Three weeks afterwards I heard of his fate, and to nerve my soul for the coming vengeance, I drank in the terrible description of the poor boy's dying scene. I was told by my sergeant how the troops were formed in a hollow square--ten thousand Russian slaves, misnamed as soldiers, with bayonets fixed and colours flying; I was told how the noble prisoner stood amid them, with the kingly air of a true Circassian cavalier, though stripped of every article of attire, save a pair of tattered drawers; how he was bound by the wrists, the neck, and ancles, to a large gun-carriage, and how the executioner, a gigantic Kalmuck, stood six feet distant to give his infernal weapon a swing more full and heavy. I was told how Selim--for he was the youngest of us--screamed in agony as each successive blow fell on his bare and quivering shoulders, from which the flesh was torn in pieces by every lash of the dreadful whip; how between every stroke this giant Kalmuck dipped its bloody ends in brimstone, and how the victim sank beneath the strokes, until at last their sound came dull and dead, for poor Selim had expired with four words on his lips; they were, "My brothers--my brothers." I did not shed a tear for him; a fiend seemed to possess me; a devilish joy swelled within me, as I lay that night in the bivouac beside the feet of Zupi, rolled in my mantle, with my sword and pistols at my side. "Woe to thee, whining cur of the Czar, woe!" I repeated again and again; "to-morrow I will see thee, Carlovitch--to-morrow shall thy soul answer to heaven and to hell for these atrocities; and to-morrow Mostapha's son shall cease to be the serf of this dog Emperor, Nicholas Paulovitch!" The sunny morrow came, and loud and shrill rang the trumpets which summoned the Hussars and Grenadiers of Tenginski to a general parade. I examined my saddle girths, my bridle, and my arms, with scrupulous exactness, for this would be the last parade I was ever to attend. I threw away everything that might serve to encumber my motions or overload my horse, and by my advice Karolyi did the same. We were now with that portion of the Russian army which had fallen back from the Circassian Mountains to recruit and reform after their defeats by Schamyl; and which, after recrossing the Don, was cantoned principally in the Ukraine. The division to which we belonged occupied Poltava, one of the richest and best parts of the adjoining province for pasturing cavalry horses. On the very day after we halted at Poltava, a grand parade was formed before Prince Menschikoff, and as I had marched with the baggage guard, I saw Carlovitch for the first time since these atrocities had cast a horror on my soul. The Prophet alone knows what were my emotions at the sight of him. The voices of Basilia and of Selim were rising from their graves--they were ever in my ears whispering "vengeance," and I rode amid the troops like one in a stupor. The parade was a magnificent one.