of that hill from which Yermoloff had thundered on
Derbend when but a lieutenant of artillery. Knowing where the Russian
officers were buried, he came out upon the upper burial-ground. But how
to find the new-made grave of Verkhoffsky in the darkness of the night?
Not a star glimmered in the sky: the clouds lay stretched on the hills,
the mountain-wind, like a night-bird, lashed the forest with its wing:
an involuntary shudder crept over Ammalat, in the midst of the region of
the dead, whose repose he dared to interrupt. He listens: the sea
murmurs hoarsely against the rocks, tumbling back from them into the
deep with a sullen sound. The prolonged "sloushai" of the sentinels
floated round the walls of the town, and when it was silent there rose
the yell of the jackals; and at last all again was still--every sound
mingling and losing itself in the rushing of the wind. How often had he
not sat awake on such nights with Verkhoffsky--and where is he now! And
who plunged him into the grave! And the murderer was now come to behead
the corpse of his former friend--to do sacrilege to his remains--like a
grave-robber to plunder the tomb--to dispute with the jackal his prey!

"Human feeling!" cried Ammalat, as he wiped the cold sweat from his
forehead, "why visitest thou a heart which has torn itself from
humanity? Away, away! Is it for me to fear to take off the head of a
dead man, whom I have robbed of life! For him 'twill be no loss--to me a
treasure. Dust is insensible!"

Ammalat struck a light with a trembling hand, blew up into a flame some
dry bourian, (a dry grass of South Russia,) and went with it to search
for the new-made grave. The loosened earth, and a large cross, pointed
out the last habitation of the colonel. He tore up the cross, and began
to dig up the mound with it; he broke through the arch of brickwork,
which had not yet become hardened, and finally tore the lead from the
coffin. The bourian, flaring up, threw an uncertain bloody-bluish tinge
on all around. Leaning over the dead, the murderer, paler than the
corpse itself, gazed unmovingly on his work; he forgot why he had
come--he turned away his head from the reek of rottenness--his gorge
rose within him when he saw the bloody-headed worms that crawled from
under the clothes. Interrupted in their loathsome work, they, scared by
the light, crept into a mass, and hid themselves beneath each other. At
length, steeling himself to the deed, he brandished his da