All the time I remained in Tiflis Ivan was suspicious of my associates, the officers. “Bloody Russians,” he called them, and he had no use for them whatever. Being one of the race who had been victimized by Russian treachery so often since the confiscation of the church property, and the abolition of the schools in 1903, he could no more put faith in any man representing the government of the Czar. He was most thoughtful of me, however, and after we had got to know each other better, he proved himself measurably loyal. Early in our acquaintance, he had taught me how to use my dagger. For he insisted that since I carried a dagger, I should know how to handle it when occasion demanded. He told me how to grasp the handle with my hands and to thrust it into the bowels of my opponent, giving it the right twist so as to make short work of my enemy, after the manner of his own countrymen. “But, sir,” he added, “you are to use it this way only when you are forced to meet your man face to face. It is better for you to get behind your enemy and to plant your dagger between his shoulders when he is not looking.” Ivan’s fighting ethics were built upon a wholly practical basis. He knew no other standard. In this, he was like all the peoples of Caucasia. Besides the demolished foreign quarters of Tiflis, there were evidences a-plenty of riot and revolt in all sections of the town; whole blocks of houses sometimes with windows broken, as a result of a recent bomb; telegraph lines down; traffic interrupted; streets torn up and day by day reports came in of clashes between the peoples, and sometimes between the populace and the authorities, and never a day without murder or assassination.