third day he reached
Khounzakh.

Trembling with impatience, he leaped from his horse, worn out with
fatigue, and took from his saddle-straps the fatal bag. The front
chambers were filled with warriors; cavaliers in armour were walking up
and down, or lay on the carpets along the walls, conversing in whispers;
but their eyebrows were knit and cast down--their stern faces proved
that bad news had reached Khounzakh. Noukers ran hurriedly backwards and
forwards, and none questioned, none accompanied Ammalat, none paid any
attention to him. At the door of the Khan's bed-chamber sate
Zourkhai-Khan-Djingka, the natural son of Sultan Akhmet, weeping
bitterly. "What means this?" uneasily demanded Ammalat. "You, from whom
even in childhood tears could not be drawn--you weep?"

Zourkhai silently pointed to the door, and Ammalat, perplexed, crossed
the threshold. A heart-rending spectacle was presented before the
new-comer's eyes. In the middle of the room, on a bed, lay the Khan,
disfigured by a fierce illness; death invisible, but inevitable, hovered
over him, and his fading glance met it with dread. His breast heaved
high, and then sank heavily; his breath rattled in his throat, the veins
of his hands swelled, and then shrank again. In him was taking place the
last struggle of life with annihilation; the mainspring of existence had
already burst, but the wheels still moved with an uneven motion,
catching and entangling in each other. The spark of memory hardly
glimmered in him, but fitfully flashed like falling stars through the
darkness of night, which thickened over his soul, and reflected
themselves in his dying face. His wife and daughter were sobbing on
their knees by his bed-side; his eldest son, Noutsal, in silent despair
leaned at his feet, resting his head on his clenched fists. Several
women and noukers wept silently at a distance.

All this, however, neither astounded Ammalat nor recalled him to
himself, occupied as he was with one idea: he approached the Khan with a
firm step, and said to him aloud--"Hail, Khan! I have brought you a
present which will restore a dead man to life. Prepare the bridal. Here
is my purchase-money for Seltanetta; here is the head of Verkhoffsky!"
With these words he threw it at the Khan's feet.

The well-known voice aroused Sultan Akhmet from his last sleep: he
raised his head with difficulty to look at the present, and a shudder
ran like a wave over his body when he beheld the lifeless