wheeled towards us.
Then a man in a grey overcoat and a sheepskin cap was on the ground
beside us wringing our hands.

'You are safe, my old friends'--it was Peter's voice that spoke--'I
will take you back to our army, and get you breakfast.'

'No, by the Lord, you won't,' cried Sandy. 'We've had the rough end of
the job and now we'll have the fun. Look after Blenkiron and these
fellows of mine. I'm going to ride knee by knee with your sportsmen
for the city.'

Peter spoke a word, and two of the Cossacks dismounted. The next I
knew I was mixed up in the cloud of greycoats, galloping down the road
up which the morning before we had strained to the _castrol_.

That was the great hour of my life, and to live through it was worth a
dozen years of slavery. With a broken left arm I had little hold on my
beast, so I trusted my neck to him and let him have his will. Black
with dirt and smoke, hatless, with no kind of uniform, I was a wilder
figure than any Cossack. I soon was separated from Sandy, who had two
hands and a better horse, and seemed resolute to press forward to the
very van. That would have been suicide for me, and I had all I could
do to keep my place in the bunch I rode with.

But, Great God! what an hour it was! There was loose shooting on our
flank, but nothing to trouble us, though the gun team of some Austrian
howitzer, struggling madly at a bridge, gave us a bit of a tussle.
Everything flitted past me like smoke, or like the mad finale of a
dream just before waking. I knew the living movement under me, and the
companionship of men, but all dimly, for at heart I was alone,
grappling with the realization of a new world. I felt the shadows of
the Palantuken glen fading, and the great burst of light as we emerged
on the wider valley. Somewhere before us was a pall of smoke seamed
with red flames, and beyond the darkness of still higher hills. All
that time I was dreaming, crooning daft catches of song to myself, so
happy, so deliriously happy that I dared not try to think. I kept
muttering a kind of prayer made up of Bible words to Him who had shown
me His goodness in the land of the living.

But as we drew out from the skirts of the hills and began the long
slope to the city, I woke to clear consciousness. I felt the smell of
sheepskin and lathered horses, and above all the bitter smell of fire.
Down in the trough lay Erzerum, now burning in many places, and from
the east, past the silent