Henceforth I am yours; I swear by the graves of my fathers.... I am
yours! Guide my steps, direct the strokes of my arm; and if ever,
drowned in softness, I forget my oath, remind me of this moment, of this
mountain peak: Ammalát Bek will awake, and his dagger will be
lightning!"

The Khan embraced him, as he lifted the excited youth into the saddle.
"Now I behold in you the pure blood of the Emírs!" said he: "the burning
blood of their children, which flows in our veins like the sulphur in
the entrails of the rocks, which, ever and anon inflaming, shakes and
topples down the crags." Steadying with one hand the wounded man in the
saddle, the Khan began cautiously to descend the rugged croft.
Occasionally the stones fell rattling from under their feet, or the
horse slid downward over the smooth granite, so that they were well
pleased to reach the mossy slopes. By degrees, creeping plants began to
appear, spreading their green sheets; and, waving from the crevices like
fans, they hung down in long ringlets like ribbons or flags. At length
they reached a thick wood of nut-trees; then came the oak, the wild
cherry, and, lower still, the tchinár,[41] and the tchindár. The
variety, the wealth of vegetation, and the majestic silence of the
umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary adoration of the wild
strength of nature. Ever and anon, from the midnight darkness of the
boughs, there dawned, like the morning, glimpses of meadows, covered
with a fragrant carpet of flowers untrodden by the foot of man. The
pathway at one time lost itself in the depth of the thicket; at another,
crept forth upon the edge of the rock, below which gleamed and murmured
a rivulet, now foaming over the stones, then again slumbering on its
rocky bed, under the shade of the barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants,
sparkling with their rainbow tails, flitted from shrub to shrub; flights
of wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes in an horizontal troop,