om she attached to her, service, some
by presents, others by various favours, and she gradually enlisted all
the lawless and adventurous men in Toscaria. With their aid, she made
herself all powerful in Tepelen, and inflicted the most rigorous
persecutions on such as remained hostile to her.

But the inhabitants of the two adjacent villages of Kormovo and Kardiki,
fearing lest this terrible woman, aided by her son, now grown into a man,
should strike a blow against their independence; made a secret alliance
against her, with the object of putting her out of the way the first
convenient opportunity. Learning one day that Ali had started on a
distant expedition with his best soldiers; they surprised Tepelen under
cover of night, and carried off Kamco and her daughter Chainitza captives
to Kardiki. It was proposed to put them to death; and sufficient
evidence to justify their execution was not wanting; but their beauty
saved their lives; their captors preferred to revenge themselves by
licentiousness rather than by murder. Shut up all day in prison, they
only emerged at night to pass into the arms of the men who had won them
by lot the previous morning. This state of things lasted for a month, at
the end of which a Greek of Argyro-Castron, named G. Malicovo, moved by
compassion for their horrible fate, ransomed them for twenty thousand
piastres, and took them back to Tepelen.

Ali had just returned. He was accosted by his mother and sister, pale
with fatigue, shame, and rage. They told him what had taken place, with
cries and tears, and Kamco added, fixing her distracted eyes upon him,
"My son! my son! my soul will enjoy no peace till Kormovo and Kardikil
destroyed by thy scimitar, will no longer exist to bear witness to my
dishonour."

Ali, in whom this sight and this story had aroused, sanguinary passions,
promised a vengeance proportioned to the outrage, and worked with all his
might to place himself in a position to keep his word. A worthy son of
his father, he had commenced life in the fashion of the heroes of ancient
Greece, stealing sheep and goats, and from the age of fourteen years he
had acquired an equal reputation to that earned by the son of Jupiter and
Maia. When he grew to manhood, he extended his operations. At the time
of which we are speaking, he had long practised open pillage. His
plundering expeditions added to his mother's savings, who since her
return from Kardiki had altogether withdrawn