On one occasion at Alexandrovsk, a strong detachment of soldiers searched the town, house by house, in the small hours of the morning, bent upon taking him, but quite fruitlessly. Yet four hours after the search had begun, he was seen by a friend in the neighbourhood passing along the street with no more disguise than being muffled up in a fur-lined coat. Again, he entered a store in the town and having posted a sentry to keep watch, proceeded to ransack the place, emptying the counter cases of their jewelry, the tills and the safes of their cash. The recklessness of these thieves was so great that they entered the town and had their photographs taken. But the net was closing round Barratasvili. A combined effort was set on foot to put an end to him and his gang. It was winter time when the end came. Overcome with fatigue, he one day ventured off the road into the forest close to a deserted saw-mill, and with his companions fell asleep. An overseer, trudging along the road, noticed the tracks of his skis, and they aroused his suspicions. Ordinary travellers do not leave the road to plunge into the deep snow of the dense forest. He, too, was tired, but he went back to Derbensk and secured the assistance of a posse of soldiers. Following up the track, step by step, through the forest, they came upon the long-sought robbers resting. The alarm was given. Firing began on both sides. The leader of the gang was hit in the left shoulder, but still continued to fire. The soldiers sought shelter behind tree trunks. Barratasvili, in taking aim, exposed his head and in so doing was shot in the forehead. Their leader killed, his companions threw down their arms, were taken and beaten by the soldiers with the butt ends of their muskets. In encounters of this kind, the soldiers, furious at the loss of their comrades, treat their captives most brutally, and in some cases the latter have died from injuries thus received. Three of the four companions of Barratasvili were hanged at the corners of the testing prison at Alexandrovsk. In theory, capital punishment is supposed to have been abolished in Russia, but the sentence is still passed by court-martial and the island of Saghalien in under martial law. These _brodyagi_ were really strangled, not hanged. A rope with a slip-knot was fixed round the neck of the culprit, the other end being carried up and made taut to a crosspiece supported by two upright poles. The convict stood on a box, which was kicked away from under his feet, and strangulation often tardily ensued.