all their hard and uncivilised life with the luxuries and joys of London. She will turn against him more and more; and her father will never compel her to marry against her wishes. Moreover, there is likely to be some time yet before his schemes come to a head. My young savage has overthrown his cast, or that of his mother Marva. In his urgency to get them back straightway to the land of the mountain without the flood, he has sent them round by St. Petersburg. He insisted so much on the peril they were in of losing all their Lesghian rights, that Sûr Imar resolved, very wisely as I thought, to assert them at headquarters. So Stepan and others were left behind to take the heavy goods straight to Poti perhaps. This was a floorer for Prince Hafer, and he gnashed his teeth, which he dyes yellow; for he is the Devil, and no mistake, when he can't have his own way. You don't consider me a suspicious man, Mr. Cranleigh, do you?" "A little too much the other way; as is the case with all fine natures," I replied, according to my thoughts; for he was evidently taking my part now. "In that case, listen to my firm belief. I am not at all up to the tone and style of what those mountaineers do now. And of course I may be as much behind the age, as Sûr Imar wants to be in front of it. But to my mind men are men always, and you can't improve them suddenly. A lot of sham comes in with some races; but not with stubborn chaps like these. Sûr Imar may print a million copies of the Sermon on the Mount; but it won't go down with them. Or it goes down, and never comes up again. You may as well pour gold into a cesspool. My firm belief is that this Prince Hafer intends to get our noble friend out there, marry his daughter, and then shoot him, and combine that heritage with his own. Ah, yes!"