"I have sent for you, my valiant Tcherkesse," said he, politely, "to make you a tempting offer from our beneficent father the emperor. It is this. If you will enter the Russian service, all your father's possessions from Marinskoi to the mouth of the Kisselbash River will be restored to you, with the title of prince--neither of which can you ever hope to regain by the impious sword you have drawn against the house of Romanoff and the cause of Holy Russia." I rejected the offer with the scorn it merited, and reminded the tempter, in the words of our "Declaration of Independence," how many of our children had been stolen; how many of our princes had thus been lured away; how many sons of nobles taken as hostages, and then butchered in cold blood; how many noble houses had been reduced and crushed by Russian treason and by Russian treachery; and lifting up my hands, while I turned my face towards Mecca, I was about to take a solemn vow, when interrupting me, he said, with an icy smile,-- "Enough, Osman Rioni--swear not--'t is needless! To-morrow you and your brothers will commence the long, long march to Siberia." At these words my soul trembled, and my head fell upon my breast. The Russian officer still smiled and continued to polish the eagle on his helmet, with his leather glove, while whistling the popular waltz of the Duchess Olga. Siberia! With that name, hope, love, liberty, my country and her cause sank, and snow-covered wastes, with chains and stripes, despair and death, rose up before me. If once I reached Siberia, I should live the life of the hopeless, and die the death of the despairing; and my brothers--my poor brothers! The alternative was terrible, but in the Russian service we should daily have chances of escape to our native mountains; so I accepted his offer in the name of myself, Selim, and Karolyi. "I knew that you would think better of it," said Carlovitch, sitting down in his tent, and writing a memorandum; "thenceforward from this day, you are a captain in the Tenginski Hussars, and your brothers shall be the lieutenants of your troop. Allow me to present you with a horse which was taken at Mikhailov. You shall fight against the Tartars, not your own people; but to-morrow I have a piece of service to propose to you. Come here after morning parade or at noon, and I shall tell you all about it--meantime adieu." With a heart full of bitterness I left him, and careless of the Cossacks, who still watched me, I took up a handful of gravel and flung it towards his painted tent, spying, as Mohammed did at Bedr,-- "A curse upon thee, Muscovite--and a curse be on every hair of the cur that begot thee! May thy face be confounded for ever!"