Russians dashed in at the other.




CHAPTER II.


The vernal noon was shining upon the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud
voices of the moollahs had called the inhabitants of Tchetchná to
prayer. By degrees they came forth from the mosques, and though
invisible to each other from the towers on which they stood, their
solitary voices, after awaking for a moment the echoes of the hills,
sank to stillness in the silent air.

The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a Turkish devotee, one of those
missionaries annually sent into the mountains by the Divan of Stamboul,
to spread and strengthen the faith, and to increase the detestation felt
by the inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing on the roof of the
mosque, having performed the usual call, ablution, and prayer. He had
not been long installed as moollah of Igáli, a village of Tchetchná; and
plunged in a deep contemplation of his hoary beard, and the circling
smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe, he gazed from time to time with a
curious interest on the mountains, and on the defiles which lay towards
the north, right before his eyes. On the left arose the precipitous
ridges dividing Tchetchná from Avár, and beyond them glittered the snows
of Caucasus; sáklas scattered disorderly along the ridges half-way up
the mountain, and narrow paths led to these fortresses built by nature,
and employed by the hill-robbers to defend their liberty, or secure
their plunder. All was still in the village and the surrounding hills;