head. "May he
eat his own heart who treats a dying man with such dreadful food!" he
murmured, scarce intelligibly. "I must make my peace with my enemies,
and not----Ah, I burn, I burn! Give me water, water! Why have you made
me drink scalding naphtha? Ammalat, I curse you!" This effort exhausted
the last drops of life in the Khan; he fell a senseless corpse on the
pillow. The Khansha had looked with horror on the bloody and untimely
present of Ammalat; but when she saw that this had hastened her
husband's death, all her grief broke out in a torrent of anger.
"Messenger of hell!" she exclaimed, her eyes flashing, "rejoice; these
are your exploits; but for you, my husband would never have thought of
raising Avar against the Russians, and would have now been sitting in
health and quiet at home; but for you, visiting the Ouzdens, he fell
from a rock and was disabled; and you, blood-drinker!--instead of
consoling the sick with mild words, instead of making his peace with
Allah by prayers and alms--bring, as if to a cannibal, a dead man's
head; and whose head? Thy benefactor's, thy protector's, thy friend's!"

"Such was the Khan's will," in his turn replied Ammalat.

"Do not slander the dead; defile not his memory with superfluous blood!"
screamed the Khansha: "not content with having treacherously murdered a
man, you come with his head to woo my daughter at the deathbed of her
father, and you hoped to receive a recompense from man, when you
deserved the vengeance of God. Godless, soulless being! No! by the
graves of my ancestors, by the swords of my sons, I swear you shall
never be my son-in-law, my acquaintance, my guest! Away from my house,
traitor! I have sons, and you may murder while embracing them. I have a
daughter, whom you may bewitch and poison with your serpent looks. Go,
wander in the ravines of the mountains; teach the tigers to tear each
other; and dispute with the wolves for carcasses. Go, and know that my
door opens not to a fratricide!"

Ammalat stood like one struck by lightning: all that his conscience had
indistinctly whispered to him had been spoken out to him at once, and so
unexpectedly, so cruelly. He knew not where to turn his eyes: there lay
the head of Verkhoffsky with its accusing blood--there was the
threatening face of the Khan, printed with the seal of a death of
torture--there he met the stern glance of the Khansha.... The tearful
eyes of Seltanetta alone appeared like stars of joy through