If I could have foreseen that the road would be blocked again by the Russians, and that it would be impossible for me to return once I left the town, I would have stayed by the troops at all costs. I was devoted to the Turkish army and the Turkish cause. I never spared myself in carrying out my duties, and I was bound by the strongest ties of attachment to my patients, as they were also, I felt and knew, to me. I positively loved the great, rough barbarians who bore their sufferings with such noble fortitude in my hospital, and during the whole of my time in Plevna I never had the slightest unpleasantness with a single one of them, and received always the greatest gratitude from them all. At that time there was no Turk in Plevna more Turkish in sympathies than I was. I threw my whole heart and soul and all my energies into the Turkish cause, and no one could have gone through all that I had without being impressed with a feeling of the most profound admiration for the patience, courage, and heroic patriotism of the Turkish private soldier. Intending as I did to remain away for a couple of weeks at most, I felt that the parting was only temporary; and when I went to say good-bye to the colonel of my regiment, Suleiman Bey, he wished me a cheery _au revoir_, expecting to see me soon back again. I had quite an affecting farewell with dear old Hassib Bey, and I also went round and said good-bye to all my intimate friends and the men with whom I had been brought most closely into contact. It was a great disappointment to me that I could not find the regimental barber, a little red-headed Turk, who used to shave me every Sunday, whether there was firing in progress or not, making me sit down on the ground and taking my head between his knees for the better performance of his task. Anxious as I was to make him a little present in recognition of his skill and punctuality, I was unable to find him. Like his brethren of the craft in other countries, he was a most loquacious conversationalist, and I got all the gossip of the trenches during the ten minutes that I was under his hands every Sunday. My Circassian servant Ahmet had to go back to the ranks, much to his disgust, when I went away, and from that time forward his lot was by no means such a happy one as before. Instead of leisurely cooking my pilaf, grooming my horse, and occasionally raiding the country for hay, poultry, eggs, or anything else that he could get for his own benefit as well as mine, the poor fellow had to take his place in the wet trenches, with no bed but a hole scooped in the clay, and little to expect in the way of breakfast except a bullet.