"The scoundrel!" cried Vassilissa. "He has the impudence to invite us to
lay our flag at his feet, and he doesn't know we have been forty years
in the service!"

It was the same when Pugatchéf was actually at our door, and the assault
had actually begun. Old Ivan Mironoff blessed his daughter, and embraced
his wife, and then faced death. There was no fight in the poor old
pensioners who made up our garrison, and both Mironoff and myself were
soon captured, bound with ropes, and led before Pugatchéf.

The commandant indignantly refused to swear fidelity to the robber
chief, and was hanged there and then in the market square; an old
one-eyed lieutenant was soon swinging by his side. Then came my turn,
and I gave the same answer as my captain had done. The rope was round my
neck, when Pugatchéf shouted out "Stop!" and ordered my release. A few
minutes later, and poor old Vassilissa, who had come in search of her
husband, was lying dead in the market square, cut down by a Cossack's
sword. Pugatchéf's arrival had prevented Marya's escape to Orenburg, and
she was now lying too ill to be moved, in the house of Father Garassim,
the parish priest.

Pugatchéf gave me leave to depart in safety, but before Savélütch and I
left the fort, the rebel bade me come and see him. He laughed aloud when
I presented myself.

"Who would have thought," he said, "that the man who guided you to a
lodging on that night of the snowstorm was the great tzar himself? But
you shall see better things; I will load you with favours when I have
recovered my empire."