slave. His origin was no legal bar to his succeeding like his brothers.
The family was one of the richest in the town of Tepelen, whose name it
bore, it enjoyed an income of six thousand piastres, equal to twenty
thousand francs. This was a large fortune in a poor country, where, all
commodities were cheap. But the Tepeleni family, holding the rank of
beys, had to maintain a state like that of the great financiers of
feudal Europe. They had to keep a large stud of horses, with a great
retinue of servants and men-at-arms, and consequently to incur heavy
expenses; thus they constantly found their revenue inadequate. The most
natural means of raising it which occurred to them was to diminish the
number of those who shared it; therefore the two elder brothers, sons of
the wife, combined against Veli, the son of the slave, and drove him out
of the house. The latter, forced to leave home, bore his fate like a
brave man, and determined to levy exactions on others to compensate him
for the losses incurred through his brothers. He became a freebooter,
patrolling highroads and lanes, with his gun on his shoulder and his
yataghan in his belt, attacking, holding for ransom, or plundering all
whom he encountered.

After some years of this profitable business, he found himself a wealthy
man and chief of a warlike band. Judging that the moment for vengeance
had arrived, he marched for Tepelen, which he reached unsuspected,
crossed the river Vojutza, the ancient Aous, penetrated the streets
unresisted, and presented himself before the paternal house, in which his
brothers, forewarned, had barricaded themselves. He at once besieged
them, soon forced the gates, and pursued them to a tent, in which they
took a final refuge. He surrounded this tent, waited till they were
inside it, and then set fire to the four corners. "See," said he to
those around him, "they cannot accuse me of vindictive reprisals; my
brothers drove me out of doors, and I retaliate by keeping them at home
for ever."

In a few moments he was his father's sole heir and master of Tepelen.
Arrived at the summit of his ambition, he gave up free-booting, and
established himself in the town, of which he became chief ago. He had
already a son by a slave, who soon presented him with another son, and
afterwards with a daughter, so that he had no reason to fear dying
without an heir. But finding himself rich enough to maintain more wives
and bring up many children,