ds and dragging it off me."

The father looked at the two children with an ever-darkening face, but
the merchant solemnly shook his head and raised his hands aloft with
an expression of horror. "O foolish--O mad children!" cried he.

"The bear had now had enough," continued Milieva, trying to give her
talkative little mouth an earnest expression befitting her serious
narration; "it tore itself out of our hands, and with a great roar
took refuge from us in a subterranean cave, taking along with it
Thomar's knife, buried in its head. Now this knife we had got from
Hassan Beg, so we could not afford to lose it. So what do you think
Thomar did? He dived into the narrow hole after the bear, and, seizing
it there by the throat, throttled it, and dragged it out."

Cold drops of perspiration trickled down the foreheads of the two men.

"Then he caught the young bear by the foot, and as it was heavy we
both dragged it along together. We had to make haste, for the old bear
had scented our trail and was after us, and pursued us as far as the
herds, where the herd-keepers shot it down, but its young one we
brought along with us."

"O ye senseless children!" cried the merchant in his terror. "O
blockheads! Suppose the bear had clawed your faces, you would have
been disfigured forevermore. It would really serve you right if your
father gave you a good thrashing with this new whip."

And that is what really did happen.

In his wrath Kasi Mollah seized the freshly made, mule-driving whip,
and cannot one imagine the fury, begotten of fear, which would take
possession of a father's heart on hearing such a hair-bristling
narrative from the lips of his children? To poke their noses into a
bear's den, forsooth! The old bear would have torn the pair of them to
pieces had she been able to catch them! They had certainly well
deserved a thrashing, and a good thrashing too! Thomar would not have
wept or groaned however many stripes he might have got; he only
clinched his teeth, and, standing upright, bore with tearless eyes the
lashing of the whip on his back and shoulders without a cry, without a
sob.

But Milieva cast herself, shrieking, on her father's breast, and the
tears began to pour abundantly from her radiantly bright eyes. She
caught hold of the Circassian's chastising right arm with both her
hands, and begged so sweetly, "Do not hurt Thomar; do not hurt him,
father! It was indeed not his fault. I assure you I set him on. I to