showed the energy of a strong will.

As soon as the Prince had set eyes on the young visitor, he stopped
singing.

"Ah! Georgi?" he stammered.

Without uttering a syllable, the page had advanced towards him, and had
quickly raised the intoxicated man from the chair. Prince Tchajawadse
flung his arm round the boy's shoulders, and without bidding his German
comrade as much as "good night," allowed himself to be led away.

Heideck did not doubt for a moment that this slender page was a girl
in disguise. The splendid build and the strange expression of untamed
energy in the admirably regular features were the unmistakable
characteristics of the Circassian type. This so-called Georgi could be
none other but a child of the Caucasian Mountains; and Tchajawadse also,
as his name showed, was a scion of those old Caucasian dynastic houses
which in days of yore had played a role in that mountain land, which
Russia had so slowly, and with such difficulty, finally subjugated.




IV

THE CIRCASSIAN BEAUTY


Captain Heideck's statement that he travelled for a Hamburg firm was